Moral Agency in Charities and Business Corporations: Exploring the Constraints of Law and Regulation

• DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3750-9
• Publication Date: 2017-12-20T11:10:40Z
• Authors: Eleanor Burt; Samuel Mansell
• Keywords: Moral agency; Judgement; Philosophy of business

For centuries in the UK and elsewhere, charities have been widely regarded as admirable virtuous organisations. Business corporations, by contrast, characterised popular imagination entities that lack a capacity for moral judgement. Drawing on philosophical literature agency of organisations, we examine how law shapes ability business corporations headquartered England to exercise agency. Paradoxically, find are legally constrained exercising ways which not. Implications then explored.