Nien-hê Hsieh

Harvard University | Harvard

Business actors often act in ways that may harm other parties. While the law aims to restrict harmful behavior and to provide remedies, legal systems do not anticipate all contingencies and legal regulations are not always well-enforced. This article argues that the logic of double effect (LDE), which has been developed and deployed in other areas...

What are corporations for? This paper provides an analytical review of relevant research on this question, and some thoughts on the moral evaluation of corporations. It distinguishes between the concepts of social purpose and corporate purpose. Social purpose concerns the specific contribution that a corporation makes to realis-ing societal goals....

Human rights have come to play a prominent role in debates about the responsibilities of business. In the business ethics literature, there are two approaches to the question of whether businesses have human rights obligations. The ‘moral’ approach conceives of human rights as antecedently existing basic moral rights. The ‘institutional’ approach s...

In this address, I outline a “back to basics” approach to specifying the responsibilities and role of business in relation to society. Three “basics” comprise the approach. The first is arguing that basic principles of ordinary morality, such as a duty not to harm, provide an adequate basis for specifying the responsibilities of business managers....

Of the many developments in business ethics that Thomas Donaldson has helped pioneer, one is the application of social contract theory to address questions about the responsibilities of business actors. In Corporations and Morality , Donaldson develops one of the most sustained and comprehensive accounts that aims to justify the existence of for-pr...

Focusing on the case of multinational enterprises (MNEs), this article argues we have reason to reject assigning human rights obligations to business enterprises and their managers. The article begins by distinguishing business and human rights from the more general topic of corporate responsibility. Following Buchanan (2013), the article takes the...

Why Asset Ownership?The Content of Work: Meaningful WorkThe Governance of Work: Protection against Arbitrary InterferenceThe Status of Work: Workers as Property OwnersConclusion References

The concepts of rationality and efficiency are central to contemporary economics and finance. Rationality is the standard by which choices are evaluated, and for purposes of theory building and empirical analysis, choices are often assumed to be rational. Efficiency is the main, if not sole, standard used to evaluate the outcomes that result from t...

In a series of articles, Thomas Dunfee defended the view that managers are permitted and at times, required, to utilize corporate resources to alleviate human misery even if this is at the expense of shareholder interests. In this article, I summarize Dunfee’s defense of this view, raise some questions about his account and propose ways in which to...

Drawing upon John Rawls's framework in The Law of Peoples, this paper argues that MNEs have a responsibility to promote well-ordered social and political institutions in host countries that lack them. This responsibility is grounded in a negative duty not to cause harm. In addition to addressing the objection that promoting well-ordered institution...

In this article, we defend pairwise comparison as a method to resolve conflicting claims from different people that cannot be jointly satisfied because of a scarcity of resources. We consider Michael Otsuka's recent challenge that pairwise comparison leads to intransitive choices for the (someone who believes the numbers should not count in forced...

DRAFT: 31 March 2006 As this is a draft, please do not quote without first consulting the author. Comments are warmly welcomed. ABSTRACT Liberal egalitarianism has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to what justice requires for the institutions that structure economic production. In the light of such criticism, this paper investigate...

According to one prominent view of rationality, for the choice of alternative to be justified, it must be at least as good as other alternatives. Michael Jensen has recently invoked this view to argue that managers should act exclusively to maximize the long-run market value of economic enterprises. According to Jensen, alternative accounts of mana...

The incomparability of alternatives is thought to pose a problem for justified choice, particularly for proponents of comparativism the view that comparative facts about alternatives determine what one rationally ought to choose. As a solution, it has been argued that alternatives judged incomparable by one of the three standard comparative relatio...

In this paper, I examine the case made by Christopher McMahon for managerial democracy. Specifically, I examine the extent to which McMahon’s account is able to address a series of objections against the case for managerial democracy as articulated by Thomas Christiano. Christiano articulates two sets of objections. First, Christiano argues that...

Gar Alperovitz's America Beyond Capitalism is an inspiring book. For although Alperovitz paints a disturbing picture of America's failure to live up to its values, he provides inspiration for the way forward. In his book, Alperovitz describes a workable alternative to existing institutional arrangements; he terms this alternative the "Pluralist Com...

Purpose The object of this paper is to examine the debate in business ethics over extending insights from political philosophy (e.g. theories of distributive justice) to address questions about the management and governance of economic enterprises. Design/methodology/approach The paper engages in a philosophical argument. Findings Even if justice...

This paper examines the extent to which the voluntary adoption of codes of conduct by multinational corporations (MNCs) renders MNCs accountable for the performance of actions specified in a code of conduct. In particular, the paper examines the ways in which codes of conduct coordinate the expectations of relevant parties with regard to the provis...

The incomparability of two items is thought to pose a problem for making justified choices and for consequentialist theories that rely on comparing states of the world to judge the goodness of a particular course of action. In response, it has been argued that items thought incomparable by one of the three standard relations, better than , worse th...

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

The chapters in this book present a challenge under the current property rights regime. On one hand, the case has been made that the dire plight of persons suffering from HIV/AIDS in developing countries requires relaxing the protection of patent rights held by pharmaceutical companies for essential HIV/AIDS medicines. On the other hand, relaxing p...

Building on John Rawls's account of the Law of Peoples, this paper examines the grounds and scope of the obligations of transnational corporations (TNCs) that are owned by members of developed economies and operate in developing economies. The paper advances two broad claims. First, the paper argues that there are conditions under which TNCs have o...

Building on John Rawls’s account of the Law of Peoples, this paper examines the grounds and scope of the obligations of transnational corporations (TNCs) that are owned by members of developed economies and operate in developing economies. The paper advances two broad claims. First, the paper argues that there are conditions under which TNCs have o...

Do people morally deserve what they earn in the market? More specifically, can people legitimately claim to deserve what they earn in the market in a way that counts against redistributing those earnings? As most liberal political philosophers do, I argue that the answer is no. Unlike many of these philosophers, however, I do not focus on whether o...

To advance our general understanding about the development of nine-teenth-century Irish political economy in the wake of the Great Irish Famine (1846-51), this article analyses the Famine's impact on a previously unstudied, yet uniquely authoritative, element of the displine: the questions given to candidates for the Whately Professorship of Politi...

Founded in 1832, the Whately Professorship of Political Economy at Trinity College, Dublin was the first chair of its kind in Ireland, and the examination papers given to its potential holders uniquely document the criteria for mastery of political economy in nineteenth century Ireland and Britain. Noting the lack of an impact by the Great Irish Fa...

Working within John Rawls’s account of justice as fairness, I examine the way in which considerations of justice ought to inform managerial decision-making in large-scale business enterprises. I argue we have reason to reject a widely held view, which is that considerations of justice apply only indirectly to managerial decisions and serve mainly a...

DRAFT: 31 March 2006 As this is a draft, please do not quote without first consulting the author. Comments are warmly welcomed. ABSTRACT Liberal egalitarianism has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to what justice requires for the institutions that structure economic production. In the light of such criticism, this paper investigate...