Kenneth Silver (Trinity College Dublin) has received an ERC grant in the amount of €1,371,715 over 5 years for a project on Corporate Moral Progress (CMP).
Title: Corporate Moral Progress (CMP)
Amount: €1,371,715 over 5 years
Brief description: Within business ethics, there is a longstanding debate concerning Corporate Moral Responsibility, the question of whether corporations themselves are the kinds of things that can be responsible for wrongdoing. Proponents of this view hope to vindicate our sense that firms are the appropriate targets of blame and censure. However, proponents have failed to decisively make their case, and they have also failed to come to terms with the magnitude of corporate wrongdoing. Even if firms are possibly responsible, this is far short of showing that corporations have the sensitivity, incentives, position, to be anything but accidental agents for good, let alone equal members of the moral community.
As corporations are some of the most significant actors in modern society, this presents a real problem. If it is right to think that corporations have genuine obligations, then a sincere effort must be made to come to terms with why they fail to meet them as well as how to train firms to behave morally in the future. Corporate Moral Progress aims to do just this – to establish the responsibility of firms, to explore the sources of their immorality, and to chart a path for their improvement. By doing all of this, CMP will pursue concrete ways to improve firms for good.
