When Responsibility Can’t Do It A. Gowri

ABSTRACT. Is being responsible good enough? Stone

(1975) argued that we need corporate moral responsibility

because neither law nor market is adequate to forestall

harmful effects of business activities. However, it is not

possible for businesses to become responsible for all forms

of foreseeable, preventable harm that they produce. This

is illustrated here by cases from insurance, television

programming, automobiles and weapons production.

Reflection on these examples leads to the formulation of a

new conception of unintended harms as moral externalities

of business activities. Although one might argue that these

(negative) moral external effects are outweighed by the

desirable end products of business activities, three reasons

not to accept the results of such a ‘‘moral subtraction’’ (or

double effect) argument are presented. Instead, the article

concludes by offering four techniques for a qualitative,

ethical analysis of produced artefacts and their conse-

quences; intended not to displace but to supplement the

study of moral responsibility in business.

KEY WORDS: arithmetical ethics, corporate responsi-

bility, double effect, ethics of artefacts, externality, harm,

hypermobility, insurance, moral subtraction, risk rating

The problem

How should we address harm resulting from business

practices? Ethicists on the whole have accepted

Christopher Stone’s (1975) argument that neither

market nor legal control is adequate. In Where the

Law Ends, Stone favoured a third possibility: cor-

porate responsibility. Studies in the Journal of Business

Ethics or Business and Society Review now usually

begin from the premise that analysis of responsibil-

ities – managerial or corporate or both1 – is the right

way to do business ethics. A plausible case has been

made that it is necessary to consider how business

might be conducted more responsibly; however

there has not yet been a discussion on the extent to

which doing business responsibly is sufficient. Rather,

there is a tacit consensus that room for ethical cri-

tique exists only where we find inadequate fulfill-

ment of business responsibilities.

This paper considers situations where business

activities perpetuate foreseeable, preventable2 harm

while being conducted as responsibly as possible. Risk

rated insurance is taken as a central case study be-

cause its product is often understood as a practically

unmixed good. The capacity of insurance to allow

risks and resources to be shared across communities

is even presented as a form of institutionalized

beneficence. Nevertheless, as I will show, the

responsible practice of insurance cannot help but

harm some persons by constituting and labelling

them as high risk or uninsurable. Because the

insurance product is intangible and might appear to

be an atypical case, similar effects of television

broadcasting, automobile use and weapons pro-

duction will also be outlined more briefly. In each

area there is the same kind of puzzle: predictably

harmful effects result from what would appear to be

morally neutral or even maximally responsible actions

on the part of business corporations and managers.

Moreover, harm cannot be prevented through

more responsible conduct of that business. Thus

our analysis of responsibility for harmful effects of

business activities leads to a kind of paradox. How

can there be preventable harm which nobody is

responsible to have prevented?

Aditi Gowri (PhD Social Ethics 1998, USC) is Research

Director of MacroEthics, specializing in the qualitative

assessment of public policies and their social ethical effects.

From 1996 to 2005 she taught ethics, metaphor analysis,

and ethnographic methods at the LBJ School of Public

Affairs, University of Texas. She has served as a programme

evaluator for the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the government of

Quebec, Canada; and is currently editor of the quarterly

Values in Society. Gowri’s pure research focuses on the moral

agency and status of non-human agents including corpora-

tions, artefacts, memes, and elements of nature

Journal of Business Ethics 54: 33–50, 2004.

� 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The appearance of any paradox suggests that one

of our tacit premises may be flawed. Here, the

paradox can be resolved if we concede that evalua-

tion of responsibilities is not always an adequate

means for ethical evaluation of business activities.

We must also evaluate the nature of the produced

artefacts themselves.

What is the ‘‘it’’ … ?

Although he offer a book about corporations,

Stone’s main moral concern in Where the Law Ends is

preventable harm to human beings: poverty, injury,

and death. Laws governing business activities are not

only a way to punish wrongdoers, they exist also to

reduce ‘‘the incidence of harmful behaviour in the

first place’’ (1975, p. 30). Yet, as Stone argues,

neither regulatory law nor the market can do ‘‘it,’’

meaning that neither can consistently forestall harm to

humans resulting from business activities. This paper

may be read as an extended critique of Stone’s

emphasis on corporate responsibility; however, his

emphasis on harm to human beings as the central

concern of business ethics is shared.

The law, according to Stone, is rarely able pro-

actively to control corporate behaviour, because

lawmakers cannot stay fully informed about new

techniques of production and their consequences

(94; cf. Goodpaster, 1983, p. 316). Members of an

industry must themselves be (more or less willing)

participants in making the laws that govern them

because they have privileged knowledge about their

own practices. But their participation may then re-

sult in laws that protect the industry from economic

or legal assault as much as they protect the public

from the industry.

The issue is complicated further by the fact that

many aspects of corporate behaviour are only prima

facie harmful and are linked with benefits. Therefore,

policy makers must treat them as ‘‘qualifiedly’’ but

not absolutely disfavoured. For instance, industrial

pollution is harmful; yet attempting to regulate it

down to zero might make it impossible to manu-

facture many goods. Rather than try to prevent

pollution, American regulatory law usually aims to

have the corporation internalize the monetary value

of undesirable externalities it imposes on others

(according to Stone, 1975, pp. 31–32; but contra

Hylton, 2002, p. 516). This means that a pollution

fine should impose on a company exactly the costs its

pollutants will impose on others; no more nor less.

Having to internalize the cost of externalities,

however, will not necessarily lead a corporation to

reduce its output of pollutants. Fines are rarely severe

enough to deter otherwise profitable behaviour,

especially given the low rate of apprehension and

conviction for offenders (Stone, 1975, p. 103; cf.

Coffee, 1981). Even when imposed, legal penalties

only punish the corporation after the fact. Since any

corporate outcome generally had complex institu-

tional antecedents, future harm is only likely to be

forestalled by systematically changing the company’s

operating structures and procedures. But a corpora-

tion may or may not spontaneously respond to being

punished by reviewing its operations. For instance, it

may be easier to fire a scapegoat, to conceal evidence

from inspectors or to put more effort into modifying

the law rather than adjust a company’s procedures to

conform with the law. Some analysts even suggest

now that a corporation should disregard the law – so

long as expected additional profits exceed the ex-

pected cost of fines (as reported by Mokhiber and

Weissman, 1999). In any case, for Stone, regulation

can’t do ‘‘it.’’

One alternative to fining the corporation is to

hold individuals criminally liable for harmful effects

of corporate activities. The problem here is that

criminal law can only punish those who commit

crimes with knowledge and intent (mens rea). Cre-

ating individual criminal liability for corporate acts

gives executives an incentive not to know anything

about possible causes of harm, so they can honestly

plead ‘‘not guilty.’’ But then, nor can they prevent

harm without advance knowledge (Stone, 1975,

p. 63; contra Luban et al., 1992). This is why Stone

says that individual criminal liability can’t do ‘‘it.’’

On the other hand, market pressure has generally

not been sufficiently forceful to control corporate

activities. Compared with regulators, consumers

generally have less knowledge about producers’

activities; and less ability to punish them. Even when a

consumer learns about undesirable business practices,

it is difficult for her to know what products to boycott

to punish the company. It may be inconvenient to do

without some goods even when one disapproves of

their producer. Harm with multiple causes – such as

elevated levels of air pollutants – may be impossible to

34 A. Gowri

blame on particular producers. Finally, consumer

protest is likely to be met by corporate attempts to

manipulate public opinion rather than changes in

production activities (Stone, 1975, pp. 89–95; cf.

Stauber and Rampton, 1995). In short, according to

Stone, the market can’t do ‘‘it’’ because the condi-

tions of a free market are not satisfied in practice.

How might responsibility do ‘‘it’’ ?

Responsibility for Stone is not independent of reg-

ulation, but rather might result from mandatory

restructuring of the corporation as a formal institu-

tion. Evading the question of whether collections of

persons can be responsible in a metaphysical sense,

he proposes that we create the analogues of con-

science, guilt, shame and responsibility within the

corporate ‘‘mind’’ or decision making structures

(1975, p. 35). As any business corporation must

answer to its shareholders for the financial results of

its actions, corporations could be made to answer for

all benefits and harms they produce. Stone suggests

this could be accomplished through legal redefini-

tion of the Board of Directors, creation of new

reporting lines and creation of new incentive

structures both inside and outside the corporation.

He does not suggest that corporations would change

on their own; but that if such changes were imposed

by law then better corporate behaviour would result.

Many of Stone’s successors, conversely, treat

responsibility as an alternative to regulatory control.

Although scholars continue to address corporate

cultures and decision making structures as loci for

ethical change, they usually counsel voluntary

structural and behavioural change, not legally im-

posed changes (Murphy, 1988, 1989; Paine, 1994;

Werner, 1992). Corporations are addressed as enti-

ties that can act on moral reasons3 – as do human

persons – and should be encouraged to do so rather

than being constrained by externally enforced rules

(e.g. French, 1986, 1995; Goodpaster and Matthews,

1982). Truly ethical behaviour is expected to ‘‘spring

from within’’ rather than be imposed from without

(Werner, 1992, p. 65). The moral authority of

government to dictate corporations’ behaviour is

even cast in doubt (French, 1986, pp. 47–48;

Goodpaster, 1983). Thus for most scholars currently,

the means towards more responsible business are

diametrically opposed to Stone’s corporate con-

science that would be built by regulatory law.

Scholars also dispute the proper scope of respon-

sibility for corporations, corporate executives,

owners and managers (DeBow, 1992; Spurgin,

2001). A few argue, following Friedman (1970) that

a business corporation should be primarily or

exclusively responsible for profit maximization (e.g.

Hood, 1996). Most concede that profit making must

be constrained by responsibilities towards multiple

stakeholders (e.g. Carroll, 1998; Showstack et al.,

1996). Some observers continue to hold that only

personal responsibility really makes sense (Corlett,

2001; Mander, 1992; Rescher, 1998; Velasquez,

1983), while others maintain that corporate agency

and responsibility can exist (French, 1979;

Goodpaster, 1983; Paine, 1994; Tollefsen, 2002).

Many of the latter stress that personal and collective

moral responsibility can be coextant (e.g. Paine

1994, p. 109).

Critics of the rhetoric of responsibility have pointed

out that some acts labelled (by the actors) as exam-

ples of ‘‘corporate social responsibility’’ are better

described as public relations techniques (Friedman,

1970, pp. 221–222) and that being known to have a

good corporate ‘‘character’’ is itself a marketable

asset (Derber, 1998, pp. 224–229, Stoll, 2002). Thus

Abbarno (2001) is suspicious of ‘‘social responsibil-

ity’’ in the schools, suggesting that children’s

autonomy has been compromised by advertising,

brand name saturation, and compulsory Channel 1

viewing – imposed on them in the name of corpo-

rate ‘‘philanthropy.’’ However, this is not a critique

of responsibility per se but of acts labelled ‘‘socially

responsible’’ by their perpetrators. Indeed the article

concludes with an exhortation that corporations

should be more respectful of persons’ and school

boards’ autonomy – i.e. that they should behave

more responsibly towards their communities. Stoll’s

(2002) critique likewise concludes that it is ethically

suspect, i.e. irresponsible, for businesses to spend too

much effort publicizing their own acts of social

responsibility.

The challenge to responsibility offered here is

more fundamental than those outlined above be-

cause I deny that different kinds of responsible

practices could ameliorate the situations studied. The

next section presents the argument that risk rating

contributes to harming people who are high risk and

When Responsibility Can’t do it 35

uninsured; yet, this harm cannot be prevented

through more responsible insurance practices. Cases

that follow a similar pattern are then sketched for

three other industries; and an extended analysis fol-

lows.

Responsible insurance can’t do it

The product sold by insurance companies is a

promise to compensate clients for specified possible

future losses (e.g. Baker, 1994; Driskill, 1991). For

clients, on the other hand, an insurance policy is not

understood only as a promise to pay; but as a path-

way to many incidental social benefits. In the areas

of health care, home, and automobile liability in

particular, possession of an adequate, current insur-

ance policy is a customary means of access to social

goods. For instance, the purchase of risk-rated or

employer-sponsored health insurance policies has

been the conventional means of access to health care

services in the U.S. since the mid-20th century.

People without adequate health insurance have

more difficulty obtaining the same quality of needed

medical care (Committee on Labour and Human

Resources 1994, p. 24, 38). They may also have

more difficulty in obtaining or changing jobs be-

cause employers who subsidize insurance benefits are

reluctant to hire them (e.g. Cooper and Monheit,

1993). Entire families may therefore suffer not only

physiologically but also emotionally and economi-

cally from inadequate health insurance for any

member (Institute of Medicine, 2002). Likewise,

people who do not have automobile insurance are

not legally allowed to drive in most jurisdictions.

People who cannot afford homeowners’ insurance

usually cannot obtain a home mortgage (Dane,

1997), and the economic development of an entire

neighbourhood is impeded if homeowners’ or

business owners’ insurance is difficult to obtain or to

afford (Squires, 1997). In short, being uninsured

results in probable and actual harm to persons.

There is a consensus among insurance scholars

that uninsurance in crucial areas (health, automobile

and home) is a problem. Being classified as high risk

lowers the likelihood that a person will be able to

afford insurance and may otherwise worsen the

terms and conditions under which they may pur-

chase it (Ericson, Barry and Doyle, 2000, p. 535).

Even if the high risk price can be afforded, it may be

difficult to retain insurance because insurers usually

consider higher risk clients to be less desirable. Ex-

tremely high risks may be uninsurable – so risky or

difficult to measure that an insurer will not accept

them. Moreover, in areas such as automobile or

homeowner’s insurance, a ‘‘high risk’’ insured is

more likely to suffer uncompensated losses because

the insurance carrier is more likely to be an ‘‘off-

shore,’’ or otherwise less regulated insurer (Powers,

1997, pp.122–125). Insurance scholars often com-

ment on the problem posed by high risk and unin-

surable populations, admitting its seriousness and

proposing ways to alleviate harm resulting from

uninsurance (e.g. Ehre, 1975; Eno and Haugh, 1988;

Harrington and Niehaus, 1992; Long and Marquis,

2001; Rejda et al., 1993; Weinick et al., 1998).

Some insurers acknowledge a responsibility to make

insurance available. For instance, there is at least

growing verbal agreement on the social undesir-

ability of ‘‘redlining’’ or arbitrarily excluding par-

ticular neighbourhoods and demographic groups

from one’s market (Feldstein, 1994; Mazur, 2000;

Squires, 1997).

However, insurers do not acknowledge any

responsibility to sell insurance policies for less than

their actuarial value. In fact, the idea that insurers can

or must help uninsured and uninsurable people is

labelled as ignorant – a view held by people who do

not really understand insurance (e.g. Long 1978,

p. 444).4 Practitioners writing in insurance trade

journals and textbooks emphasize that maintaining

high product ‘‘quality,’’ is their first duty (e.g.

Christensen, 1992; Horn, 1978). Since the insurance

product is in effect a financial promise, the highest

quality insurance plan is one that offers a client the

most effective guarantee that its promises will be

kept. This means that a high quality insurance

company must have plenty of funds on hand to be

able to keep all of its promises (e.g. Gibbons et al.,

1992, Chapter 3). Or in other words, insurance

premiums must comfortably exceed expected losses,

so that accumulated reserves will be adequate to pay

all claims. Thus product quality depends on product

pricing. So actuarial risk rating is a necessary part of

doing insurance responsibly. Because a responsible

insurer must charge prices that reflect risks, the goal

of making insurance available to the broadest market

possible – while laudable – must be pursued within

36 A. Gowri

the constraint of selling insurance policies for no less

than actuarial rates.5

In theory, risk rated pricing is not the only way to

collect reserves adequate to pay all claims. Insurance

can also be priced according to a system of ‘‘com-

munity rating,’’ where prices are equalized over a

larger group, regardless of personal risks. Under such

a system, premiums contributed by all insured per-

sons pay primarily for the losses of the less fortunate.

Community rating is a less secure strategy, however,

because most people know something about their

own risk of future loss events. Those who know

themselves to be higher than average risks have a

stronger incentive to buy insurance at community

rates. Conversely, those who know themselves to be

lower than average risks have an incentive to remain

uninsured at the community rate – or to get a more

favourable actuarial rate from another insurer. The

combination of these two effects, known as adverse

selection, produces a situation where community

rated plans are more likely than others to attract

worse-than-average risks, but at a price suitable for

average risks. This means that they may encounter

financial difficulties in future because claims exceed

their reserve funds; but more to the point, it

diminishes their product quality immediately.

Since it is impossible to measure future risks per-

fectly, there is a continuum of more to less finely

graduated risk rating systems between ‘‘pure’’ actu-

arial rating and ‘‘pure’’ community rating. In theory,

any insurance company is free to adopt or not to

adopt any particular refinement of its classification

scheme, as it sees fit (subject to regulatory con-

straints); clients in turn may select the company

whose classification system suits them best (Carroll

1988). In practice, whenever one insurer refines its

criteria for classifying risks, others must soon follow

suit. An insurer that declines to underwrite as finely

as its competitors would only cultivate adverse

selection in its client pool, which can result in

financial difficulties, inability to pay claims, and – at

worst – insolvency (e.g. Stano, 1991; Stano and

Iuculano, 1987). This phenomenon is exemplified in

the history of Blue Cross/Blue Shield which tried,

but failed, to maintain community rating for hospi-

talization insurance alongside companies selling risk

rated policies (Law et al., 1974, pp. 11–16; Starr,

1982, pp. 327–331). On one hand, the Blues were

trying to make health insurance available to a broader

population by beneficently declining to charge them

high-risk rates. On the other hand, it would have

been irresponsible for them to persist in using a com-

munity rating system, as this would likely have

continued to vitiate the quality of their insurance

products. Thus in general, insurers must rate risks

carefully in order to be responsible to their clients.

Yet insurance underwriting is not only the mea-

surement of risk. Underwriting institutionalizes

some ways of classifying risks (but not other statis-

tically equally valid ones)6, classifies some persons as

high risk, and others as uninsurable. Prior to the fact

of underwriting, persons and/or places are subject to

risks, accidents and losses. The underwriter’s task is

to collect and organize knowledge about these

amorphous sites of accidents to produce statistically

assessable risks. In other words, risk rating redefines a

group of possible accidents as a set of locally and per-

sonally identified more or less probable events whose

likelihood and expected value may be measured

numerically. To risk rate is to redefine accidents as

statistically predictable events, thereby assigning an

understood probability of loss to sites and persons.

Accidents are not uniformly distributed across

populations. So each time an underwriter collects

information about another risk factor, a new group

of high risk sites and high risk persons is established.

Some of these may be uninsurable. Thus the process

of risk rating creates new classes of high risk and

possibly uninsurable places and persons. So risk rat-

ing harms persons by construing, measuring, and

labelling new risks.

One may object here that any person or place

identified as high risk was already high risk, whether

or not an underwriter noticed this fact; that the

adverse consequences of that risk were already

present and the insurer has only brought them to

light. While it may be true that some persons have

always had more than their share of accidents and

loss events, the objection may be answered if we

notice that being uninsured is harmful in itself. Harm of

this kind will equally befall a person who is ‘‘actu-

ally’’ high risk and one who is ‘‘mistakenly’’ labelled

high risk. Thus, a client who is labelled as a high

health risk must pay more for – or forgo – an

insurance policy even if it is only to be used for

routine and preventive health care. A driver labelled

uninsurable must forgo some employment, com-

mercial and social opportunities (or risk severe legal

When Responsibility Can’t do it 37

penalties and financial loss by driving uninsured),

quite independent of any road incidents that might

or might not have occurred. A property labelled

uninsurable is unlikely to be inhabited or developed.

Owners of high risk homes are less likely to be able

to continue affording their mortgage and other

housing costs, and therefore less likely to remain in

their housing. These examples indicate that being

classified as high risk or uninsurable is harmful

independent of the incidence of insurable events. There-

fore some forms of harm result from the act of risk

rating itself, not from a person’s presumed prior risk

profile.

Insurers and other commentators usually charac-

terize uninsured losses as unfortunate, but not unfair

(e.g. Bole, 1991, p. 4). The fact of being uninsured

itself is understood as a consequence of the person’s

own circumstances and decisions. Losses that befall

an uninsured person are implicitly depicted as natural

events. Harm resulting from uninsured losses, like

harm resulting from a storm, could perhaps be ad-

dressed by redistributive social policies or charity.

But they do not perceive uninsured losses to result

from insurance practices. Nor do they generally

consider fundamentally changing their practices to

address the problem. Even consumer advocates who

write on insurance implicitly accept that uninsurance

is not the insurance industry’s problem, expressing

concerns primarily about insurers’ financial, sales and

claims payment practices towards those who are in-

sured (e.g. Gollin, 1966; Hunter, 1993; Powers,

1997; Reynolds, 1968).7

Yet the creation of new forms and categories of

uninsurability is a predictable consequence of the

insurance business. Producing knowledge which

transforms unknown risks into personal, probable

events is a deliberate part of doing insurance. This

practice foreseeably results in the construction of

high risk populations. Risk rating is considered

financially responsible; and it is even irresponsible for

an insurer not to rate risks with sufficient accuracy

because of probable adverse effects on the quality of

their product. But effects of risk rating are neither

unpredictable nor inevitable. Rather, harm to the

uninsured that results from risk rating can be fore-

seen and understood analytically – as has been begun

here – and might be prevented at least in part, for

instance if the entire industry adopted community

rating. But analysis of responsibilities at the level of

the corporation will not allow us to address this

harm.

Three more examples

To eliminate the possibility that this paradoxical

effect is peculiar to insurance, the following section

offers three more situations where business activities

result in harmful consequences more or less pre-

dictably, yet harm cannot be averted by more

responsible conduct of that business. The first con-

cerns another intangible product (television pro-

gramming), while the second and third concern the

manufacture of tangible objects, automobiles and

weapons.

Television programming and children’s health

Are television stations responsible for making chil-

dren ill? The number of hours spent watching

television programs is highly correlated with obesity

at all ages beginning in the pre-school years

(Dennison et al., 2002). Early childhood obesity in

turn increases the likelihood of hypertension, cardio-

vascular disease, diabetes and a broad range of other

chronic and acute diseases throughout the lifespan.

Part of the problem is that children watching tele-

vision spend more time sitting still rather than

engaging in physical activity; and may develop a

distaste for physical activity. Another factor may be

that young children’s food preferences are rapidly

shaped (Borzekowski and Robinson, 2001) by

advertisements for a disproportionate number of

overly refined, high-fat, high-sugar, low-fibre foods

(Wilson et al., 1999). Television watching is also

known to have be addictive (Kubey and

Csikszentmihalyi, 2004), and to produce shorter

attention spans and greater hyperactivity in children

who watch many hours a day (Winn, 1985); hence

those who watch more television may also be more

likely to suffer mental health problems later in life.

This entire range of health problems is preventable

to some extent; and there is strong evidence that

children’s health improves quite rapidly when hours

spent watching television are reduced (Robinson,

2001).

38 A. Gowri

It seems reasonable to hold television stations and

programmers responsible for the content of their

programming; for instance to require that they

should consider the probable consequences of

violent or sexist images on young viewers. But it

does not seem reasonable to expect them to make

their shows less attractive or to promote less televi-

sion watching for children, since a station’s capacity

to generate revenue is directly proportional to the

size of its audience (Postman and Powers, 1992,

Chapter 1). Producers make their programmes

attractive precisely with the intention of having

people – including children – spend more time

watching them. This is not inevitable; and it has the

foreseeable consequence of making more children

obese. Yet we do not hold programmers to account

for children’s loss of health. If we wish to address

harm done to children by this addictive, harmful

pastime, then responsibility can’t do it.

Automobiles and hypermobility

Owning a private automobile allows a person to

travel farther and more frequently than without it,

which may in turn give her a sense of enhanced

personal autonomy (Lomasky, 1997). But extensive

urban automobile travel by a population predictably

harms people overall. On one level, increased air

pollution from automobile emissions results in in-

creased respiratory and cardio-vascular disease

(Bates, 1995; D’Amato, 2002; Miyamoto, 1997).

Societies where people are ‘‘hypermobile’’ overall

also suffer from a host of social ills, as demonstrated

by geographer John Adams (1999, 2000).

When people routinely travel longer distances –

while having the same number of hours in a day –

they will tend to have more instrumental

relationships and less intimacy or friendship, simply

because one has less time and attention for each

person in one’s sphere of activities. This applies to

the hypermobile as well as to those who are merely

surrounded by hypermobile people. Hypermobility

also leads to more danger and crime, because people

cannot control one another’s behaviour as easily

when they move about so much (and also because of

the presence of speeding vehicles!); and leads to

more intensive policing and less civic freedoms. The

more mobile a society becomes, the more it will

tend to use built spaces in ways suited to a very

mobile population. Therefore, longer trips to work,

shopping and social activities will become routine

and expected. But this will in turn perpetuate the

(understood and experienced) need to drive even

more miles in personal automobiles. Meanwhile, our

built spaces become progressively less welcoming for

the approximately one third of persons who are too

young, too old, too poor, too infirm or too inca-

pacitated to drive. Hypermobility is a self-perpetu-

ating path towards loss of freedoms and increased

inequality of capacities between rich and poor, be-

tween healthy and ill, and so on. All of these social

harms are avoidable, since decreased personal

mobility over a population would allow all of us to

have safer, friendlier, less policed, more equitable

and democratic lives (Adams 1999, pp. 131–133).

Most ethicists would agree that automobile

manufacturers have a responsibility to make safer,

more fuel-efficient and less polluting vehicles – so

far as they are able to do so within the limits of

technology and profitability. But one can hardly

expect them to try to make and sell fewer auto-

mobiles! The first task of business is to make and

sell the product; and beyond that to cultivate a

steady or increasing demand for the product.

Moreover, the economy depends on automobiles.

In an era beset by perpetual danger of recession,

selling cars not only profits the manufacturer and

shareholders, it also contributes significantly to

general economic prosperity. If we would like to

address the harms of hypermobility, then respon-

sibility can’t do it.

Manufacturing weapons of war

Are weapons makers responsible for military escala-

tion? Their business is to make and sell lethal devices

which serve a national defensive purpose and are

valued especially in times of international hostility.

Yet having to use weapons of war is at best a nec-

essary evil – not an intrinsic good – and should be

minimized. However, the financial health of a firm

that is invested in making and selling weapons will

be fostered whenever the demand for their weapons

is constant or increasing (cf. Huxley, 1937, pp. 1–5).

Among other things, this means that weapons

makers (as persons or corporations) are likely to

When Responsibility Can’t do it 39

support armed conflict and to oppose truces or

political movements in favour of disarmament. They

are also likely to pursue sales by expanding their

markets to foreign governments (e.g. Flamm, 1997),

police forces (e.g. Haggerty and Ericson, 1999) and

even private purchasers. Broader distribution of

weaponry will in turn enable its use in a broader

range of settings; and proliferation of larger stock-

piles will enable more extensive use.

Creation and perpetuation of weapons enables

organized violent action. Having fewer weapons, of

‘‘lower’’ quality (i.e. with less advanced capabilities),

would be one way to reduce the capacity for harm.

It is surely the case that people with guns – not guns

themselves – kill people. Nonetheless, people without

so many guns (mines, anti-personnel missiles, aircraft

carriers, rocket launchers, tanks, nuclear silos and so

on) – or such good ones – are surely somewhat less

able to kill. Yet it seems unreasonable to suggest that

responsible weapons makers should cease to invest in

technical developments; or should make and sell

fewer weapons. As long as that is one’s business, it is

necessary to keep selling more as well as ‘‘more

effective’’ weapons to stay in business (Saul, 1994,

pp. 30–32). Certainly weapons makers are not

responsible for national military policy or interna-

tional arms escalation. If we would like to address

the harm enabled by weapons development and

production, then responsibility can’t do it.

Moral externalities

Making and selling weapons of war enables military

violence. Selling automobiles contributes to more

unequal, less friendly societies – which in turn has

adverse effects on human morbidity and mortality

(Wilkinson, 1997). Transmitting addictive television

programming contributes to making children obese

and ill. Risk rating contributes to depriving high risk

people of social goods. In each of these cases, harm

resulting from business activities is foreseeable, and

could be averted or at least significantly reduced; but

in none of them does it seem possible to formulate a

relevant ethical critique of business in terms of

responsibilities that have been neglected and might

be fulfilled. In each case, these effects are (co-)pro-

duced by businesses; yet forestalling harm seems to

be not a business problem but someone else’s

problem. Helping people with uninsured losses is a

problem to be addressed by state aid or private

charity; supervising children’s pastimes is a parent’s

duty; fostering friendlier, safer, more equitable

communities is a job for regional planners and

avoiding war deaths is a task for foreign policy and

military leaders.

Each of these unintended, undesirable, yet pre-

dictable effects can be understood as a kind of

externality, since each involves the imposition of

fortuitous costs that result from business transactions,

onto persons who may have little or no direct role in

those transactions. The economic concept of an

externality denotes economically significant conse-

quences (costs or benefits) that manage to escape

market reckoning and are not incorporated into

market price. Likewise, I would like to develop the

concept of a moral externality to identify morally

significant consequences that seem to escape ethical

reckoning about what is owed by an actor – situa-

tions that defy our capacity to assign responsibility

for preventable harm.

Moral externalities as defined here should not be

understood as a subset of economic externalities but

rather as a parallel phenomenon, consisting in

morally but not necessarily financially significant harm.8

Increasing childhood illness is admittedly unfortu-

nate and costly; it is also morally problematic because

the children who are harmed have little ability to

change their own circumstances yet. Likewise, many

insurance underwriting criteria – such as living in a

relatively dangerous neighbourhood (Squires, 1997)

or being the victim of domestic abuse (Hellman,

1997) – are disadvantages in themselves; so it seems

not only unfortunate but also unjust if persons are

penalized for these characteristics (Evans, 1988,

p. 163). Similarly, the harms brought about by

military action are not only costly, but also unjustly

distributed. Of course moral externalities may be

associated with economic externalities – clearly, war

casualties are costly to a nation; yet their injustice

also transcends and is not fully captured in any

monetary price.

Since it is the moral significance of an effect that

identifies it as a moral externality, it may not always

be possible to assign it a monetary price tag. Can we

measure the monetary value of lost opportunities for

social interaction and friendship in a hypermobile

city? The morbidity and mortality ‘‘cost’’ of cur-

40 A. Gowri

tailed social interaction, which can be monetized to

some extent, is only a small part of the picture.

Asking people to place a money value on their

friendships would not resolve the issue either, be-

cause it is nearly impossible for them to imagine the

different hypothethical pattern of relationships that might

have been available to them in a less mobile city – let

alone to assess the value of an entirely different life in

money terms.9

The usual response to (economic) external effects

of production is to use taxes, fines or regulatory fees

to make businesses ‘‘internalize’’ the costs they have

imposed on others. In theory, funds collected should

then be used to compensate the victims of external

costs. A parallel solution to the problem of moral

externalities would be to make businesses internalize

harmful effects to which they have contributed.

Because moral externalities often represent non-

monetary forms of harm, however, internalizing a

moral externality could not be accomplished by

money alone; and would have to entail some

appropriate contribution to preventing or reversing

harms done.

But asking businesses to ‘‘accept’’ responsibility

(Fingarette, 1967, Chapter 2) for moral externalities

does not appear to be a promising tactic, perhaps

because (by definition) these are effects that have

escaped responsibility in the first place. We can

hardly ask an insurer to risk rate less carefully; a

television station to encourage people to watch

fewer hours of its programs; an automobile maker

to sell fewer vehicles; or a weapons maker to sell

less effective or fewer weapons. In each case, the

act required to ‘‘internalize’’ or reverse harms

would constitute a direct impediment to business

activities.

Double effects?

Some ethicists use the rule of double effect to address

situations where a good (or at least morally neutral)

end cannot be attained without also bringing about

some kind of secondary, harmful effect. The rule

states that in such situations, the harmful effect is

excusable only if it is (1) of lesser magnitude than the

good effect, (2) not the means by which the good is

accomplished, and (3) not intended by the actor; al-

though it may be foreseen and allowed to occur (e.g.

Beauchamp and Childress, 1994, pp. 206–211).

Television programmers most likely do not intend

to make children obese or ill, although they do

intend to encourage them to watch more televi-

sion. Automobile makers probably do not intend us

to live in more disordered communities, although

they do intend for us to drive more miles in

personal vehicles. Weapons makers probably do not

intend to cause more casualties worldwide but do

intend to sell more and more-lethal weapons.

Insurance underwriters probably do not intend to

deprive high risk persons of goods and social

opportunities, but they do intend to rate risks. The

intended act in each case is intrinsic to distribution

of a presumably legitimate product; and the

harmful effect in each case appears to be unin-

tended. Since the harmful effect is not the means

by which the good is accomplished in any of these

situations – for instance children are not made ill so

that they will watch more television – the rule of

double effect seems to apply so far.

Manufacturers will contend, moreover, that

availability of their product in each case constitutes a

greater good than the harm that ensues. Television

programmers can point out the good they do for all

parents (as well as other persons) in offering an

inexpensive form of entertainment, deplore the

harm to the health of a few children, and consider

themselves justified by the rule of double effect.

Automobile makers can point out that they increase

the autonomy of each car owner (Lomasky, 1997),

deplore the decay of social relationships, and

exculpate themselves by the rule. Weapons makers

can argue that they are serving their nation’s need for

military equipment to defend itself, deplore the

escalation of casualties internationally, and likewise

invoke the rule. Finally, insurers can point to the

many people for whom an insurance policy provides

financial security and needed indemnity payments

(e.g. Williams et al., 1978, pp. 13–14; Woods, 1934;

Wright, 1873, p. 113), express sympathy for the

unmet needs of uninsured persons, point out that the

former greatly outnumber the latter; and consider

themselves justified by the rule. In each of these cases

the responsibility for harmful effects appears to

‘‘vanish’’ because it is an unavoidable Double Effect

of selling one’s (useful) product.

When Responsibility Can’t do it 41

Arithmetical ethics

Are moral externalities as discussed here beyond hope

of any better ethical resolution? The idea that insurers

are not blameworthy if risk rating harms uninsured

persons – because the harm is of lesser magnitude than the

good that risk rated insurance does in general – rep-

resents a kind of arithmetical approach to ethical

reasoning. As outlined above, the Double Effect rule

in such situations suggests that unintended harm

resulting from business processes may in a sense be

cancelled against – or ‘‘subtracted from’’ – goods

produced. When the result of subtraction is positive,

then so may be our assessment of the act.10Yet it is not

clear that such operations of ‘‘moral subtraction’’

should be embedded in our ethical evaluations of

business activities without further comment.

First, I do not believe that we are generally happy

to use arithmetical ethics in formulating judgements

of personal moral lives. Rather, a human being whose

good acts regularly result in unintended harm might

be judged morally ineffectual at best; or believed to

have a character flawed by self-deception at worst.

When a person’s actions or words repeatedly harm

others – regardless of how they do so – we expect her

to reflect on her role in the outcome; and to try to

change her habits, character or circumstances. For

instance, we usually do not consider the good a

person’s income does for her family before finding

her blameworthy for stealing or practicing some

other harmful, illegal trade. Rather, the consequences

of stealing are first considered separately, independent

of the good that may result from the same act. Even if

the person truly has no choice but to steal to survive,

we would still insist that she should continually seek a

less harmful means of livelihood. To the extent that

we do not assess personal moral action arithmetically,

there does not seem to be any basis for taking such an

approach in business ethics.

Second, persistent use of an arithmetical motif in

our ethical evaluations may actually foster self-

deception concerning how much harm is being

done, how one might avoid doing harm, and the

extent to which harmful effects are deplored. It is

difficult enough for anyone to realize the true

magnitude of harms done to others. For instance, it

is easier to underestimate the harmful effects of war if

one has not suffered them directly. An arithmetical

approach to evaluating moral harm may encourage

actors (and third parties) to further downplay the

extent of others’ suffering, simply because the in-

tended, good effects of an act are always kept in view

alongside its unintended, harmful results. As we are

constantly invited to compare the two, we are likely

to see harms as less significant in absolute terms than

had they been examined separately. By underesti-

mating the harms side, the moral equation is then

more easily made to yield a result greater than zero –

which in turn rehabilitates the act overall (within an

arithmetical ethical framework).

So long as we can tell ourselves that an action has

brought about more good than harm, we are also less

likely to ask how we might work against particular

harms done. The very process of comparing harms

with goods suggests that the exact ‘‘magnitude’’ and

distribution of harms done is less important than the

fact that goods exceed harms. As long as there is a

net positive arithmetical result, it may not seem

morally necessary to work to increase its amount.

Tallying the arithmetical result and expressing sym-

pathy for one’s victims may thus become a substitute

for trying to harm them less.

It is easier to deplore harm than to accept that one

must do something to correct the situation. Because

an easier act of benign intention (sincere as it may be) is

allowed to substitute for more difficult corrective

effort, actors may find it easier to exaggerate how

morally compassionate they really are; and may con-

vince themselves or others that they deplore the

harmful effects to a much greater degree than is the

case (cf. Boddington, 1998, pp. 49–50). As harmful

effects are allowed to persist, actors may also become

desensitized to these effects, and may be self-deceived

about the extent to which an apparently ‘‘unin-

tended’’ but foreseen harmful effect can gradually

become – at some level, perhaps subconsciously –

intended or at any rate willingly allowed to occur (cf.

Beauchamp and Childress, 1994, pp. 208–209).

Third, arithmetical moral reasoning is suspect

because it is not always clear that harms entailed are

commensurate with the goods from which they are

subtracted. The act of comparing and subtracting

harms from goods suggests that all consequences are

of similar enough types that the operation of sub-

traction makes sense. In other words, all harms and

goods are implicitly placed on one linear scale and

ranked from very good through very bad. Econo-

mists speak as though all values may be made

42 A. Gowri

mutually commensurable through the medium of

money pricing. Establishing a unified scale of plus

and minus money values is also indispensable in the

practice of business so that we know whether any

project is (and continues to be) financially viable.

But moral externalities as discussed here often consist

of non-monetizable bads; therefore we cannot as-

sume that they are commensurate with other harms

or goods. For instance, consider an operation of

comparing or ‘‘subtracting’’ the harm of curtailed

social interaction for one set of persons; from the

psychological benefits of autonomous hypermobility

for a different, yet possibly overlapping, set of per-

sons. It is questionable that any arithmetical sum of

these two disparate, qualitative values can offer a

meaningful net ethical result.

If we put ethical arithmetic and responsibility aside

we may consider anew what it might mean to do ‘‘it’’

from an ethicist’s point of view. To address foresee-

able harm to human beings resulting from business

practices, first we must understand what is going

awry; and second we may seek ways to avert harmful

consequences. Neither of these tasks requires us to

accept an arithmetical conception of goods and

harms. Indeed, in accepting an arithmetical approach,

we have courted the danger of mistaking moral for

financial consequences, and even of trying to reduce

the former to the latter.11 To quantify and subtract

bads from goods is an abstraction from the com-

plexity of the moral world. A less counterfactual way

of doing business ethics might be to describe and

analyze moral consequences without reducing them

to linear commensurability; in other words, we may

undertake ethical evaluation qualitatively. Rather than

jump to an ethical bottom line of dubious signifi-

cance, any robustly qualitative method of ethical

evaluation would have to pay attention to the attri-

butes, locations, and significance – not only the

magnitude – of goods and harms.12 Admittedly,

qualitative ethical analysis will entail its own

abstractions; yet hopefully these may represent the

moral world somewhat more recognizably than does

a linear scale of goodness and badness.

An ethics of artefacts?

Yet it seems difficult to get away from an arith-

metical motif so long as we are ethically assessing acts

and persons who act. I propose that business ethicists

must also assess the objects and technological systems

associated with people’s actions. In terms of the

concern with human harm presented at the begin-

ning of this paper, one way to do ‘‘it’’ better would

be to develop an ethical analysis of artefacts and their

uses, independent of the task of ‘‘tallying up’’ each

business person’s or corporation’s moral score. In

doing so, business ethicists must to some extent part

company with businesslike ways of thinking, and

adopt an attitude more familiar to the cultural or

aesthetic analyst.

Many economists and theorists of business write as

though the consequences of a product cease at the

point of sale, when a ‘‘widget’’ is exchanged for its

money price. It is considered more significant

(economically) that money changes hands during a

sale transaction, than that widgets are distributed in

the same act. This suggests, for instance, that time

allocated to acts of consumption should simply be

overlooked by economists. Productive work for

wages takes time by definition, but consumption of

widgets purchased with those wages is treated as

though it occurs instantaneously (Linder, 1970). In

general the purpose of business is understood to lie

in the financial realm, and is generally further

identified as making profits – albeit within limits set

by law and custom (Friedman, 1970; Stone, 1975,

Chapters 8 and 12). Making widgets is not usually

discussed as a purpose of business. In fact, the act of

distributing widgets appears almost to be a byprod-

uct of the main task of making profits! Yet surely a

business must distribute some tangible or intangible

widgets (goods or services) to make profits.

Likewise, most business ethicists have downplayed

the importance of the widget. We have to a large

extent been writing as though ethical consequences

of production end with the sale and purchase of a

good – so long as the artefact fulfills its functions as

advertised and is not directly harmful to the user.

Ultimate effects on consumers, users and other peo-

ple of using the artefact have been more or less exempt

from ethical evaluation in those terms. Moreover,

artefacts are tacitly assumed to produce good effects to

the extent people are willing to pay for and use

them.13 Conversely, harm may be manifest in nega-

tive externalities and unintended effects. However,

so long as a production process is understood to bring

about more good than (unintended and inextricable)

When Responsibility Can’t do it 43

harm, businesses are not generally held responsible for

the latter. Little further effort need be – nor has been

– put to the task of describing the negative moral

external effects of artefacts, their distribution and use.

Yet even if the moral subtraction always yields po-

sitive results, it would be valuable to improve our

understanding in this area – just as it is morally pru-

dent for a basically good person to look for possibly

harmful consequences of his actions.

Colleagues who follow the argument to this point

have sometimes observed that an ethics of the arte-

fact appears to be fundamentally opposed to pro-

duction and therefore anti-capitalist. Yet, it seems

quite plausible for strong capitalists to embrace such

a mode of analysis. For instance, Hood (1996),

clearly an admirer of Milton Friedman, suggests that

Ben and Jerry’s is an odd choice for a model business

since its product is after all a high-fat luxury food.

His choice for a more ethically responsible product

than ice cream is plastic – especially in its role as a

constituent of food storage systems, computers and

biomedical supplies. While Hood’s general obser-

vation that our judgement of a business should in-

clude the nature of its product seems valid, his

particular choice of plastic is questionable. Wide-

spread availability of cheap non-biodegradable plas-

tics has contributed to a worldwide garbage

problem. This – no less than lives saved – would

have to be part of our ethical evaluation of plastic as

an artefact. At any rate, capitalists who are willing to

argue that some products are boons to humanity

because of the uses to which they may be put should

also be willing to consider the full spectrum of

ethical consequences of these products. For a quali-

tative ethics of the artefact the goal is not to decide

whether medical uses of plastic offer more or less good

than medical waste does harm, for instance, but to

develop a full account of the moral consequences of

the product.14

Four possible methods for an ethics of the artefact

are proposed here. A standard objection to ethical

analysis of artefacts is that things do not have inten-

tions, virtues or vices in themselves. It is only the

uses to which people put those things that may be

ethically evaluated. Nevertheless, the shapes that

things take will tend to channel and constrain our

intentions, actions and relationships, as developed

below (cf. Winner, 1986). It is important to

emphasize that the purpose of these methods is not

primarily to assign responsibilities or to condemn the

makers of artefacts for their consequences, but to

develop our understanding of the moral conse-

quences of production activities. These methods

may not tell us exactly what to do; but the detailed

representation of the moral world that they offer will

bring us closer towards understanding and thence

addressing harmful effects of production.

What does the artefact do?

First, it is possible to evaluate the artefact itself as an

agent – to consider what events its presence

accomplishes, enables or forestalls. As suggested by

Johnson ([Latour] 1988), treating a nonhuman being

as an agent means that we must ask what acts, by

what persons, would be required to accomplish the

same tasks in the absence of the object. An artefact

can then be understood to ‘‘do,’’ in its own way,

what those hypothetical persons would be doing.

Because those persons’ acts may have had some

moral content, we can evaluate both ends and means

of the artefact’s ‘‘acts’’ by reference to those hypo-

thetical persons. This amounts to an evaluation of

the artefact as nonhuman (moral) agent.

Such a method may be used to evaluate television

programming as a child sitter – the use to which it is

often put by parents. If we did not have any televi-

sion, then parents might have to engage a human

being to keep young children amused or pacified. A

child sitter might, like the television, keep these

children largely immobile, silent and entranced for

long hours at a time (Winn, 1985, Chapter 3). This

might be accomplished by administering psychoac-

tive substances to them (laudanum was once popular

for this purpose) or somehow mesmerizing the chil-

dren. As we might evaluate the acts of a hypothetical

person entrusted with the care of children who used

such methods – rather than playing games with them,

teaching them a skill or reading to them, for instance

– so might the ‘‘acts’’ of television programming as a

cultural artefact be judged in this context.

How does proliferation shape the user?

Second, we may evaluate the ways that using an

artefact is likely to change a user’s physical and

44 A. Gowri

perceptual habits. Using any product requires the

development of some skills and behaviours, and may

tend to impede others. The user is thus shaped by

the artefact even as she uses it to shape her world.

Business ethicists, mostly Westerners from the Ju-

deo-Christian traditions, are used to considering the

effects of an act on its target; but are less used to

considering the effects of an act on the actor. The

Buddhist doctrine of Right Livelihood suggests,

however, that our habitual acts have effects on our

moral selves; and that we have a duty to understand

and channel these effects (Schumacher, 1968).

To buy risk rated insurance is at some level to

define oneself as a personal locus of risks. Since

insurance is a product with a price, purchasers of risk

rated insurance will cultivate a habit of considering

the price and benefits of each plan they might pur-

chase. They will look for the best available deal, the

best quality and features, at the lowest possible price.

This in turn suggests habits of thinking of oneself as

an individual risk, separating one’s economic interest

from that of other people, hoping to be a better risk

than others, and even being proud of one’s (low) risk

status. As the advertisements I regularly receive ask

me to consider: why should a basically healthy

person, a safe driver, who lives in a solid house in a

safe middle class neighbourhood, and so on, be

paying for other people’s higher risks? By contrast,

nationalized Medicare or Social Security plans –

where risks and benefits are shared through com-

munity rating – foster a different habit of thought.

Participants are not encouraged to develop the habit

of thinking about themselves as better or worse risks,

but rather to value the secure, communal nature of

insurance benefits (Evans, 1988) and to develop a

habit of solidarity with others (cf. Stone, 1993,

1999). An ethical assessment of the habits of mind

(and body) cultivated in the users of a good should

be part of our ethical evaluation of the artefact.

How does proliferation affect non-users?

Third, we may evaluate the effects of proliferation of

an artefact on non-owners or non-users of an arte-

fact. Economists tend to dismiss the consequences of

goods and wealth on a non-possessor, labelling them

‘‘envy effects’’ and usually declining to study them.

Ethicists in the tradition of John Rawls (1971) follow

suit and often discount the effects of one person’s

wealth on another’s welfare. Yet, there is evidence

of serious psychological as well as material conse-

quences of relative deprivation. First, the psycho-

social effects of lacking goods others possess (relative

poverty) now appear to be the most significant

determinants of personal health and life span in the

First World (Wilkinson, 1997). Second, knowing

oneself to be relatively deprived may have effects on

one’s own consumption behaviour and thus one’s

welfare. The broad dissemination of goods and

images of goods that one might (but does not yet)

own tends to encourage conspicuous consumption

and inadequate inconspicuous consumption – i.e.

expenditures on goods that are more beneficial than

noticeable. In North America we probably spend

less on air quality, personal vacation time, and better

water systems (Frank, 1999, Chapter 6) than would

be economically optimal.

Moreover, even if one has no desire to own or

use a product, the mere fact of its proliferation

among other users may have consequences for a

person’s well-being that have nothing at all to do

with envy. The proliferation of automobiles in

North America has fostered social geographies de-

signed to better serve automobile users. Therefore,

the portion of the population who do not or could

not drive are no longer served so well by infra-

structures as they once were. Thus increased use of

automobiles has had real economic effects on non-

users, even those who (at least initially) felt no envy

of drivers. Johnson (Latour, 1988, p. 302) proposes

that artefacts may be understood to ‘‘discriminate’’ –

with all the moral implications of that judgement –

to the extent that persons are predictably differently

situated with respect to the acts accomplished

through their use. One might say in his terms that

personal automobiles (and their highway system)

discriminate against the very young, persons without

full use of their limbs, drinkers, epileptics, the se-

verely visually impaired, those who cannot afford an

automobile, and uninsurable drivers, among others.

Similarly, the proliferation of cell phones has

contributed to a lower demand for pay telephones.

Therefore, pay telephones are no longer installed or

maintained in locations where they were recently

considered indispensable. The effect on non-users of

the cell phone is that it is now more difficult to make

a telephone call away from home; therefore many

When Responsibility Can’t do it 45

public spaces are less safe than they were. Persons

with no particular prior need, desire or ‘‘envy’’ of

portable phones (such as this author) have had to

acquire this service simply as a defensive expendi-

ture, a substitute for goods no longer available. Or

from another point of view, the price of a telephone

call in a public place has increased from having 25¢

on hand to planning and investing $100 or more for

a cell phone plan. The continued sale of cell phone

subscription services (including my own) now con-

tributes to an ongoing exacerbation of social

inequality. Such distributive effects on non-users

should be part of our ethical evaluation of artefacts,

including both products and services.

What does the artefact demand in the public realm?

Finally, we can evaluate the civic and political

consequences of an artefact’s existence, distribution

and use. Winner (1986, Chapter 2) argues that the

development of nuclear power seems to ‘‘demand’’

more strict, hierarchical control of workers and

materials involved in these enterprises as well as

greater control of state secrets. The production and

storage of byproducts that can be used in nuclear

weapons creates an increased danger that lethal

materials can be purloined for evil ends. Therefore

we cannot contemplate a more participatory style of

management or governance in this area. In this very

precise sense, nuclear energy is an anti-democratic

form of technology. Similarly, equipping a police

force with more sophisticated weaponry (while

leaving their negotiation skills constant) will result in

their being perceived as more dangerous by a policed

population; and is likely in turn take us further away

from the stated ideal of democratic, less-conflictual

community policing (cf. Haggerty and Ericson,

1999).

We can also discuss plausible effects of artefacts on

civic cultures at a more mundane level. Widespread

distribution of televisions and (freely available) pro-

gramming watched by children means that an entire

age cadre has grown up with some common images.

The expected result is that the range of social and

political views found among this cadre will be nar-

rowed. Conversely, a society in which automobiles

proliferate is one in which we are less likely to have

conversations about social issues with our neigh-

bours and people we see in public places, since

we usually traverse them in personal steel boxes. To

this extent, the preconditions of participatory

democracy are less well fulfilled than they would be

if trains, buses and feet were our primary means of

transport.

Such political consequences of production tend to

transcend the categories of intended as opposed to

unintended consequences of business activities, and

to defy the assignment of responsibilities. Asking

whether the social effects of a particular technical

development were desired or intended by its maker

or not is somewhat beside the point. Rather, once a

series of choices has been made to develop particular

economic means and to adopt them as customary,

artefacts seem to take on an inertia of their own. The

customary expectation that people will use personal

telephones forces me to pay for one; but I do not

blame cell phone service providers for my plight.

The highway system invites and rewards us for

driving private automobiles, and our cars in turn

demand more miles of roadways; but were the

roadmakers to blame? The risk rated insurance sys-

tem as it has been developed demands continued use

and refinement of risk rating tables; but insurers

must rate risks given current market structures. In

general, the production, distribution and use of ar-

tefacts may narrow the range of personal and polit-

ical choices that will be available to us in future

(Schlicht, 1998, Chapter 3; cf. Winner, 1986,

Chapter 2). This capacity of produced artefacts to

contribute – in partly if not perfectly predictable

ways – to an ongoing transformation of social life

must be incorporated into the ethical analysis of

business.

Notes

1 Throughout the paper I sidestep the question of

corporate moral agency or personhood, referring instead

to business activities and their effects. I believe the

argument would remain unchanged whether one imagi-

nes human managers or corporations as the agents of these

activities. My own views on collective agents are

developed in Gowri (1997).2 Only foreseeable and preventable harm is considered

because without these conditions, usually no ethical

analysis of the consequences of an act is considered

appropriate.

46 A. Gowri

3 My working definition of ethics is reasoning in or about the

moral realm. So ‘‘moral reasoning’’ is more or less equivalent

to ‘‘ethical reasoning.’’ But moral discourse (e.g. thou shalt

not!) is not always ethical discourse, nor is a moral authority

(e.g. your mother) always an ethical authority.4 Similarly, Stone (1975, p. 111) emphasizes that

corporate responsibility does not mean a duty for business

entities to undertake charitable actions.5 Likewise, Arnow (1994) suggests that ‘‘socially respon-

sible’’ investment strategies are not acceptable for insurers

if they offer less secure returns than conventional

investments.6 For instance, female/male is a common risk rating

criterion but left/right-handedness is not, although the

latter is a significant risk factor for property damage,

morbidity and mortality (Coren and Halpern, 1991;

Hugdahl et al., 1993).7 However, some advocates hold the health insurance

industry blameworthy for their collective failure to cover

a growing number of Americans (Himmelstein and

Woolhander, 1995; Nader and Smith, 1990, pp.193–

196). Former New York State Insurance Commissioner

Stewart (1971, Stewart et al., 1997) also treats the

uninsured as a constituency for all forms of insurance.8 The idea that capitalist production results in positive

moral externalities, i.e. moral benefits for which nobody is

responsible, has been developed at length by Friedman

(1962), for instance.9 Notice that I am not saying that friendships are of

infinite monetary value; only that their value is incom-

mensurable with money or instrumental values for most

people (cf. Hargrove, 1992).10 Stone’s idea of ‘‘qualifiedly disfavoured conduct’’

(1975, p. 31) likewise implies such an arithmetical

approach to moral judgement, since again the bads a

business does may be tolerated based on our need for the

goods that we expect it to produce.11 Indeed, there appears to be a deep metaphorical

relationship between responsibility as a medium of ethical

‘‘exchange’’ and money. We accept or are assigned debts

of specified ‘‘amounts’’ in both realms; and must settle

what we owe or be considered remiss. Debts may be

cancelled against ‘‘assets’’ of the same coin of greater

magnitude (as in double effect reasoning). Moreover, it is

possible for nobody in particular to owe anything (either

responsibility or money) to injured parties.12 Scholars such as Yanow (2000) advocate for a

similarly enlarged scope in the area of public policy

evaluation. The institutional ‘‘ethics audit’’ as a practice

likewise acknowledges that qualitatively diverse findings

cannot be reduced to a single sum.13 The fact that commodities are known as goods is a

symptom of ways that our notions of ethical and

economic value are perhaps inextricably tangled. Indeed

I suspect that at some level many people assess the (moral

or nonmoral) goodness of things by their price (cf. Linder,

1970, p. 69).14 Ideally we would begin with smaller objects of

analysis. Plastic in all its forms is ubiquitous in contem-

porary material lives and therefore quite complicated to

assess.

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933 Somerset St.,

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Canada KIR 6R8

www.macroethics.ca

(613)-231-2259

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50 A. Gowri