The Lure of Corporate Virtue

Abstract

In this essay I explore the notion that corporations are moral agents that may aspire to virtuosity. If corporations must lose their innocence as natural moral agents do, then they too may enter a moral life cycle. Since loss of innocence may result in a sense of care about one’s behavior, one may expect corporations to manifest the affect of care. In my view the 18 corporations that made the Built-to-Last list exemplify how corporations do care about their core ideology. Using Merck and Company, Inc. as an example I discuss one way that ethicists may turn the care of corporations about their mission statement to the advantage of the entire moral community.

For those corporations that qualify as corporate persons I assume that corporate virtuosity is a good that may be publicly recognized, and it may be valuable to corporations. I also assume that corporate virtuosity is a status that is achieved over time through testing and by comparison with their peers. For instance, some corporations do seem to have the virtuosity of being in the top tier of the best places to work. Likewise when some corporations ask their shareholders to vote against a shareholder resolution on ethical conduct, management may argue that the corporation follows its own ethical code of conduct. I want to suggest that when corporations set forth ethical guidelines for behavior in their mission statement they are creating a program for the development of corporate virtuosity. How corporations respond to ethical crises and how they aspire to excellence will determine whether they are making progress toward corporate virtuosity or if not.

“Every virtue or excellence both brings into good condition the thing of which it is the excellence and makes the work of that thing be done well”

– Aristotle