Alan Strudler

The Ethical and Environmental Limits of Stakeholder Theory

We argue that though stakeholder theory has much to recommend it, particularly as a heuristic for thinking about business firms properly as involving the economic interests of other groups beyond those of the shareholders or other equity owners, the theory is limited by its focus on the interests of human participants in business enterprise. Stakeholder theory runs into intractable philosophical difficulty in providing credible ethical principles for business managers in dealing with some topics, such as the natural environment, that do not directly involve human beings within a business firm or who engage in transactions with a firm. Corporate decision-making must include an appreciation of these ethical values even though they cannot be captured in stakeholder theory.

Authority, heuristics, and the structure of excuses

Stanley Milgrams (1983) famous obedience experiments show that in some contexts, ordinary people obey authority even when doing so involves gross wrongdoing. In this chapter we ask what, if anything, these experiments reveal about individual moral responsibility for wrongful conduct and its consequences. We propose approaches for evaluating the conduct of Milgrams subjects and we propose ways to generalize these approaches to assess the behavior of managers who respond to authority inside complex organizations. Our inquiry is not empirical: We do not try to expand the stock of psychological explanations of the behavior of Milgrams subjects or to adjudicate among rival explanations. Our inquiry is instead conceptual and normative: We analyze and propose norms for assessing some instances of wrongful conduct. Our normative arguments build on arguments that Schoeman (1987) made in a fascinating but neglected article about attribution theory and the Milgram experiments. Schoeman argued that some psychologists exaggerate the relevance of the Milgram experiments for interpreting normative judgments about moral responsibility. We agree. But, drawing on the legal theory of entrapment, Schoeman also sought to identify some reason that the Milgram experiments provide a source of insight about the normative relevance of relying on authority for certain excuses. We argue that the entrapment model cannot explain the normative relevance of relying on authority in Milgram cases because entrapment

The social construction of genetic abnormality: Ethical implications for managerial decisions in the workplace

This paper examines moral issues concerning a firms use of genetic information about a prospective employees predisposition to contract occupational and other illnesses. It critically reviews leading social construction literature on genetic abnormality and genetic screening, and it examines the relevance of arguments from justice and meritocratic principles. It concludes that there is a strong moral presumption against genetic screening in employment.

Causal inference as a cognitive strategy

Abstract This paper reports on ongoing research about how humans process probabilistic or frequentistic information. It suggests that humans depart from the probability calculus not only when they engage in the kind of reasoning that cognitive psychologists like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky label as ‘erroneous’, but also when they choose to give weight to causal rather than to frequentistic information and thereby in effect to ignore the odds. Finally, it argues that these results complicate the notion of rationality that should be employed by AI researchers.

Mass torts and moral principles

This paper examines moral problems that arise when assigning liability in causally problematic mass exposure tort cases. It examines the relevance of different conceptions of corrective justice for such assignments of liability. It explores an analogy between the expressive role of punishment and the expressive role of tort, and argues that the imposition of liability in causally problematic mass exposure cases can be justified by appeal to expressive considerations.

Pairwise comparison and numbers skepticism

In this article, we defend pairwise comparison as a method to resolve conflicting claims from different people that cannot be jointly satisfied because of a scarcity of resources. We consider Michael Otsukas recent challenge that pairwise comparison leads to intransitive choices for the ‘numbers skeptic’ (someone who believes the numbers should not count in forced choices among lives) and Frances Kamms responses to Otsukas challenge. We argue that Kamms responses do not succeed, but that the threat they are designed to meet is illusory. Once the method of pairwise comparison is understood in a manner consistent with its proposed use, the challenge disappears. In making this argument, we examine questions about the interpretation of pairwise comparison and maintain that it must be understood as a method for ensuring that decisions are justifiable from the perspective of each affected individual.

Managerial Choice About the Interests of Others: Psychological and Normative Dimensions

This paper investigates the relevance of certain research in psychology to normative issues about the ascription of managerial responsibility and about the design of managerial organizations. It argues that while the discussed psychological research has significant implications, these may not be the implications claimed by psychologists. The paper examines relevant research in the psychology of heuristics and the psychology of obedience. It argues that this research tends to establish that experimental subjects take deontology seriously, and that phenomena that psychologists dismiss as irrational may be better understood as a rejection of consequentialism.

Normative business ethics in a global economy: New directions in Donaldsonian themes

THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES contains an idea that can demoralize people who aim to be clever: that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9-14). The idea may seem particularly apt for those of us working in business ethics. People have been arguing about business ethics forever, disputing the fairness of a price, whether a merchant duped her customer, whether an employee was wrongly terminated, and so on. Given the endless history of business ethics casuistry, how can anything novel occur? Thomas Donaldson’s work offers an answer. Donaldson helped change the way that we think about business ethics. Rather than treat business ethics as a kind of informal casuistry, he showed how substantial theoretical constructs could be useful in business ethics. Donaldson has written about an extraordinary range of topics over the last thirty years, including: normative theories of the purpose of the corporation such as social contract theory and stakeholder theory (e.g., Donaldson 1982 , Donaldson and Dunfee 1999 , Donaldson 1999 , Donaldson 2011 ); responsibility in the fi nancial services industry (e.g., Donaldson 2008 ); epistemology in economic interpretations of business (e.g., Donaldson 2012 ); responsibilities of fi rms operating across international borders (e.g., Donaldson 1989 , Donaldson 1994 ); and social mores, social contracts, and economic life (e.g., Donaldson 2001 , Donaldson 2010 ). His writing in each of these areas inspires business ethics scholars, not only because of the importance of his ideas, but also because he combines an analytic rigor with knowledge of global markets and fi rms. Consider three representative examples of his scholarship. First, Donaldson demonstrated that perhaps the most powerful model in the history of moral and political thought, the social contract, could illuminate many recalcitrant problems in business ethics. The idea of a social contract is ancient, extending back at least to Plato’s Crito (1961) . It is a staple of modern political philosophy, playing an important role in work by Hobbes ( 1994 ), Rousseau ( 1987 ), and Kant ( 1999 ). The preeminent political philosopher of our time, John Rawls ( 1971 ), makes the social contract the centerpiece of his view. The idea of the social contract, very roughly, is that by considering the possibility of a hypothetical agreement among people, in which they aim to structure their society and to assign individual rights and responsibilities, we can gain insight about the nature of a good or just society, insight that should help assess our own society. Donaldson’s deployment of the social contract came in two distinct stages. The fi rst stage, represented by Corporations and Morality (1982),