Corporate sincerity: accommodation, reputation washing, and moral credit
A distinctive question about corporate sincerity arises in two kinds of contexts. In accommodation contexts, a corporate agent expresses the sort of reasonable, conscience-constituting normative commitments that generate a claim to be exempt from a general obligation that applies to it. For this cla...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Journal of business ethics
Year: 2025, Volume: 202, Issue: 3, Pages: 503-517 |
| Further subjects: | B
Reputation washing
B Corporate sincerity B Aufsatz in Zeitschrift B Corporate Moral Agency B Corporate moral credit |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | A distinctive question about corporate sincerity arises in two kinds of contexts. In accommodation contexts, a corporate agent expresses the sort of reasonable, conscience-constituting normative commitments that generate a claim to be exempt from a general obligation that applies to it. For this claim to be justified, it must be sincere in expressing these commitments. In moral credit contexts, a corporate agent expressly acts in a morally right (or justified) manner, but there is reason to leave open the question of whether it deserves moral credit for this. Such a question is raised when, e.g., companies are accused of reputation washing. Deserving moral credit requires companies to have been sincere in their rightful expressive actions. I argue that there is a single substrate of corporate sincerity in both contexts: A corporate agent is sincere when (i) it says or does something that is meant to be understood as expressing certain valuing attitudes and (ii) its statement or action is guided by the practical functioning of those valuing attitudes. In addition to helping us evaluate corporate agents in accommodation or moral credit contexts, this account promises to shed light on the broader relational import of corporate sincerity appraisals. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-0697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10551-025-06000-1 |
