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Corporate Culpability and the Limits of Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

William S. Laufer
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Abstract

Ethicists and legal theorists have proposed models of corporate culpability that shift the standard of guilt determination from vicarious attribution of individual action and intention to an assessment of culture, policies, as well as organizational action and inaction. This paper briefly reviews four prominent models of corporate culpability, arguing that each makes claims that extend well beyond the limits of existing law. As an alternative to these models, a constructive corporate fault is described that relies on both objective and subjective reasonableness judgments. The paper concludes with a consideration of constructive corporate fault in relation to an Accountability model of corporate liability.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 311 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1996

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