Essay on Collective Responsibility Text

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But does this apply to a school, its administrators and teachers, and its students? as stated in this article, data was provided, hypotheses were assumed, and studies were completed to see if, in fact, collective responsibility does have promising impacts. Throughout the course of this essay, the importance of collective responsibility within a school and its effects on gains in achievement for early secondary school students will be examined, tested, and discussed. length: 1277 words 3.6 double spaced pages collective responsibility in priestley's an inspector calls works cited not included priestley’s play ‘an inspector calls’ was written in 1944 5 but was set in 1912. Wars, gang violence, toxic waste spills, world hunger, overcrowding and brutality in u.s. Prisons, corporate fraud, the manufacture of unsafe and defective products, failure of legislative bodies to respond to pressing public policy concerns, or financial waste by a governmental agency, are some examples of the serious and widespread harms associated with collective actions and a variety of groups.  they are matters of very real and growing concern to people living in every country on the planet. Collective moral responsibility refers to arrangements appropriate for addressing widespread harm and wrongdoing associated with the actions of groups.  the key components of the basic notion of moral responsibility are deeply rooted in the fabric of every society and are constitutive of social life.

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Without some conception of moral responsibility no amount of imaginative insight will render a society recognizable as a human society.  while there is broad, often tacit, agreement regarding the basic model of moral responsibility as it applies to individuals there is considerable debate about how this notion might be applied to groups and their members. Collective moral responsibility raises disagreement between conceptions of collective responsibility which maintain that only individual human agents can be held morally responsible, and conceptions which maintain that groups, such as corporations. Joel feinberg's 1970 taxonomy of collective responsibility arrangements is a valuable contribution to the exploration of issues regarding the culpability of groups and their members.  in his essay, collective responsibility. He presents four logically distinct responsibility arrangements as follows: a whole groups can be held liable even though not all of their members are at fault. B a group can be held collectively responsible through the fault, contributory or noncontributory, of each member c group liability through the contributory faults of each and every member and d through the collective but nondistributive fault of the group itself it bears liability independently of its members p. 233.  this last of feinberg’s responsibility arrangements presents a version of responsibility which has generated substantially greater debate than the other three. Military, particularly in the navy.  it is not uncommon for all enlisted sailors on a ship in port to be denied shore leave or to be given an early curfew as a result of the wrongdoing of several of their shipmates.  not surprisingly, the effect on morale is negative, and such vicarious punishment is most often ineffective in achieving its goals.  an even more troubling proposal for the use of vicarious punishment is d.j.

Levinson's 2003 argument for sanctioning all members of a group as a means to motivate them to identify the guilty individuals in their midst.  the practice by israel of destroying the homes of the families of palestinian suicide bombers is a tactic of war, not vicarious punishment, but is based on the same principle. He explains how causing harm is associated with character flaws that are often widely shared.  in fact, he finds some flaws to be so prevalent and capable of leading to harmful actions, under circumstances impossible for many to anticipate, that everyone should be aware of the serious and dangerous character flaws found in the least suspected places. But he needs to provide an argument for the justness of his penal lottery.  as he admits, such an argument is not part of his current proposal.

What each of us may consider lucky or unlucky depends on what goals we are pursuing,   the vagaries of the world, our interactions with others, and many other factors.  that which one considers unlucky today may strike her as lucky weeks later.  fortunate and unfortunate occurrences unfold, but to a large degree luck is a concept embraced by those who often see the way their lives unfold in superstitious terms. Bernard williams 1982 argues that luck does matter in the moral assessment of people's actions and characters.  he takes the position that our moral assessment of a person will be affected by good consequences which could not have been foreseen. This is an especially rich category of groups, including mobs and other loosely organized groups as well as ad hoc collectives, clubs, teams, and orchestras.  with the exception of formal organizations, such as business corporations or nation states and public bureaucracies, a tremendous variety of groups fall under this heading.

 larry may 1992 has identified what he calls a putative group.  it falls between aggregates and conglomerates, because a putative group is an aggregate which possesses the potential leadership and solidarity necessary to set up the kind of structure and decision procedures that would qualify it as a conglomerate. May's notion of shared responsibility is drawn from his interpretation of the social existentialism of heidegger, jaspers, and the later sartre.  he asserts that both the conscious and pre reflective attitudes of individuals are profoundly affected by their membership in groups and communities.  according to may: . Although the pictures of organizations as either persons or as aggregations of people are based on competing philosophical assumptions, organizations share the normative status of persons. And this supports the conclusion that they should be treated likewise dan cohen 1986, p.15.  the implications of both the personification and aggregation views are unsuitable as a basis for a new normative conception of organizations in morality and in the law.  both pictures also reflect an unhelpful belief that some sort of cognitive conception of organizations is required before normative issues can be examined. C wright mills perceived the relations i have argued for between these concepts in his distinction between fate and power lukes 1974, p.

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Organizations must satisfy three criteria in order to be morally responsible agents: 1 they must be intentional agents able to act. 2 they must be able to conform to rules and appreciate the effects of their actions on other individuals and groups, and 3 they must be capable of responding to moral censure with corrective measures.  opponents of collective moral responsibility have argued that organizations cannot meet some or all of these criteria. John searle refers to organizations and other social objects as ontologically subjective and advises: in the case of social objects, however, the grammar of the noun phrases conceals from us the fact that, in such cases, process is prior to product.

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Constituted by social acts and, in a sense, the object is just the continuous possibility of the activity searle 1995, p. But, for most philosophers actively engaged with the issues surrounding collective moral responsibility, the debate over the status of formal organizations and specifically corporations, has remained at center stage, and the question of whether some organizations can be morally responsible is seen to hinge on questions of the metaphysical identity of organizations. The majority of positions on these issues are grounded in some version of methodological or normative individualism, and most of these present some version of a contractualist analysis of the aggregationist conception of groups. Another version of the individualistic conception of corporate identity is michael keeley's 1981 agency theory which has its roots in classical lockean liberalism and f.a. Wittgenstein offers a very useful observation in remarks on colour that is an analogy for the shortcomings of methodological individualism: 53. Description of a jig saw puzzle by means of the description of its pieces.  i assume that these pieces never exhibit a three dimensional form, but always appear as small flat bits, single or many coloured.  only when they are put together does something become a 'shadow', a 'high light', a concave or convex monochromatic surface', etc. Methodological individualists may claim that corporate actions can be reduced to a set of facts about individuals which can then be arranged to provide an adequate description, at least in theory, of corporate activity, but problems are evident which have a striking family resemblance to the problems in giving a description of wittgenstein's puzzle through a description of its pieces.

The main appeal of methodological individualism is ideological.  paul thompson in curtler 1986, pp. 127 128 identifies methodological individualism as an ideological position which supports a view of society determined by individual choice and implying that attempts to interfere with the actions of individuals in the marketplace are a corruption of the natural order of the economy. Ladd's position on corporations and formal organizations generally, is based in the philosophy of language, which french employs to build a competing position supporting corporate moral responsibility.  in ladd's analysis, moral language can be incorporated into a group's operating procedures.  ladd does believe that bureaucracies, i.e. For most purposes, dan cohen finds it advantageous overall to view organizations from a holistic perspective.  he finds that a holistic view is preferable to the individualistic view, but he makes it clear that: the intelligibility of such holistic terminology as we daily use need not accordingly depend on a metaphorical personification of the organization nor on some far reaching metaphysical commitments dan cohen 1986, p. And finally, due to the nature of their decision making function, organizations can be plausibly seen as intentional systems endowed with organizational intelligence dan cohen 1986, pp.

In an increasingly bureaucratized world, there are diminished possibilities for the spontaneous, informal, and intimate human interactions essential to civil society, that social space which is considered a buffer between big government and big corporations. This contraction of social space results in less opportunities for freedom and human diversity and creativity what hannah arendt speaks of as human plurality.  the implications of relentless bureaucratization for the well being of human communities are pressing concerns for both moral philosophy and political theory. Caplow, theodore, principles of organization new york: harcourt, brace and world, 1966 pp.6 8. Curtler, hugh, shame, responsibility, and the corporation new york: haven publications, 1986.

Dan cohen, meir, rights, persons, and organizations berkeley: university of california press, 1986.   in  doing and deserving: essays in the theory of responsibility princeton: princeton university press, 1970 pp. corrigible corporations and unruly law san antonio: trinity university press, 1985. Coauthor corporations in the moral community fort worth: harcourt brace college publishers, 1992. 7 14 grantham, ross, the doctrinal basis of the rights of company shareholders cambridge law journal.

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Lukes, steven, power: a radical view 2 nd revised edition new york: palgrave  macmillan, 2005 may, larry and stacey hoffman, eds. collective responsibility: five decades of debate in theoretical and applied ethics savage, md: rowman and littlefield, 1991. May, larry, the morality of groups notre dame: university of notre dame press, 1987. May, larry, sharing responsibility chicago: university of chicago press, 1992. Rawls john, a theory of justice cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1971.

Coauthor corporations in the moral community fort worth: harcourt brace college publishers, 1992 risser, david t. the construction of social reality new york: the free press, 1995 shapiro, ian, the second face of lukes' third face. Thompson, judith jarvis, the decline of cause, the georgetown law journal.

Valasquez, manuel, why corporations are not morally responsible for anything they do, business and professional ethics journal. Waller, bruce, sincere apology without moral responsibility, social theory and practice. Werhane, patricia, formal organizations, economic freedom, and moral agency, journal of value inquiry. Wolf, susan, the legal and moral responsibility of organizations   typescript  p.21.