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Corporate Punishment

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Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics

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Introduction

“Corporate punishment” is ambiguous and thus requires clarification. By “corporate” is meant legal businesses which satisfy the conditions of what constitute corporations according to law. However, at least for purposes of punishment, there is a dualistic feature to corporate punishment. For not only are there corporate-collective entities but corporate individuals who are also sometimes subject to legal punishment, normatively speaking. This discussion of corporate punishment assumes that whomever/whatever is to be punished must satisfy the conditions both necessary and jointly sufficient for corporate responsibility (liability to punishment). Here it is implied that a theory of corporate punishment (about who or what ought to be punished) requires, among other things, a theory of responsibility (liability to punishment) because it is the latter which forms the basis for the former. By “punishment,” is meant hard treatment and the denial of certain kinds of rights and...

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This definition of “negligence” is found in Feinberg (1970).

  2. 2.

    This phrase is borrowed from a famous James Brown lyric from the song, “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothin.”

References

  • Corlett JA (2014) Responsibility and punishment, 4th edn. Springer, Dordrecht

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  • Feinberg J (1970) Doing and deserving. Princeton University Press, Princeton

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  • Fischer JM, Ravizza M (1988) Responsibility and control. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

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  • French PA (1984) Collective and corporate responsibility. Columbia University Press, New York

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

    J. Angelo Corlett

Authors
  1. J. Angelo Corlett
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Correspondence to J. Angelo Corlett .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Deborah C Poff

  2. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Alex C. Michalos

Section Editor information

  1. San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

    J. Angelo Corlett Ph.D.

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© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

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Angelo Corlett, J. (2017). Corporate Punishment. In: Poff, D., Michalos, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_15-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_15-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1

  • eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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