โ Scribed by Paul B. Thompson
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Flores and Johnson (Ethics 93 No. 3 (1983)
pp. 537, 545.) offer a solution to the problem of individual and collective responsibility which obscures the fundamental requirement for responsibility ascriptions, namely, moral agen_cy. Close attention to matters of individual and collective agency provides a simple yet defensible criterion for establishing when an individual is and isn't responsible for the untoward consequences of a collective act. Should individual executives, engineers or professionals employed by corporate organizations be held to blame for the consequences of corporate acts even when the individual's contribution to the act was prescribed by corporate policy and the individual's professional role? Flores and Johnson argue that such individuals may be held responsible (i.e. that acting in the capacity of a role does not shield them from responsibility), and that they should be held responsible when: (1) their corporate position invests them with some degree of autonomy, (2) they have causally contributed to the harm in question, and (3) they have a duty to protect public health and safety which has not been fulfilled.
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