Individuals' Responsibility in Corporations

I discuss role responsibly, individual responsibility and collective responsibility in corporate multinational setting. My case study is about minerals used in electronics that come from the Democratic Republic of Congo. What I try to show throughout the thesis is how many things need to be taken into consideration when we discuss the responsibility of individuals in corporations. No easy and simple answers are available. Instead, we must keep in mind the complexity of the situation at all times, judging cases on individual basis, emphasizing the importance of individual judgement and virtue, as well as the responsibility we all share as members of groups and the wider society. I begin by discussing the demands that are placed on us as employees. There is always a potential for a conflict between our different roles and also the wider demands placed on us. Role demands are usually much more specific than the wider question of how we should act as human beings. The terminology of roles can also be misleading as it can create illusions about our work selves being somehow radically separated from our everyday, true selves. The nature of collective decision-making and its implications for responsibility is important too. When discussing the moral responsibility of an employee in a corporate setting, one must take into account arguments from individual and collective responsibility, as well as role ethics. Individual responsibility is not a separate or competing notion from that of collective responsibility. Rather, the two are interlinked. Individuals' responsibilities in collective settings combine both individual responsibility and collective responsibility (which is different from aggregate individual responsibility). In the majority of cases, both will apply in various degrees. Some members might have individual responsibility in addition to the collective responsibility, while others just the collective responsibility. There are also times when no-one bears individual moral responsibility but the members are still responsible for the collective part. My intuition is that collective moral responsibility is strongly linked to the way the collective setting affects individual judgements and moulds the decisions, and how the individuals use the collective setting to further their own ends. Individuals remain the moral agents but responsibility is collective if the actions in question are collective in character. I also explore the impacts of bureaucratic ethic and its influence on the individual. Bureaucracies can compartmentalize work to such a degree that individual human action is reduced to mere behaviour. Responsibility is diffused and the people working in the bureaucracy can come to view their actions to be outside the normal human realm where they would be responsible for what they do. Language games and rules, anonymity, internal power struggles, and the fragmentation of information are just some of the reasons responsibility and morality can get blurry in big institutional settings. Throughout the thesis I defend the following theses: ● People act differently depending on their roles. This is necessary for our society to function, but the more specific role demands should always be kept in check by the wider requirements of being a good human being. ● Acts in corporations (and other large collectives) are not reducible to individual actions, and cannot be explained fully by the behaviour of individual employees. ● Individuals are responsible for the actions that they undertake in the collective as role occupiers and are very rarely off the hook. Hiding behind role demands is usually only an excuse and shows a lack of virtue. ● Individuals in roles can be responsible even when the collective is not. This depends on if the act they performed was corporate in nature or not. ● Bureaucratic structure affects individual thinking and is not always a healthy environment to work in. ● Individual members can share responsibility with the collective and our share of the collective responsibility is strongly linked to our relations. ● Corporations and other collectives can be responsible for harm even when no individual is at fault. The structure and the policies of the collective are crucial. ● Socialization plays an important role in our morality at both work and outside it. We are all responsible for the kind of moral context we create. ● When accepting a role or a position in a collective, we are attaching ourselves with the values of that collective. ● Ethical theories should put more emphasis on good judgement and decision-making instead of vague generalisations. My conclusion is that the individual person is always in the centre when it comes to responsibility, and not so easily off the hook as we sometimes think. What we do, and especially who we choose to associate ourselves with, does matter and we should be more careful when we choose who we work for. Individuals within corporations are responsible for choosing that the corporation they associate with is one that they can ascribe to morally, if not fully, then at least for the most part. Individuals are also inclusively responsible to a varying degree for the collective activities they contribute to, even in overdetermined contexts. We all are responsible for the kind of corporations we choose to support through our actions as consumers, investors and citizens.

Authorship in scientific publications: analysis and recommendations.

In 2008, a Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences working group chaired by Professor Emilio Bossi issued a "Memorandum on scientific integrity and the handling of misconduct in the scientific context", together with a paper setting out principles and procedures concerning integrity in scientific research. In the Memorandum, unjustified claims of authorship in scientific publications are referred to as a form of scientific misconduct - a view widely shared in other countries. In the Principles and Procedures, the main criteria for legitimate authorship are specified, as well as the associated responsibilities. It is in fact not uncommon for disputes about authorship to arise with regard to publications in fields where research is generally conducted by teams rather than individuals. Such disputes may concern not only the question who is or is not to be listed as an author but also, frequently, the precise sequence of names, if the list is to reflect the various authors' roles and contributions. Subjective assessments of the contributions made by the individual members of a research group may differ substantially. As scientific collaboration - often across national boundaries - is now increasingly common, ensuring appropriate recognition of all parties is a complex matter and, where disagreements arise, it may not be easy to reach a consensus. In addition, customs have changed over the past few decades; for example, the practice of granting "honorary" authorship to an eminent researcher - formerly not unusual - is no longer considered acceptable. It should be borne in mind that the publications list has become by far the most important indicator of a researcher's scientific performance; for this reason, appropriate authorship credit has become a decisive factor in the careers of young researchers, and it needs to be managed and protected accordingly. At the international and national level, certain practices have therefore developed concerning the listing of authors and the obligations of authorship. The Scientific Integrity Committee of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences has collated the relevant principles and regulations and formulated recommendations for authorship in scientific publications. These should help to prevent authorship disputes and offer guidance in the event of conflicts.

The vocation of responsibility : a conceptual analysis of a modern idea

Please consult the paper edition of this thesis to read. It is available on the 5th Floor of the Library at Call Number: Z 9999 P55 N48 2004

Introduction: Working in Development Ethics – a tribute to Denis Goulet

Denis Goulet (1931-2006) was probably the main founder of work on ‘development ethics’ as a self-conscious field that treats the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning and practice. This overview of a selection of papers presented at a conference of the International Development Ethics Association (Uganda, 2006) surveys Goulet’s work and compares it with issues and approaches in the selected papers. Ideas raised by Goulet provide a framework for discussing the set of papers, which especially consider corruption, professional ethics and the rights to water and essential drugs. The papers in turn provide a basis for comparing Goulet’s ideas with actual directions of work on development ethics. Rather than as a separate sub-discipline, development ethics takes shape as an interdisciplinary meeting place, aided though by the profile and intellectual space that Goulet strikingly strove to build for it.

La base para la construcción de una sociedad más justa, fundamentada en el papel que juegan las empresas a la luz de la norma ISO 26.000. ¿Qué está sucediendo dentro de la multinacional Merck?

Dentro del marco empresarial, uno de los conceptos más utilizados en los últimos años ha sido el de responsabilidad social, aunque muchas compañías entienden el concepto, no saben cómo ponerlo en práctica, en las próximas páginas, usted querido lector sabrá qué debe hacer para hacer que su compañía sea reconocida como socialmente responsable.

Dialogical ethics in a global society : cultural difference and answerability

Debates about multiculturalism are common to many late-modern societies today. Globalization has triggered a massive flow of people across state borders, challenging and changing assumptions about national identities and cultural politics. How to deal with difference without reducing it to sameness is becoming one of the main issues discussed by policy-makers, researchers and educators. This paper argues for the importance of turning to dialogical ethics before developing and implementing largescale political strategies in managing differences. It draws on the ideas of Bakhtin and Levinas to transcend the notion of ‘caring at a distance’ that is embedded in the neo-liberal construction of moral selfhood. As an alternative, the emphasis is made on spatial proximity – on ‘face-to-face’ relations with alterity – to conceptualize the dialogical self who is both responsive to and responsible for the Other. Bakhtin’s philosophy of the act and Levinas’ ethics of responsibility are mutually enriching in thinking about the role of the dialogical self in building a pluralistic society. The paper concludes with the implications of dialogical ethics for multicultural education.

What do indigenous communities think of the CSR practices of mining companies?

This paper examines how one indigenous community in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG) views the social responsibility initiatives of OK Tedi Mining Ltd (OTML). This mining operation has been controversial since its inception, and various operators of the mine have sought to engage the community and to undertake a number of CSR-related projects. Insights gained from four focus groups amongst the Ok Tedi River indigenous communities show that while some members of the community are satisfied with the company’s efforts at the macro level, many have reservations about the effectiveness of the programs at the micro level on the village and family unit. The implementation of CSR activities are slow and in many instances do not effectively address stakeholder concerns.

Credit for marginal groups; a study of the principal private sector credit institutions providing loans to marginal groups in the countries of the Dominican Republic, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, and Guatemala.

"Sponsored by: Pan American Development Foundation, in cooperation with: CUNA International, Inc. [and others]"

The responsibility is ours; the individual and our human relationships.

Bibliography: p. 29.

Budget issues : budgetary treatment of federal credit programs : report to the Chairman, Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives /

"B-227245"--p.1.

Why do US banks borrow from the Fed? A fresh look at the ‘reluctance’ phenomenon

The role of several theoretical factors in determining the demand of US banks for borrowed reserves from the Fed is empirically investigated. The main objective is to isolate the candidate(s) most likely responsible for the recent observed phenomenon of banks reluctance to borrow from the Fed, particularly since the mid-1980s. The results indicate that the declining number of banks due to mergers and consolidations holds much of the weight for explaining the weakened demand for borrowed reserves since the mid-1980s. Consistent evidence is found suggesting that US banks may have been unlawfully exploiting the discount window service for profit-taking purposes. This finding proves credible and suggests the need for further loan scrutiny at the Federal discount window.

CSR Reporting in the Finnish Banking Sector – Status and Recent Development

This thesis reviews the development of CSR reporting in the Finnish banking sector. This was achieved by analyzing the content of specific CSR reports published by three banks during years 2012-2014. The banks selected represent the three largest banks operating in Finland according to their market share, constituting approximately 70 percent of the total perceived market share. The purpose of the analysis is to establish a clear descriptive overview of the status of CSR reporting and how it has thematically developed over the years. The research was conducted with the qualitative content analysis method. By analyzing the contents of the CSR reports it was found that CSR reporting is understood in 3 different themes that reflect the general CSR theory: economic, social and environmental responsibility. The following research focused on analyzing these three core themes separately during years 2012-2014 in order to find specific tendencies in the development of CSR reporting. The results confirm that CSR reporting is developing in the Finnish banking sector. Reporting about economic responsibility is based on core financial performance reporting, and it’s mainly developing in the assessment of the global recession and how the potential fiscal reforms affect to the bank sector’s performance. Economic responsibility is also being understood and reported as a wider concept, including intertwined and shared meanings with the other responsibility reporting themes. The research also suggests that banks value social responsibility reporting increasingly each year. Environmental responsibility reporting is the most standardized form of reporting, however, the reporting development includes the increased use of digitalization as source of lessening the environmental impact.

Automatic speaker recognition under adverse conditions

Speaker verification is the process of verifying the identity of a person by analysing their speech. There are several important applications for automatic speaker verification (ASV) technology including suspect identification, tracking terrorists and detecting a person’s presence at a remote location in the surveillance domain, as well as person authentication for phone banking and credit card transactions in the private sector. Telephones and telephony networks provide a natural medium for these applications. The aim of this work is to improve the usefulness of ASV technology for practical applications in the presence of adverse conditions. In a telephony environment, background noise, handset mismatch, channel distortions, room acoustics and restrictions on the available testing and training data are common sources of errors for ASV systems. Two research themes were pursued to overcome these adverse conditions: Modelling mismatch and modelling uncertainty. To directly address the performance degradation incurred through mismatched conditions it was proposed to directly model this mismatch. Feature mapping was evaluated for combating handset mismatch and was extended through the use of a blind clustering algorithm to remove the need for accurate handset labels for the training data. Mismatch modelling was then generalised by explicitly modelling the session conditions as a constrained offset of the speaker model means. This session variability modelling approach enabled the modelling of arbitrary sources of mismatch, including handset type, and halved the error rates in many cases. Methods to model the uncertainty in speaker model estimates and verification scores were developed to address the difficulties of limited training and testing data. The Bayes factor was introduced to account for the uncertainty of the speaker model estimates in testing by applying Bayesian theory to the verification criterion, with improved performance in matched conditions. Modelling the uncertainty in the verification score itself met with significant success. Estimating a confidence interval for the "true" verification score enabled an order of magnitude reduction in the average quantity of speech required to make a confident verification decision based on a threshold. The confidence measures developed in this work may also have significant applications for forensic speaker verification tasks.

Reconceiving the good life : the key to sustainable globalisation

Resource-intensive, high-carbon, Western lifestyles are frequently criticised as unsustainable and deeply unsatisfying. However, these lifestyles are still attractive to the majority of Westerners and to a high proportion of the developing world’s middle classes. This paper argues that the imminent threat of catastrophic climate change constitutes an immediate political, economic and ethical challenge for citizens of the developed world that cannot be tackled by appeals to asceticism or restraint. There can be no solution to climate change until sustainable conceptions of the good life are developed that those in the west want to live and which others might want to live. While the ultimate solution to climate change is the development of low carbon lifestyles, it is important that government initiatives, governance arrangements and economic incentives support rather than undermine that search. Like the global financial crisis, the climate change crisis also demonstrates what happens when weaknesses in national, corporate and professional governance are exacerbated by weaknesses in global governance. In tackling the latter, it is critical the mistakes now evidenced in the former are avoided – including a rethinking of carbon market and carbon tax alternatives. It is also critical that individuals must take responsibility for their actions as consumers, voters and investors.

Regulating the cost of small loans : overdue or overkill?

Small-amount short-term lending began in 1994 in response to the initial exemption of such loans from consumer credit regulation. Growing demand for such loans now produces industry turnover of approximately $800 million each year. Regulators recognised early the need for consumer protection due to the vulnerability of borrowers and the emergence of various predatory practices. This led to reforms designed to regulate these loans, prevent particular misconduct and provide remedies against injustice. Some were enacted as part of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth), which also imposed licensing and responsible lending requirements on lenders and increased consumer access to remedies. The Government has now introduced the Consumer Credit and Corporations Amendment (Enhancements) Bill 2011 which limits the price that can be charged for credit and restricts access to small loans. This article examines the extensive reforms which have taken place in this sector, and compares these regulatory approaches with the “bright line approach” of the Enhancements Bill. The article argues that the repercussions of this step will require careful monitoring to ensure that further harm is not suffered by those least able to bear it, and that the government will also need to facilitate other, more sustainable, solutions to the problem that small loans are currently used to solve. After we wrote this article, the Report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services and the Report of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee on the Enhancements Bill were released. These are referred to in a postscript.