This new collection builds on one editor’s (Eric W. Orts) work in developing the theory of the firm and the other editor’s (N. Craig Smith) work in extending accounts of corporate social responsibility. It offers welcome insights into a long-standing dispute in business ethics: whether corporations themselves (as opposed to the individuals that work in the corporation, only) can be morally responsible for their actions. The insights are more than tantalizing. Contributors provide real and promising resources for reflecting anew on this well-worn problem. Whether the resources are ultimately effective in advancing the debate, though, remains an open question.

The book is divided into three parts: arguments that firms are morally responsible, arguments that they are not morally responsible, and “new directions” regarding corporate moral responsibility. In convening this debate again, Orts and Smith face a high bar: the positions that firms are, or are not, morally responsible seem entrenched, buttressed by powerful intuitions, difficult to dislodge. One of the ways in which they meet this bar is via the collection’s philosophical orientation. While the debate about corporate responsibility falls squarely in business ethics (not philosophy), Orts and Smith are to be commended for drawing out the debate’s normative and metaphysical roots. Their contributors list begins with well-known theorists of the philosophy of action, who marshal rigorous arguments to explain the underpinnings of the controversy. In the first contribution to the book, Philip Pettit (best known for his philosophical accounts of republicanism and freedom) develops his previously published work on the problem of corporate agency. Next, Michael Bratman (a titan of the philosophy of action whose ideas have been enthusiastically appropriated by applied ethicists) explains how his account of collective intention can be used to support arguments for corporate moral responsibility. Whereas Pettit’s previously published work in corporate agency is already well known to theorists of corporate moral responsibility (and his article in this volume adds new conceptual apparatus to themes he explored therein), Bratman’s work is less standard in the business ethics community. Happily, readers who are new to the philosophy of action should find Bratman’s article a friendly introduction: he summarizes the relevant aspects of his prior research in a highly accessible manner as background information for the extension of his ideas that he offers here.

Following these philosophical perspectives, Peter French (the founder of this fruitful literature and the author of a powerful argument in favor of corporate moral responsibility) offers a novel perspective on the moral responsibility of firms, discussing how changes in the firm over time can enhance or diminish its moral responsibility. In the final contribution to part one, Waheed Hussain and Joakim Sandberg offer a pragmatic approach to the problem of corporate responsibility, in which business ethicists should decide whether to hold firms morally responsible based on which position—responsible or not—would best serve the (morally justified) purpose of market economies: viz., enhancing the welfare of the people whom the markets serve.

One of the most pleasing characteristics of this book is the way in which the authors respond to one another’s arguments and offer original riffs on shared themes and competing interpretations of similar examples. John Hasnas’s essay, for example—the first in part two of the book—begins by attempting to dismantle some of Pettit’s earlier work on corporate moral responsibility. Hasnas defends Pettit’s argument that corporations are the kind of thing that can be held morally responsible but argues that they should not be held so. In criticizing Pettit’s argument, Hasnas also develops his own previous, influential work in corporate moral responsibility, with which most readers of this volume will already be familiar. Ian Maitland discusses three malevolent uses of corporate moral responsibility, delivering a reductio ad absurdum-style argument against the positive views defended in the first part of the book. In their contribution, David Rönnegard and Manuel Velasquez also offer arguments (six of them) against what they take to be the widely held view that moral responsibility can be literally attributed to corporations. Velasquez’s work is as foundational in inaugurating this debate as French’s: he offered the seminal argument for the position that corporations cannot be held morally responsible. Rönnegard, for his part, has ingeniously used Bratman’s (previously published) ideas to argue against the possibility of corporate moral agency in his previously published work in this literature. Rounding out part two, Amy J. Sepinwall’s chapter provides an additional argument against corporate moral responsibility. Corporations cannot be morally responsible, on her view, because they cannot be blameworthy. They cannot be blameworthy, in turn, because corporations are unable to experience guilt and other emotions. Like other contributors, Sepinwall has published important work in the literature on corporate moral responsibility, which her chapter extends.

In part three of the volume, two authors explore avenues of future research. Kendy Hess argues that researchers’ work to date suggests important commonalities amid the controversy: in particular, the ideas that corporations should not act in ways that are morally bad and that an adequate account of corporate agency should explain both the individual and the collective elements of corporate decision making. Nien-hê Hsieh closes the volume with a chapter proposing that business ethicists consider what corporations are obliged positively to do in addition to their dominant investigations about what corporations are morally prohibited from doing.

This book is a joy for business ethicists with philosophical training and helpful for business ethicists who seek greater philosophical grounding in core business ethics issues such as the question of corporate moral responsibility. The cooperation among the various authors is also noteworthy, even when they are disagreeing with one another. One especially helpful instance of this cooperation is various authors’ evaluations of common cases—P & O European Ferries, Volkswagen—using the distinctive resources of their respective positions. This spirit of cooperation is characteristic of the discipline of business ethics, in my experience, and it is a pleasure to see it here. None of the essays will replace the classics of the field, but the book is indispensable reading for researchers on this topic. As I perused the volume, it seemed to me that it would make excellent reading material for a graduate seminar in corporate moral responsibility. I am not sure if there are any such courses, but now that a volume exists for one, perhaps they will develop.

One frustration with this collection (and perhaps an opportunity for a second edition) is the limited scope of the philosophical material. The collection makes clear progress over other accounts of corporate moral responsibility in part in virtue of its inclusion of philosophical material. It is curious, then, that philosophical support is provided only for the view that corporations are morally responsible. This decision seems especially questionable in the sense that Bratman is not a clear advocate for this position. In fact, his longstanding interlocutor, Margaret Gilbert, has (in the philosophy of action literature) done more to advocate for a group-based notion of collective intention whereas Bratman has previously explained collective intention using individualistic bases, only (Schweikard and Schmid Reference Schweikard, Schmid and Zalta2013). Gilbert, whom Hsieh references in his chapter, is another major player in the philosophy of action and would be a welcome addition to a volume such as this one.

Another possible shortfall is that the volume does not, ultimately, offer a neutral view of this debate. Smith expresses support for the idea that corporations are morally responsible for their actions. As suggested by my summary, the accounts in favor of corporate responsibility tend to be somewhat more forceful than those challenging this notion (in the sense that they offer positive, rather than rebuttal, arguments). Both authors in the “new directions” division appear to be proponents of corporate moral responsibility: Kess in virtue of her previously published works in the field and Hsieh to the extent that the view that firms are morally responsible supports his argument that firms are responsible for acting well (in addition to not acting badly). Orts concludes that “although attributions of moral responsibility to individuals may be ideal, organizational complexities of legal structure and authority make the case for fixing moral responsibility at the firm level, if only for pragmatic reasons” (218). In this sense, the volume may be considered most helpful for proponents of corporate responsibility in accessing the best arguments for their view and for antagonists in understanding what are the strongest arguments against their view. In terms of the overall debate, though, it appears to make lopsided progress, only: neither offering a clear argument for corporate moral responsibility nor giving both positions genuinely equal voices.