Do corporations have any moral responsibility?

The Chinese police state is a great investment says US hedge funds.

The US economy may be on decline but US hedge funds investors considers the Chinese police state to be a good investment for our global economy.

“China’s Hot Stock: Orwell Inc” is the headlines over an article in the NYTimes published September 19, 2007.

“In a stunning report in the New York Times last week, correspondent Keith Bradsher documented the rise of China's electronic surveillance industry, whose leading companies have incorporated themselves in the United States and obtained the lion's share of their capital from U.S. hedge funds. Though ostensibly private, these companies are a for-profit adjunct of the Chinese government.”

Do US corporations have any moral responsibility to the citizens of the US?

Do US corporations have any moral responsibility to the people living on this planet?

A corporation's first responsibility is to itself...

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Of course not. A corporation (a for-profit corporation) exists only to limit legal and financial liability and maximize ROI to stockholders.

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

well, theres a certain limits. for example, a business cant sell illegal drugs or sponser prostitutes. So, i guess there are some moral responsibilities.

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Those are legal limits - not moral responsibilities.

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

Besides, if a corporation blantantly disregards the law and gets hit with large defense legal bills and fines, profits are negatively affected. The moral responsiblity is maximizing profit for the shareholders, period.

But, since our country has decided to recognize a corporation as a person, it does have moral obligations. Clearly, the responsibility of the corporation is to all stakeholders, not just the individual stockholders.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

A corporation doesn't have any moral responsability, not more than a state or a supermarket. All these things are conglomerates of people (they are also conglomerates of objects, but we don't take objects into account when discussing moral matters, as far as I know). The people who form the corporations, states and supermarkets exist and they do have a moral responsibility. So, Germany is not responsible for the holocaust: the fault goes to Hitler and those who helped him or obeyed him without resisting. Similarly, google and yahoo are not responsible for their immoral acts, but the lmen who help yahoo and google to perform immoral acts (typically, some of the employees and some of the leaders) are morally responsible.

I've recently seen a movie that dealt with that. The movie drew a parallel between corporations and the 3rd reich. In the third reich, people just "did their job", and considered that if there was any evil in what they did, it was not their fault but the fault of the system which gave them orders. In corporations, the same thing goes: everybody throws the blame on a virtual entity (the corporation) in order to stop worrying about whether they're behaving morally or not. You'll see company CEOs seriously say, "I had to do it! That's what the market ordered!". That's how people manage to live with making their business on the hard work of 6 years old children (see Nike and similar companies). But there is no market, just CEOs being immoral and unable to deal with it.

LEGAL obligations.

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Client: In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!
Tailor: But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look at the world, and look at my trousers.
(Beckett)

Well, the reading that I'm doing for my MBA would disagree with you. Even the staunch corporatists I'm reading.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Shows how extremely fucked up they are. Do you have an argument? I have edited my post to give one - although I didn't really need to, since it's pretty obvious that law creates only legal obligations, while morality deals with moral obligations.

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Client: In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!
Tailor: But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look at the world, and look at my trousers.
(Beckett)

If your argument is that the law doesn't give corporations moral obligations, i can't argue with you. Of course, the law doesn't give anyone or anything moral obligations. Kind of the point of the law, isn't it?

However, if the question is: "do corporations (via the decisions made by those who run them) have moral obligations, i.e. obligations to behavior that may not maximize profit for shareholders?" then clearly, the answer is yes.

I'd start with reading O'Toole, and work my way out from there.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Replace the word moral with ethical...and I would say yes.

Short answer: no.

How can a non-human entity have morality or ethical responsibility to anything?

Pramjockey, nice way to be passive-agressive. On one hand, you admit that if "corporations are responsible", it's only because those who run them are responsible(which was precisely my point) and on the other hand you're saying I should read some guy's work "and work it from there", as if I was totally new to the subjet.

But, if corporations are responsible through some other people, that just means that they are not responsible themselves. Indeed, the one who deserves a punishment is never the corporation (that wouldn't make any sense), but always the person who runs it / or follow it. So, saying that a corporation is responsible is an easy way to say that people can't do anything with a corporation, and it's also a wrong way to say it. But it's easier to understand. Which is what theory is all about, in management: get people to be more effective with simple and usually false principles. These principles might be false, but they work well - much like proverbs, they're not based on science but they do tend to provide acceptable results. It works for running a company, it doesn't work for deciding what is moral and what isn't.

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Client: In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!
Tailor: But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look at the world, and look at my trousers.
(Beckett)

1. I hold that the recognition of corporations having the legal equivilence of a person is the single most horrific thing the USA has ever done to pollute the planet (figuratively speaking).

2. Corporations, even if having all the legal rights of individuals granted to them by a pliant court and a captured legislature, have only a legal responsibility to the letter of the law.