Two Senses of Autonomy­

Autonomy, at bottom, expresses the idea that an agent is capable of reflecting upon certain grounds of action and deciding whether those grounds are good—or sufficient—to act in a cer­tain manner.

But this only gets us so far. The ability of an agent to examine and form intentions about whether to act on her desires is only part of the story. To get clearer on whether corporations are capable of autonomy, we have to ask whether having independent reasons, i.e., reasons that are the agent’s own, sufficiently encapsulates what we mean by having the autonomy necessary for moral agency. One way to press this point is to think about autonomy within the Kantian tradition. Human agents, for Kant, are autonomous because they not only possess reasons to act in this or that way, but those reasons are reasons guided by principles that do not merely make reference to subjective goals, interests or ends that the agent possesses. So the fact that one has a life plan with certain ends, perhaps which she has herself endorsed, is not what fully characterizes her autonomy; rather, another necessary dimension to her autonomy is that that very process of how she sets ends within her life—and how she carries out action plans in accordance with those ends—are bounded by other practical requirements which make no ref­erence to the particular ends that she possesses. The presence and recognition of these practical requirements, which guide the process of practical reasoning in general, are characteristic of the capacity to be autonomous.

Put in slightly different Kantian terminology, certain practical requirements are derived from the fact that one’s action should conform to a universal law and, in turn, this formal expectation structures the deliberative activities of morally responsible agents. An agent has autonomy not simply because they recognize and institute reasons for action, which are their reasons, but that some of their action plans are governed by requirements that make no reference to the specific ends an agent possesses. The unique moral status of such requirements follows from this formal requirement; they bind the agent to act in certain ways regardless of who they are, what life they have created for themselves or what subjective interests they possess. To be autonomous, thus, is to take the requirements embedded within the very idea of a universal law as having normative authority for oneself.

Can the type of corporate autonomy described by Pettit and Hess be captured along similar Kantian lines? Consider initially that the corporate capacities of judgment and self-restraint could be premised on a respect for certain principles that are universal in form; that is, a corporation’s deliberation about how to conduct business and the regulation of its own behavior by its own decision making structures could very well take account of principles that have sig­nificance apart from the corporation’s economic interests (e.g., sales growth, market share or profitability). Perhaps this is exactly what corporations like Volkswagen are doing when, over time, they adapt their conduct on the basis of coordinated, internal decision making that places priority on principles that proscribe fraud or prescribe compensation to those who have been negligently harmed. Responsible corporations can take account of, and consistently prioritize, principles in their operational decisions.

The question, however, is not whether corporations can consistently integrate into their decision making structures certain moral requirements.

But the question at hand is whether corporations themselves are capable of taking principled requirements as normative independent of the economic goals they happen to have. Autonomy on the Kantian line is not simply the ability to institute a moral principle but the recogni­tion that the moral principle is an authoritative consideration independent of one’s subjective interests. But, here again, some may counter that corporate decision making structures permit even this type of recognition. Corporate decision making structures could allow for a consid­eration of moral principles alongside economic aims and the structures could indeed embody a shared commitment to those principles. Morality could remain normative for the corporation in that moral principles are taken to be overriding considerations that limit or constrain how business is conducted.

This answer is problematic along one key dimension. The normative authority of moral principles for agents is found in a very special moment of practical recognition. The ability to act on reasons that are not tied to one’s subjective interests is an important component of the freedom exhibited by Kantian agents; but there is an additional component, namely the moment in which agents recognize that their conduct is governed by principles which they give themselves. This “positive” dimension of our freedom is unique. Being autonomous is not simply being free from external causes.

Another way of putting this point is to recognize that “the source of the normativity of moral claims [is]. found in the agent’s own will, in particular. that its claims are ones she is prepared to make on herself” (Korsgaard 1996: 19). The practical grip of moral principle is born out of the very capacity to reflectively endorse courses of action and that very cap­acity presupposes an appeal to general laws that are authored by the agent. This recognition of authorship is, at bottom, a capacity for “self-consciousness” about “our own actions [that] confers on us a kind of authority over ourselves” (Korsgaard, 1996: 20).

Cast in this light it may be clearer now why critics of corporate moral responsibility may be reluctant to assign the capacity of autonomy to corporations (Ronnegard 2013). The moment of “self-consciousness” that is presupposed by autonomy is not necessary for Pettit’s three cri­teria to be met. Judgment, deliberation and the existence of independent, corporate grounds for action do not rely upon the corporation’s structural assessment that the grounds for its action are governed by laws that it gives itself. This defining feature of autonomy—not just self-authorship of morality but the self-recognition of this fact—is absent in the case of cor­porate actors. Pettit’s criteria may be helpful in explaining why we attribute a level of moral responsibility to corporations; but the criteria do not provide sufficient grounds to think that corporate decision making structures give rise to a sense of corporate self-awareness that would be a marker of the corporation’s autonomy. The introspective moment where an agent phe­nomenologically has direct contact with the awareness that her reasons are her reasons, derived from principles that she has authored, is not present for corporations.

It might be noted, then, that the discussion about whether corporations are morally respon­sible involves two senses of autonomy in the context of corporate action. There is, first, an admin­istrative autonomy that accompanies the corporate capacity to judge and deliberate about how to act and how to enact policies that are consistent with principled moral commitments. The polit­ical conception of corporate responsibility that we put forth in section 29.1 can allow for—and even require—this functional sense of autonomy. Corporate decision making structures and the leadership roles that board members and managers have within these structures presume that the reasons possessed by corporations are the corporation’s reasons. Corporate action prescribed by its internal decision making structures is autonomous in that there is no other subject of action, but for the corporation itself. Corporations are capable of being held morally responsible in virtue of the capacity to independently incorporate moral considerations into their deliber­ation and judgment about how to conduct business.

The moral autonomy expressed within Kantian thought demands more, however. It presupposes that the corporation’s principled moral commitments are not simply accepted constraints on deliberation and judgment; rather, if corporations are autonomous in this second sense, those commitments have normative validity independent of the corporation’s operational objectives and their validity is anchored in an act of self-reflective endorsement completely divorced from those objectives. Autonomy is, at bottom, a capacity of agents that is born out of their experi­ence of their own independence and freedom in deciding how to act (Guyer 1996).

29.5