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 COLUMN
A moral quandary I'm living a lie. Well, to put it more precisely, I'm in a dishonest relationship with my VCR. It has been blinking 12:00 at me for a long time now, living in some fool's paradise thinking that it's noon or midnight (the latter, I suspect), and I haven't done anything to correct it.
That attitude seems reasonable. To make any sense of a moral theory that relies on rights and obligations, it would seem that those who hold the rights -- those to whom we have obligations -- need to be moral agents. I don't have any moral obligations to my VCR, my automobile, or my television set. I think -- although I could be wrong -- that most people feel the same way. This would probably be pretty uncontroversial if it didn't raise a larger issue: whether or not we have any moral or ethical obligations to a corporation. Corporations, as we've noted before in this space, aren't real persons (see "Do you work for an ethical corporation?". The law considers them persons, which means that we may owe them some legal obligations, but they're not natural persons, and therefore wouldn't appear to have any moral rights. A couple of cases we've considered before -- one involving whether or not to return a found sum of money belonging to a corporation and a more recent one involving lying on a résumé -- hinge on our ethical obligations. If I find a sum of money that belongs to you, it's easy to build a case that you have a moral right to the money, and I in turn have a moral obligation to return it. But does that obligation hold when the money belongs to an inanimate object such as a corporation, and if so, why? The same goes for lying. I can build a strong case that some ethical relationship between you and me prohibits my lying to you. But if I can lie to my VCR with impunity, why can't I lie to General Motors? You could argue, I suppose, that there are people involved -- even if the corporation is a separate entity and not a real person. That's true, but the ethical obligations I have to those people are separate and distinct from the obligations, if any, that I have to the corporation itself, which is a separate and distinct entity. The sum of money that I find -- and that I am perplexed about returning -- doesn't really belong to Mr. Smith in accounting. It belongs to the corporation. And the HR clerk to whom I submit my résumé isn't really hiring me. He or she is only a conduit -- and an interchangeable one at that, at least in the corporation's eyes. He or she could be fired tomorrow -- or quit -- and be instantly replaced with an analogue, who then becomes the new conduit. So in essence, I'm not lying to that person, but to the inanimate corporation. You could also argue that stockholders own the corporation, and in cheating or lying to the corporation I'm lying to or cheating the stockholders. In a sense, you might be right, but it's more complicated than that. It's the same as my trying to evade a traffic ticket by reminding the police officer that I'm really the boss because my taxes pay the police salaries. In one sense it's true, but in a more important sense it's not. I don't think anyone ever got out of a ticket using that line of defense. Two things argue against the stockholder line of reasoning. The first is that, if the argument is true, then buying a few shares of stock would allow me to indulge in activities that other people cannot because it's impossible to lie to and cheat myself. The more important consideration is that the stockholders are behind the "corporate veil." They are not personally liable -- legally or, they would argue, morally -- for the actions of the corporation. If that's true, then the stockholders/owners see themselves as having no moral obligations toward other people with whom the corporation comes in contact. Ethical rights and obligations seem to have, at the very least, some reciprocity. It's hard to argue that you have some ethical claims on me, but I have none on you. Now, some people will also want to argue that their ethical obligations are to a higher authority, which is a widely held belief. But even in that case, it seems to require interaction with another moral agent for the ethical obligations to kick in. I know of no religious proscription against lying to a tree, for example. I feel perfectly comfortable in telling my cat something that isn't true -- although extreme animal rights activists might have something to say about that. If we don't have moral obligations to corporations, then we may have to re-examine some ideas we have about what conduct is ethically allowed and what isn't. Many people already feel it's OK to deal differently with corporations than they do with natural persons. Is there a chance they're right? While on one hand, I always try to act ethically -- even in my relationship with corporations -- I can't come up with a good rationale for why I would feel that obligation to an entity that isn't itself a moral agent. If there is such a rationale, then I may need to sit down for a heart-to-processor talk with my VCR. Do you have a good argument that says we do have such obligations? If so, share them with other readers in our InfoWorld forum at www.infoworld.com/forums/ethics, or write to me at ethics_matters@infoworld.com. Carlton Vogt is the senior editor in charge of InfoWorld's e-mail newsletters. He holds graduate degrees in philosophy and theology, and has taught ethics at the college level. He also has an extensive background in technology journalism. Discuss this article in our online forums MORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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