LESSON 4:
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND BLAME
When do we hold people Morally Responsible for
their Acts and their Effects?
When the person KNOWINGLY and FREELY performed or
brought about an action/effect which was morally wrong for the
person to perform/bring about.
When the person KNOWINGLY and FREELY failed to
perform or prevent an action/effect which was morally wrong
for the person to fail to perform or prevent.
Points to be covered in this lecture:
• Moral responsibility
• Corporate responsibility
• Subordinate’s responsibility
Moral Responsibility
When a person performs or fails to perform a morally signifi- cant
action, we sometimes think that he or she is deserving of a
particular kind of response. Praise and blame are perhaps the
most common forms this reaction takes. For example, one who
encounters a car accident may be worthy of praise for having saved
a child from inside the burning car, or alternatively, one may be
worthy of blame for not having at least used one’s cell phone to
call for help. To regard such agents as worthy of one of these
reactions is to ascribe moral responsibility to them on the basis of
what they have done or left undone. (These are examples of
other-directed ascriptions of responsibility. The reaction might
also be self-directed, e.g., one can recognize oneself to be
blameworthy). Thus, to be morally responsible for something,
say an action, is to be worthy of a particular kind of reaction —
praise, blame, or something akin to these — for having
performed it.
Philosophical reflection on moral responsibility has
historically relied upon one of two broad interpretations of
the concept:
1. The merit-based view, according to which praise or blame
would be an appropriate reaction toward the candidate if and
only if she merits- in the sense of ‘deserves’ - such a
reaction.
2. The consequentialist view, according to which praise or blame
would be appropriate if and only if a reaction of this sort
would likely lead to a desired change in the agent and/or her
behavior.
Moral Responsibilty is doing something wrong or for wrong-
fully injuring someone. A judgement about a person’s moral
responsibilty for a wrongful injury is a judgment about the
extent to which the person deserves blame or punishment, or
should pay restitution for the injury.
Here we are discussing ‘Moral Responsibilty’ as a term which is
used to express that a person is to blame for an action. A person
is morally responsible only for those acts and their
foreseen injurious effects which the person knowingly and freely
11.292
performed or brought about and which was morally wrong for
the person to perform or bring about; or, which the person
knowingly and freely failed to perform or prevent and which it
was morally wrong for the person to fail to perform or prevent.
Several manufacturers of asbestos, for example, were recently
judged responsible for the lung diseases of their workers. The
judgment was based in part on the finding that the manufactur-
ers had a special duty to warn their workers of the known
dangers of working with asbestos, but that they knowingly failed
to perform this duty, and the lung diseases were a
foreseen injury that they could have prevented had they acted as
they had a duty to act.
Two conditions completely eliminate a person’s moral responsi-
bility for causing a wrongful injury:
1. Ignorance
2. Inablity
These are called excusing conditions because they fully excuse a
person from being held responsible for something. Ignorance
of fact generally eliminates moral responsibility completely for
the simple reason that a person cannot be obligated to do
something over which he or she has no control. Negligently or
deliberately created ignorance is an exception to this principle
because such ignorance can be controlled.
Inability can be the result of either internal or external circum-
stances that render a person unable to do something or unable
to keep from doing something. Inability eliminates responsibil-
ity because again a person cannot have any moral obligation to
do something over which the person has no control.
In addition to the two excusing conditions that completely
remove a person’s moral responsibility for a wrong, there are
also several mitigating factors that can lessen a person’s moral
responsibility depending how serious the wrong is. Mitigating
factors include:
1. A person may be fairly convinced that doing something is
wrong, yet may still be doubtful about some important
facts, moral standards involved or doubts about how
seriously wrong the action is.
2. A person may find it difficult to avoid a certain course of
action because he or she is subjected to threats or duress of
some sort or because avoiding that course of action will
impose heavy costs on the person.
3. A person’s responsibility can also be mitigated by
circumstances that diminish the person’s active involvement
in the act that caused or brought about an injury.
The extent to which these three mitigating circumstances can
diminish a person’s responsibility for a wrongful injury
depends upon how serious the wrong is.
9
Corporate Responsibilty
In the present scenario responsibility for a corporate act is often
distributed among a number of cooperating parties. Corporate
acts normally are brought about by several actions or omissions of
many different people all cooperating together so that their linked
actions and omissions jointly produce the corporate act. One
team of managers, for example may design a car, another team
tests it, and a third team builds it; one person orders, advises, or
encourages something and others act on these orders, advice, or
encouragement; one group knowingly defrauds buyers and
another group knowingly but silently enjoys the resulting profits;
one person contributes the means; and another person
accomplishes the act; one group does the wrong and another
group conceals it. The variations on cooperation are endless.
Who is morally responsible for such jointly produced acts? The
traditional view is that those who knowingly and freely did what
was necessary to produce the corporate act are each morally
responsible. On this view, situations in which a person needs
the actions of others to bring about a wrongful corporate act are
no different in principle from situations in which a person
needs certain external circumstances in order to commit a wrong.
Critics of the traditional view of the individual’s responsibility for
corporate acts have claimed that when an organized group such as
a corporation acts together, their corporate act may be described as
the act of the group and consequently, the corpo- rate group and
not the individuals who make up the group must be held
responsible for the act. For example, we normally credit the
manufacture of a defective T.V. to the corporation and not to the
individual engineers involved in its manufacture; and the law
typically attributes the acts of a corporation’s managers
to the corporation itself and not to the managers as individuals.
The traditionalists’ reply is that although we sometimes
attribute acts to corporate groups, this linguistic and legal factor
does not change the moral reality behind all such corporate acts -
individuals had to carry out the particular action that brought
about the corporate act. Since individuals are morally respon- sible
for the known and intended consequences of their free actions,
any individual who knowingly and freely joins his actions together
with those of others, intending thereby to bring about a certain
corporate act, is responsible for that act. Employees of large-scale
organizations follow bureaucratic rules that link their activities
together to achieve corporate outcomes
of which the employee may not be even aware. So they cannot be
said to have “knowingly or freely joined their actions together” to
bring about a corporate act or to pursue a corporate objective.
10
Moreover depending on the seriousness of the act, the
mitigating factors of uncertainty, difficulty, and minimal
involvement can also diminish a person’s moral responsibility
for a corporate act. Sometimes employees in a corporation go
along with a wrongful corporate act although they know that is
wrong and although to some extent they have the ability to
withdraw their cooperation. They unwillingly go along because
of the pressures placed on them.
Traditional moralists have argued that a person’s responsibility
for unwillingly cooperating with others in a wrongful act should
be determined by weighing the various factors that mitigate
individual responsibility. That is one must weigh the serious-
ness of the wrongful act against the uncertainty, the difficulty, and
the degree of involvement that were present*.
Point to Ponder
Students should remember that nobody can run away from
their moral duty to prevent the wrong by just pleading that
their omission constitutes “minimal involvement”.
Subordinate’s Responsibilty
Corporations usually have a hierarchical structure of authority in
which orders and directives pass from those higher in the
structure to those at lower levels. People sometimes suggest that
when a subordinate acts on the orders of a legitimate superior,
the subordinate is absolved of all responsibility for that act -
only the superior is morally responsible for the wrongful act
even though the subordinate was the agent who carried it out. It
is clearly a mistake, however, to think that an employee who
freely and knowingly does something wrong is absolved of all
responsibility when he or she is “following orders”. Moral
responsibility requires merely that one act freely and knowingly,
in choosing to follow an order. Of course a senior can put
significant economic pressures on an employee and such
pressures can mitigate the employee’s responsibility but they do
not totally eliminate it. Thus, when a superior orders an
employee to carry out an act that both of them know is wrong,
the employee is morally responsible for that act if he/ she carries
it out. At the same time, the superior is also morally responsible,
since in ordering the employee, the superior is
11.292
knowingly and freely bringing about the wrongful act using the
employee as an instrument.
Dear students hope it is very clear to you now that in an
organization if a wrongful act takes place then everybody
(people from top level to bottom level) is directly/indirectly
involved in that act. So, in the near future when you join an
organization you have to remember these points. Never do
things under pressure, do the things, which your conscience
allows you to do.
Overview
• Moral Responsibilty is doing something wrong or for
wrongfully injuring someone.
• Those who knowingly and freely did what was necessary to
produce the corporate act are each morally responsible
(Traditional View).
Activity
In 1962 the Atlantic Cement Company began operating a cement
plant outside of Albany, New York. The Company employed
over 300 local residents and by 1970 had invested $45 million in
the plant. The plant emitted large amounts of pollution,
however, as well as caused constant vibrations and loud noise.
Local residents filed suit against the Company, claiming that the
loud noise and the vibrations were harming their health and
property. The suit asked that the court issue an injunction that
would close down the plant until the pollution and vibrations
could be eliminated. The Company was already using the best
available technology, which meant that the suit was asking that
the plant be closed down indefinitely. The court refused to issue
the injunction, reasoning that the costs of closing the plant
outweighed the benefits to be gained by the residents. Instead of
closing the plant, the court ruled that the cement company
should pay residents a one-time fee to compensate them for
ongoing harms. This fee was calculated to be a fair market price
for what the residents would receive if they were inclined and able
to rent their property.
Was the decision of the court in this case fair? If so, why?
If not, why not?
I know what all of you are thinking right now that life will
become very easy if all of us start taking responsibility for our
actions, but then things have to start from somewhere and you
are the budding managers. So, I feel that rather than thinking
that who is going to initiate the whole process we all should
start our journey towards this goal right now.

11.292 11
For useful Documents like
this and
Lots of more
Educational and
Technological Stuff...

Visit...

www.thecodexpert.com