The Corporation

Should individuals (directors, employees, shareholders) bear any responsibility for the actions of a corporation? If so, to what degree?

Even though corporations are “legal persons” and have the same rights and legal protections as regular people, unlike humans, they do not have a life of their own, meaning that they don’t make decisions, carry out their own actions and are not directly responsible for what they do. Their status of legal persons is just fictitious and it was created so companies could gain more power. Behind every corporation there is a group of people who seek to obtain major benefits without giving importance to the damage that they may cause to society.

In a major or minor degree every person involved in a corporation is responsible for the actions of the corporation, because humans have been raised up with values, morals and they are able to acknowledge what is ethically right or wrong. But I think a big part of the responsibility should fall on the shareholders and executives because they are the ones taking decisions and carrying out actions in name of the corporations, whereas employees sometimes don’t have other options than to follow the rules of their superiors. Individuals working inside the corporations are TOTALLY responsible for the damage they cause to society; may be in their daily life basis they can be the kind of person that worries about the environment, human and animal exploitation, poverty and work for their community, but inside the corporations they become part of that giant monster that threatens us all.

Unfortunately, humans have been characterized as being selfish individuals that seek their own benefits without thinking about the rest of the people. They are only worried about the outcomes and their main objective is to increase their profits. So basically, every time businesspeople come up with decisions they don’t see public health, poverty, pollution, illnesses, exploitation and the degradation of the biosphere as relevant factors to take into account before deciding something.

Throughout the years we have seen many corporations that have been sued for not obeying the law, for damaging the environment, or committing an outrage against the health of the people because of the excessive use of chemicals, and all they do is pay a fine and they go back to the same actions once again. Nowadays, as the degradation of the environment and the severe diseases affecting humans have become important issues, governments should strengthen their positions towards corporations and they must impose more severe sanctions for them.