What is corporate moral responsibility?

Corporate moral responsibility refers to consciously implementing moral standards and norms in production and business activities. Corporate moral responsibility is a high-level social responsibility, which is divided into internal and external aspects: internally, it mainly includes being kind to employees, paying attention to their life safety and health, improving their working environment, safeguarding their legitimate rights and interests, paying attention to their career growth and letting them share the fruits of enterprise development; Externally, it includes observing business ethics, trading on an equal footing, being honest and trustworthy, respecting nature, protecting the environment, and cherishing and saving resources and energy.

The meaning of corporate moral responsibility has two aspects: broad sense and narrow sense. In a broader and universal sense, corporate moral responsibility is embodied in corporate economic responsibility, legal responsibility and spiritual and cultural responsibility, and it is also an organic unity of various responsibilities closely related to corporate ethics construction. In a narrow sense, the moral responsibility of enterprises is a conscious and spiritual commitment to their own moral obligations, to their peers' moral obligations and to social moral obligations. In its spiritual essence, it can be summarized as "dedication and refinement, harmony and joy". The internalization of corporate moral responsibility is corporate conscience. Corporate conscience is the self-cognition and self-evaluation of corporate moral responsibility. It consists of enterprise love, enterprise honesty and enterprise righteousness.

The basis and reasons of corporate moral responsibility can be mainly understood from the following aspects:

First of all, an enterprise is an economic organization that pursues interests, thus forming stakeholders. In the profit-oriented business activities that enterprises are engaged in, they will inevitably have relations with various internal and external stakeholders. Stakeholders refer to those individuals and social organizations whose corporate behavior has a serious impact on them or bears dangerous consequences, including employees, shareholders, customers, users, suppliers, distributors, creditors, governments, communities, etc. In all kinds of interest relations inside and outside the enterprise, the foundation of enterprise moral obligation and responsibility will inevitably be formed.

Secondly, the enterprise is a legal person organization concluded by people because of social contract. An enterprise as a legal person refers to an enterprise organization that is established according to the procedures prescribed by law, has a certain organizational structure and independent property, and can enjoy civil rights and assume civil obligations in its own name. Similar to natural persons, enterprise legal persons are independent actors who act according to their own will. The independent legal person status of an enterprise is the premise for an enterprise to assume moral responsibility. Some foreign business ethicists use the theory of enterprise social contract to define the moral responsibility of enterprises, and think that the realistic or existing social contract is an important source of corporate moral responsibility.

Third, the enterprise is the ethical subject of free will and behavior choice. In ethical theory, the discussion and accusation of responsibility is closely related to people's ability to act and freedom of will. Without a certain capacity for action, it is impossible to assume certain responsibilities, and without a certain freedom of will, it is difficult to ask him to assume certain responsibilities. An enterprise is an economic entity established by most people who have the ability to act and the freedom of will, and should bear their own moral responsibilities. As an ethical subject with independent will and freedom of behavior choice, enterprises should have their own sense of moral responsibility and ethical spirit. Just as moral people remould themselves, develop themselves and improve themselves, moral enterprises also embody the moral pursuit of the subject itself and the overall embodiment of the behavior of a group of moral people.

The internalization of corporate moral responsibility is corporate conscience. It is closely related to corporate conscience. Generally speaking, conscience is a sense of responsibility and self-evaluation ability. Corporate conscience is the self-cognition and self-evaluation of corporate moral responsibility. Corporate conscience takes corporate moral responsibility as its specific content, and corporate moral responsibility takes corporate conscience as its spiritual or psychological support. In other words, corporate responsibility is external corporate conscience, and corporate conscience is internal corporate responsibility. The internalization of corporate responsibility is corporate conscience, and the externalization of corporate conscience is corporate responsibility. Whether there is a corporate conscience depends on whether the enterprise is aware of corporate responsibility. Therefore, corporate conscience is a strong sense of social responsibility and moral mission in corporate ethics, and it is a strong and lasting desire of all employees of an enterprise to fulfill their obligations to others, the collective and society because they are consciously aware of their own missions, responsibilities and tasks in real life. Corporate conscience is to transform corporate responsibility into the internal corporate moral needs of corporate collectives and individuals, and make it an internal measure of corporate moral evaluation and an internal mechanism for corporate crowd behavior selection and good and evil evaluation. Therefore, it can be said that corporate conscience is the psychological support and spiritual guarantee of corporate responsibility, and strengthening corporate responsibility focuses on cultivating corporate conscience.

Define the moral responsibility of enterprises in a broader and universal sense. The moral responsibility of enterprises is embodied in the economic responsibility, legal responsibility and spiritual and cultural responsibility of enterprises, and it is also the organic unity of various responsibilities closely related to the ethical construction of enterprises.

refer to

Wang Zeying. On the basis, expression and internalization of corporate moral responsibility.