Corporations and Persons

We need to reimagine how we think about the firm. The dominant view of today sees corporations as relentlessly driven profit-maximizers; and, while many see this as an unfortunate reality, others maintain that a sophisticated understanding of law, economics, and morality reveals that corporations have a duty to act in this fashion. Either way, the dominant view is out of step with the needs and values of society. People, and especially members of younger generations, are clamoring for more meaningful and ethically engaged work. We also have recent memory of a global financial crisis that shook confidence in the free market system, and relatedly, there has subsequently been a diminution in trust in liberal democratic institutions and values. This work in philosophy and applied ethics responds to these events by presenting a persons-based theory of the firm. It views the for-profit corporation as a corporate person standing in moral relationships with human persons rather than as a purely calculating or even psychopathic actor. It fills out this theory by exploring the normative dimensions of the firm's relationships with key stakeholders such as customers, employees, and shareholders; and, it recognizes a special importance to the relationship between the firm and the citizens of a democratic society, and the role this relationship plays in understanding all of the others. The resulting way of thinking about corporations is more attuned to their duties within democratic society and more ethically empowering for their personnel.

David Silver holds the Chair in Business and Professional Ethics in the interdisciplinary W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, located in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He is cross appointed in the Sauder School of Business and is an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Philosophy. Professor Silver is a philosopher and business ethicist with decades of experience teaching within philosophy departments and business schools.