Society for Business Ethics 2024 Annual Meeting

Paper Abstracts: Session 6

Session 6A: Hybrid Session 3, Workshop 6

• Researching And Writing Differently In Business Ethics – A Hybrid Workshop

Session 6B: Virtue

• The Place Of Virtue Ethics For Shareholders Exercising Discretion Vis-À-Vis Beneficence
  • I argue that deontologically-based accounts of shareholder discretion in regard to beneficence are complemented by virtue theory. Engaging with recent deontological accounts of corporate beneficence based on shareholder primacy theory, I critique some key arguments within that literature. First, I examine the moral limits to shareholder discretion in regard to beneficence. It has been argued that an agent who never (or very rarely) undertakes beneficent acts would be regarded as “callous,” and “morally objectionable,” so as to constitute a failure to discharge the duty of beneficence. I argue that such moral limits to shareholder discretion may be more perspicaciously characterized as coming from considerations of virtue and character than from within the deontological structure of duties proper. Second, I critique the imperfect/perfect distinction, questioning how ideally virtuous shareholders might interpret duties of beneficence in non-pandemic yet otherwise currently urgent morally bad states of affairs. I argue that virtuous shareholders could reasonably be expected to treat today’s global problems as an “all hands on deck” circumstance, justifying treatment of beneficence as a nonelective (perfect) duty in relation to the status quo. Third, I show how the question of an agent’s motivations and fortitude for following the duty of beneficence relates to Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue. Fourth, I discuss “lowballing,” and how it justifies having a high benchmark for shareholders in the face of beneficent choices. Fifth, drawing upon Aristotle’s concept of hexis I critically examine the idea of shareholders expressing themselves morally via their discretion vis-à-vis imperfect duties of beneficence.
• Unleashing The Normative Potential Of Institutional Logics: The Role Of MacIntyre’s Virtue Ethics
  • New institutionalism, as empirical theory, has been criticised for its claims to value neutrality and the absence of a normative core. In this paper, we argue that MacIntyre’s moral philosophy has major insights to offer, to address this problem. Using MacIntyrean virtue ethics, we extend the virtues-goods-practices-institutions schema developed by Moore and Beadle (2006) and incorporate it into a cross-level (individual-organization-society) model of institutional logics. By doing so, we show how a balance of institutional logics, instrumental and value rationalities, and external and internal goods can help achieve eudaimonia or human flourishing. The resulting contribution is a coherent pathway to normative institutional logics.

Session 6C: Ford Pinto and Asbestos

• Dollars Vs. Lives: Correcting The Ford Pinto Narrative, Historical Evidence, & Ethics
  • The Ford Pinto story – that the company knew its cars would catch fire and gruesomely kill its occupants in rear-end collisions but chose to not fix the defective design because it was cheaper to simply pay settlements for injuries and deaths – remains widely known and cited in ethics. With an interest in understanding how executives make such dollars vs lives tradeoff, we undertook a historical investigation and found that the Ford Pinto narrative is false and disconnected from evidence. A journalist’s flawed account is the sole source of this influential ethics case. Our study is based on an extensive collection of historical documents from government sources, the auto engineering literature, a safety advocacy organization, Ford’s corporate archives, and other sources. We show that the purported cost-benefit calculations had nothing to do with the Pinto, the Pinto was no more dangerous than other small cars of its time, and Ford was not uncaring about safety. To the contrary, we show that the cost-benefit calculation was required by the government for Ford to engage in a government-led, multiyear, multistakeholder process to make cars safer. The memo was a minor input in a major process; it made no evident difference. We show other evidence of Ford’s investment in safety but buyers’ indifference to it. There is no evidence of Ford behaving unethically but there is evidence that it behaved ethically. We discuss how correcting the Ford Pinto narrative opens new avenues of research on how executives make dollars vs lives tradeoffs.
• So You Are Selling Asbestos… The Ethics Of Threatened Industries
  • Business ethics typically concerns how industries or firms could be reformed (rather than shrunk or destroyed) to avoid bad effects or bad behavior within an industry. Sometimes, however, it appears that a significant proportion of non-commercial actors (civil society, government) believe that a whole industry should be phased down, or even phased out, for ethical reasons. Central examples include the cigarette industry, the asbestos mining industry, and the coal extraction industry. I call these “threatened industries.” In this paper I argue the following. First, threatened industries are an important special topic in normative business ethics, both in terms of their impact and nuance. Second, that some of the most prominent regrettable actions by firms in threatened industries actually fall under an under-studied general problem – that of delineating appropriate from inappropriate political and research activity by firms. Third, firms in threatened industries lack a duty to make a hasty exit from that industry. Fourth, most firms in threatened industries have at least three unique duties – to exit defensive industry associations and to strongly consider exiting legacy industry associations, and to refuse to create arbitrary alliances via philanthropy. Finally, I suggest that such firms might gain special permission to treat their competitors in the industry worse than they otherwise would.

Session 6D: Workshop 4

• Ghost Work: Ethics, Politics, Pedagogical Strategy

Session 6E: Pollution And Responsible Investment

• Does It Still Pay To Pollute? Stock Market Performance Of Carbon Major Entities
  • Do Stock markets penalise or reward the investors for buying stocks of companies responsible for emissions? In this study, we evaluate the stock market performance of a portfolio composed of 31 investor-owned global carbon major entities that collectively have contributed for one-fifth of anthropological global greenhouse gas emissions. The performance is compared against a variety of benchmark indices for the period 1987-2022. The results show that the rank-weighted portfolio strategy – allocating greater investment weights to high polluting companies, substantially outperforms the (i) broad; (ii) sectoral; (iii) environmental, social, and governance (ESG); and (iv) environmental indices, thus incentivising to invest in the stocks of high emitting companies. Since only once a year rebalancing is required to earn such abnormal returns it is shown that even busy individual investors can invest in CMEs portfolios and earn high returns. In light of the emergence of environmental issues, this paper raises questions for research on aspects of investment performance, climate change and resilience of energy sources.
• The Fallacy Of Responsible Investment
  • This paper argues that responsible investment does not warrant the use of the terms employed to describe it. What follows illustrates the ways in which responsible investment fails to be responsible, sustainable, ethical, or environmentally- and socially-focused; it also demonstrates that the activities associated with this field very rarely constitute “investing” or “financing” in that they do not tend to deploy primary market flows towards desirable ends. Accordingly, responsible investment can be considered neither responsible nor investment.