Interrogating Peter French’s Notion of Corporate Moral Agency
This paper attempts a critique of Peter French?s notion of Corporate Moral Agency. In response to the debate between methodological collectivism and individualism on whether collective agents are appropriate targets of praise and blame, French asserts that corporate collectives possess internal decision-making processes, standards of conduct, and utilise well defined roles delineating subordinate and superior positions. By virtue of these attributes, corporate collectives are proper agents of moral attributions, over and above their constituent component parts. This assertion conveys the erroneous notion that corporate entities, through the possession of corporate internal decision structures, are moral agents. Utilising the conceptual analysis method of research, this paper contributes to the debate on corporate moral agency by interrogating French?s arguments. While acknowledging French?s contributions to the debate, it argues that French?s arguments for corporate moral agency elicit diverse problematiques and cannot be upheld as a viable theory for attributions of moral responsibility for corporate faults.
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