When Responsibility Can't Do It A. Gowri

ABSTRACT. Is being responsible good enough? Stone(1975) argued that we need corporate moral responsibilitybecause neither law nor market is adequate to forestallharmful effects of business activities. However, it is notpossible for businesses to become responsible for all formsof foreseeable, preventable harm that they produce. Thisis illustrated here by cases from insurance, televisionprogramming, automobOes and weapons production.Reflection on these examples leads to the formulation of anew conception of unintended harms as moral externalitiesofbusiness activities. Although one might argue that these(negative) moral external effects are outweighed by thedesirable end products of business activities, three reasonsnot to accept the results of such a "moral subtraction" (ordouble effect) argument are presented. Instead, the articleconcludes by offering four techniques for a qualitative,ethical analysis of produced artefacts and their conse-quences; intended not to displace but to supplement thestudy 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 businesspractices? Ethicists on the whole have accepted

Aditi Gowri (PhD Social Ethics 1998, USC) is ResearchDirector of MacroEthics, specializing in the qualitativeassessment 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 PublicAffairs, Uniuersity of Texas. She has served as a programmeevaluator for the U.S. Dept. ofjustice and the government ofQuebec, Canada; and is currently editor of the quarterlyValues in Society. Cowri's pure research focuses on the moralagency and status of non-human agents including corpora-tions, artefacts, memes, and elements of nature

Christopher Stone's (1975) argument that neithermarket nor legal control is adequate. In Wliere theLaw Ends, Stone favoured a third possibihty: cor-porate responsibility. Studies in the Journal of BusinessEthics or Business and Society Review now usuallybegin from the premise that analysis of responsibil-ities — managerial or corporate or both — is the rightway to do business ethics. A plausible case has beenmade that it is necessary to consider how businessmight be conducted more responsibly; howeverthere has not yet been a discussion on the extent towhich 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 ofbusiness responsibihties.

This paper considers situations where businessactivities perpetuate foreseeable, preventable harmwhile 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 practicallyunmixed good. The capacity of insurance to allowrisks and resources to be shared across communitiesis even presented as a form of institutionalizedbeneficence. Nevertheless, as I will show, theresponsible practice of insurance cannot help butharm some persons by constituting and labellingthem as high risk or uninsurable. Because theinsurance product is intangible and might appear tobe an atypical case, similar effects of televisionbroadcasting, automobile use and weapons pro-duction will also be outhned more briefly. In eacharea there is the same kind of puzzle: predictablyharmfiil effects result from what would appear to bemorally neutral or even maximally responsible actionson the part of business corporations and managers.Moreover, harm cannot be prevented throughmore responsible conduct of that business. Thusour analysis of responsibility for harmful effects ofbusiness activities leads to a kind of paradox. Howcan there be preventable harm which nobody isresponsible to have prevented?

Journal of Business Ethics 54: 33-50,2004.© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

34 A. Gowri

The appearance of any paradox suggests that oneof our tacit premises may be flawed. Here, theparadox can be resolved if we concede that evalua-tion of responsibilities is not always an adequatemeans for ethical evaluation of business activities.We must also evaluate the nature of the producedartefacts themselves.

Wltatis the "it" ... ?

Although he offer a book about corporations.Stone's main moral concem in Where the Law Ends ispreventable harm to human beings: poverty, injury,and death. Laws goveming business activities are notonly a way to punish wrongdoers, they exist also toreduce "the incidence of harmful behaviour in thefirst place" (1975, p. 30). Yet, as Stone argues,neither regulatory law nor the market can do "it,"meaning that neither can consistently forestall harm tohumans resulting firom business activities. This papermay be read as an extended critique of Stone'semphasis on corporate responsibility; however, hisemphasis on harm to human beings as the centralconcem ofbusiness ethics is shared.

The law, according to Stone, is rarely able pro-actively to control corporate behaviour, becauselawmakers cannot stay fully informed about newtechniques of production and their consequences(94; cf Goodpaster, 1983, p. 316). Members of anindustry must themselves be (more or less wiUing)participants in making the laws that govem thembecause they have privileged knowledge about theirown practices. But their participation may then re-sult in laws that protect the industry from economicor legal assault as much as they protect the pubhcfrom the industry.

The issue is complicated further by the fact thatmany aspects of corporate behaviour are only primafacie harmful and are hnked with benefits. Therefore,pohcy makers must treat them as "qualifiedly" butnot absolutely disfavoured. For instance, industrialpollution is harmfiil; yet attempting to regulate itdown to zero might make it impossible to manu-facture many goods. Rather than try to preventpollution, American regulatory law usually aims tohave the corporation intemahze the monetary valueof undesirable extemalities it imposes on others(according to Stone, 1975, pp. 31-32; but contra

Hylton, 2002, p. 516). This means that a pollutionfine should impose on a company exacdy the costs itspollutants will impose on others; no more nor less.

Having to internalize the cost of extemahties,however, will not necessarily lead a corporation toreduce its output of pollutants. Fines are rarely severeenough to deter otherwise profitable behaviour,especially given the low rate of apprehension andconviction for offenders (Stone, 1975, p. 103; cfCoffee, 1981). Even when imposed, legal penaltiesonly punish the corporation after the fact. Since anycorporate outcome generally had complex institu-tional antecedents, fliture harm is only hkely to beforestalled by systematically changing the company'soperating structures and procedures. But a corpora-tion may or may not spontaneously respond to beingpunished by reviewing its operations. For instance, itmay be easier to fire a scapegoat, to conceal evidencefrom inspectors or to put more effort into modifyingthe law rather than adjust a company's procedures toconform with the law. Some analysts even suggestnow that a corporation should disregard the law — solong as expected additional profits exceed the ex-pected cost of fines (as reported by Mokhiber andWeissman, 1999). In any case, for Stone, regulationcan't do "it."

One altemative to fining the corporation is tohold individuals criminally hable for harmful effectsof corporate activities. The problem here is thatcriminal law can only punish those who commitcrimes with knowledge and intent (mens rea). Cre-ating individual criminal habihty for corporate actsgives executives an incentive not to know anythingabout possible causes of harm, so they can honesdyplead "not guilty." But then, nor can they preventharm without advance knowledge (Stone, 1975,p. 63; contra Luban et al., 1992). This is why Stonesays that individual criminal hability can't do "it."

On the other hand, market pressure has generallynot been sufficiendy forceful to control corporateactivities. Compared with regulators, consumeregenerally have less knowledge about producers'activities; and less abihty to punish them. Even when aconsumer leams about undesirable business pracrices,it is difficult for her to know what products to boycottto punish the company. It may be inconvenient to dowithout some goods even when one disapproves oftheir producer. Harm with multiple causes - such aselevated levels of air pollutants - may be impossible to

When ResponsibiUty Can't do it 35

blame on particular producers. Finally, consumerprotest is likely to be met by corporate attempts tomanipulate public opinion rather than changes inproduction activities (Stone, 1975, pp. 89-95; cfStauber and Rampton, 1995). In short, according toStone, the market can't do "it" because the condi-tions of a free market are not satisfied in practice.

How might responsibiUty do "it" ?

Responsibihty for Stone is not independent of reg-ulation, but rather might result from mandatoryrestructuring of the corporation as a formal institu-tion. Evading the question of whether collections ofpersons can be responsible in a metaphysical sense,he proposes that we create the analogues of con-science, guilt, shame and responsibility within thecorporate "mind" or decision making structures(1975, p. 35). As any business corporation mustanswer to its shareholders for the financial results ofits actions, corporations could be made to answer forall benefits and harms they produce. Stone suggeststhis cotild be accomphshed through legal redefini-tion of the Board of Directors, creation of newreporting hnes and creation of new incentivestructures both inside and outside the corporation.He does not suggest that corporations would changeon their own; but that if such changes were imposedby law then better corporate behaviour would result.

Many of Stone's successors, conversely, treatresponsibility as an alternative to regulatory control.Although scholars continue to address corporatecultures and decision making stnictures as loci forethical change, they usually counsel voluntarystructural 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 reasons'' - as do humanpersons - and should be encouraged to do so ratherthan being constrained by externally enforced rules(e.g. French, 1986, 1995; Goodpaster and Matthews,1982). Truly ethical behaviour is expected to "springfrom within" rather than be imposed from without(Wemer, 1992, p. 65). The moral authority ofgovemment to dictate corporations' behaviour iseven 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 w ould be built by regulatory law.

Scholars also dispute the proper scope of respon-sibihty for corporations, corporate executives,owners and managers (DeBow, 1992; Spurgin,2001). A few argue, following Friedman (1970) thata business corporation should be primarily orexclusively responsible for profit maximization (e.g.Hood, 1996). Most concede that profit making mustbe constrained by responsibilities towards multiplestakeholders (e.g. Carroll, 1998; Showstack et al.,1996). Some observers continue to hold that onlypersonal responsibility really makes sense (Corlett,2001; Mander, 1992; Rescher, 1998; Velasquez,1983), while others maintain that corporate agencyand responsibihty can exist (French, 1979;Goodpaster, 1983; Paine, 1994; ToEefsen, 2002).Many of the latter stress that personal and collectivemoral responsibility can be coextant (e.g. Paine1994, p. 109).

Critics of the r/je(orr'c of responsibility have pointedout that some acts labelled (by the actors) as exam-ples of "corporate social responsibihty" are betterdescribed as pubhc relations techniques (Friedman,1970, pp. 221—222) and that being known to have agood corporate "character" is itself a marketableasset (Derber, 1998, pp. 224-229, Stoll, 2002). ThusAbbamo (2001) is suspicious of "social responsibil-ity" in the schools, suggesting that children'sautonomy has been compromised by advertising,brand name saturation, and compulsory Channel 1viewing - imposed on them in the name of corpo-rate "philanthropy." However, this is not a critiqueof responsibiHty per se but of acts labelled "sociallyresponsible" by their perpetrators. Indeed the articleconcludes with an exhortation that corporationsshould be more respectful of persons' and schoolboards' autonomy — i.e. that they should behavemore responsibly towards their communities. Stoll's(2002) critique hkewise concludes that it is ethicallysuspect, i.e. irresponsible, for businesses to spend toomuch effort pubhcizing their own acts of socialresponsibility.

The challenge to responsibility offered here ismore fundamental than those outhned above be-cause I deny that different kinds of responsiblepractices could ameliorate the situations studied. Thenext section presents the argument that risk ratingcontributes to harming people who are high risk and

36 A. Gowri

uninsured; yet, this harm cannot be preventedthrough more responsible insurance practices. Casesthat follow a similar pattem are then sketched forthree other industries; and an extended analysis fol-lows.

Responsible insurance can't do it

The product sold by insurance companies is apromise to compensate clients for specified possiblefuture losses (e.g. Baker, 1994; Driskill, 1991). ForcHents, on the other hand, an insurance pohcy is notunderstood only as a promise to pay; but as a path-way to many incidental social benefits. In the areasof health care, home, and automobile liability inparticular, possession of an adequate, current insur-ance policy is a customary means of access to socialgoods. For instance, the purchase of risk-rated oremployer-sponsored health insurance policies hasbeen the conventional means of access to health careservices in the U.S. since the mid-20th century.People without adequate health insurance havemore difficulty obtaining the same quality of neededmedical care (Committee on Labour and HumanResources 1994, p. 24, 38). They may also havemore difficulty in obtaining or changing jobs be-cause employers who subsidize insurance benefits arereluctant to hire them (e.g. Cooper and Monheit,1993). Entire families may therefore suffer not onlyphysiologically but also emotionally and economi-cally from inadequate health insurance for anymember (Institute of Medicine, 2002). Likewise,people who do not have automobile insurance arenot legally allowed to drive in most jurisdictions.People who cannot afford homeowners' insuranceusually cannot obtain a home mortgage (Dane,1997), and the economic development of an entireneighbourhood is impeded if homeowners' orbusiness owners' insurance is difficult to obtain or toafford (Squires, 1997). In short, being uninsuredresults in probable and actual harm to persons.

There is a consensus among insurance scholarsthat uninsurance in crucial areas (health, automobileand home) is a problem. Being classified as high risklowers the hkeHhood that a person will be able toafford insurance and may otherwise worsen theterms 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 bedifficult to retain insurance because insurers usuallyconsider higher risk chents to be less desirable. Ex-tremely high risks may be uninsurable - so risky ordifficult to measure that an insurer will not acceptthem. Moreover, in areas such as automobile orhomeowner's insurance, a "high risk" insured ismore likely to suffer uncompensated losses becausethe 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 andproposing ways to alleviate harm resulting fromuninsurance (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 makeinsurance available. For instance, there is at leastgrowing verbal agreement on the social undesir-ability of "redlining" or arbitrarily excluding par-ticular neighbourhoods and demographic groupsfrom one's market (Feldstein, 1994; Mazur, 2000;Squires, 1997).

However, insurers do not acknowledge anyresponsibihty to sell insurance pohcies for less thantheir actuarial value. In fact, the idea that insurers canor must help uninsured and uninsurable people islabelled as ignorant — a view held by people who donot really understand insurance (e.g. Long 1978,p. 444). Practitioners w riting in insurance tradejoumals and textbooks emphasize that maintaininghigh product "quality," is their first duty (e.g.Christensen, 1992; Hom, 1978). Since the insuranceproduct is in effect a financial promise, the highestquality insurance plan is one that offers a client themost effective guarantee that its promises will bekept. This means that a high quality insurancecompany must have plenty of funds on hand to beable to keep all of its promises (e.g. Gibbons et al.,1992, Chapter 3). Or in other words, insurancepremiums must comfortably exceed expected losses,so that'accumulated reserves will be adequate to payall claims. Thus product quality depends on productpricing. So actuarial risk rating is a necessary part ofdoing insurance responsibly. Because a responsibleinsurer must charge prices that reflect risks, the goalof making insurance available to the broadest marketpossible - while laudable - must be pursued within

Wlien ResponsibiUty Can't do it. 37

the constraint of selling insurance policies for no lessthan actuarial rates.

In theory, risk rated pricing is not the only way tocollect reserves adequate to pay all claims. Insurancecan also be priced according to a system of "com-munity rating," where prices are equalized over alarger group, regardless of personal risks. Under sucha 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 theirown risk of future loss events. Those who knowthemselves to be higher than average risks have astronger incentive to buy insurance at communityrates. Conversely, those who know themselves to belower than average risks have an incentive to remainuninsured at the community rate — or to get a morefavourable actuarial rate from another insurer. Thecombination of these two effects, known as adverseselection, produces a situation where communityrated plans are more likely than others to attractworse-than-average risks, but at a price suitable foraverage risks. This means that they may encounterfinancial difficulties in fliture because claims exceedtheir reserve funds; but more to the point, itdiminishes their product quality immediately.

Since it is impossible to measure future risks per-fectly, there is a continuum of more to less finelygraduated risk rating systems between "pure" actu-arial rating and "pure" community rating. In theory,any insurance company is free to adopt or not toadopt any particular refinement of its classificationscheme, as it sees fit (subject to regulatory con-straints); clients in tum may select the companywhose classification system suits them best (Carroll1988). In practice, whenever one insurer refines itscriteria for classifying risks, othere must soon followsuit. An insurer that dechnes to underwrite as finelyas its competitors would only cultivate adverseselection in its client pool, which can result infinancial difficulties, inability to pay claims, and — atworst — insolvency (e.g. Stano, 1991; Stano andIuculano, 1987). This phenomenon is exemplified inthe history of Blue Cross/Blue Shield which tried,but failed, to maintain community rating for hospi-talization insurance alongside companies selling riskrated pohcies (Law et al., 1974, pp. 11-16; Starr,1982, pp. 327-331). On one hand, the Blues weretrying to make health insurance available to a broader

population by beneficently declining to charge themhigh-risk rates. On the other hand, it would havebeen irresponsible for them to persist in using a com-munity rating system, as this would Hkely havecontinued to vitiate the quality of their insuranceproducts. Thus in general, insurers must rate riskscareflilly in order to be responsible to their clients.

Yet insurance underwriting is not only the mea-surement of risk. Underwriting institutionalizessome ways of classifying risks (but not other statis-tically equally valid ones) , classifies some persons ashigh risk, and others as uninsurable. Prior to the factof underwriting, persons and/or places are subject torisks, accidents and losses. The underwriter's task isto collect and organize knowledge about theseamorphous sites of accidents to produce statisticallyassessable risks. In other words, risk rating redefines agroup o(possible accidents as a set of locally and per-sonally identified more or less probable events whoselikelihood and expected value may be measurednumerically. To risk rate is to redefine accidents asstatistically predictable events, thereby assigning anunderstood probability of loss to sites and persons.

Accidents are not uniformly distributed acrosspopulations. So each time an underwriter collectsinformation about another risk factor, a new groupof high risk sites and high risk persons is estabhshed.Some of these may be uninsurable. Thus the processof risk rating creates new classes of high risk andpossibly uninsurable places and persons. So risk rat-ing harms persons by construing, measuring, andlabelling new risks.

One may object here that any person or placeidentified as high risk was already high risk, whetheror not an underwriter noticed this fact; that theadverse consequences of that risk were alreadypresent and the insurer has only brought them tolight. While it may be true that some persons havealways had more than their share of accidents andloss events, the objection may be answered if wenotice that being uninsured is harmful in itself. Harm ofthis kind will equally befall a person who is "actu-ally" high risk and one who is "mistakenly" labelledhigh risk. Thus, a client who is labelled as a highhealth risk must pay more for — or forgo — aninsurance policy even if it is only to be used forroutine and preventive health care. A driver labelleduninsurable must forgo some employment, com-mercial and social opportunities (or risk severe legal

38 A. Gotim

penalties and financial loss by driving uninsured),quite independent of any road incidents that mightor niight not have occurred. A property labelleduninsurable is unlikely to be inhabited or developed.Owners of high risk homes are less likely to be ableto continue affording their mortgage and otherhousing costs, and therefore less likely to remain intheir housing. These examples indicate that beingclassified as high risk or uninsurable is harmfulindependent of the incidence of insurable events. The re -

fore some forms of harm result firom the act of riskrating itself, not from a person's presumed prior riskprofile.

Insurers and other commentators usually charac-terize uninsured losses as unfortunate, but not unfair(e.g. Bole, 1991, p. 4). The fact of being uninsureditself is understood as a consequence of the person'sown circumstances and decisions. Losses that befallan uninsured person are implicitly depicted as naturalevents. Harm resulting from uninsured losses, likeharm resulting from a storm, could perhaps be ad-dressed by redistributive social pohcies or charity.But they do not perceive uninsured losses to resultfirom insurance practices. Nor do they generallyconsider fundamentally changing their practices toaddress the problem. Even consumer advocates whowrite on insurance implicitly accept that uninsuranceis not the insurance industry's problem, expressingconcerns primarily about insurers' financial, sales andclaims payment practices towards those who are in-sured (e.g. Gollin, 1966; Hunter, 1993; Powers,1997; Reynolds, 1968).^

Yet the creation of new forms and categories ofuninsurabiUty is a predictable consequence of theinsurance business. Producing knowledge whichtransforms unknown risks into personal, probableevents is a deliberate part of doing insurance. Thispractice foreseeably results in the construction ofhigh risk populations. Risk rating is consideredfinancially responsible; and it is even irresponsible foran insurer not to rate risks with sufficient accuracybecause of probable adverse effects on the quality oftheir product. But effects of risk rating are neitherunpredictable nor inevitable. Rather, harm to theuninsured that results from risk rating can be fore-seen and understood analytically — as has been begunhere - and might be prevented at least in part, forinstance if the entire industry adopted communityrating. But analysis of responsibilities at the level of

the corporation will not allow us to address thisharm.

Three more examples

To eliminate the possibility that this paradoxicaleffect is peculiar to insurance, the following sectionoffers three more situations where business activitiesresult in harmful consequences more or less pre-dictably, yet harm cannot be averted by moreresponsible conduct of that business. The first con-cems another intangible product (television pro-gramming), wliile the second and third concem themanufacture of tangible objects, automobiles andweapons.

Television programming and children's health

Are television stations responsible for making chil-dren ill? The number of hours spent watchingtelevision programs is highly correlated with obesityat all ages beginning in the pre-school years(Dermison et al., 2002). Early childhood obesity intum increases the likelihood of hypertension, cardio-vascular disease, diabetes and a broad range of otherchronic and acute diseases throughout the hfespan.Part of the problem is that children watching tele-vision spend more time sitting still rather thanengaging in physical activity; and may develop adistaste for physical activity. Another factor may bethat young children's food preferences are rapidlyshaped (Borzekowski and Robinson, 2001) byadvertisements for a disproportionate number ofoverly refmed, high-fat, high-sugar, low-fibre foods(Wilson et al., 1999). Television watching is alsoknown to have be addictive (Kubey andCsikszentmihalyi, 2004), and to produce shorterattention spans and greater hyperactivity in childrenwho watch many hours a day (Winn, 1985); hencethose who watch more television may also be morelikely to suffer mental health problems later in life.This entire range of health problems is preventableto some extent; and there is strong evidence thatchildren's health improves quite rapidly when hoursspent watching television are reduced (Robinson,2001).

When Responsibility Can't do it 39

It seems reasonable to hold television stations andprogrammers responsible for the content of theirprogramming; for instance to require that theyshould consider the probable consequences ofviolent or sexist images on young viewers. But itdoes not seem reasonable to expect them to maketheir shows less attractive or to promote less televi-sion watching for children, since a station's capacityto generate revenue is directly proportional to thesize of its audience (Postman and Powers, 1992,Chapter 1). Producers make their programmesattractive precisely with the intention of havingpeople - including children - spend more timewatching them. This is not inevitable; and it has theforeseeable consequence of making more childrenobese. Yet we do not hold programmers to accountfor children's loss of health. If we wish to addressharm done to children by this addictive, harmfiilpastime, then responsibility can't do it.

Automobiles and hypennobility

Owning a private automobile allows a person totravel farther and more frequently than without it,which may in tum give her a sense of enhancedpersonal autonomy (Lomasky, 1997). But extensiveurban automobile travel by a population predictablyharms people overall. On one level, increased airpollution from automobile emissions results in in-creased respiratory and cardio-vascular disease(Bates, 1995; D'Amato, 2002; Miyamoto, 1997).Societies w^here people are "hypermobile" overallalso suffer from a host of social ills, as demonstratedby 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 instrumentalrelationships and less intimacy or friendship, simplybecause one has less time and attention for eachperson in one's sphere of activities. This applies tothe hypermobile as well as to those who are merelysurrounded by hypermobile people. Hypennobilityalso leads to more danger and crime, because peoplecannot control one another's behaviour as easilywhen they move about so much (and also because ofthe presence of speeding vehicles!); and leads tomore intensive poHcing and less civic freedoms. Themore mobile a society becomes, the more it will

tend to use built spaces in ways suited to a verymobile population. Therefore, longer trips to work,shopping and social activities will become routineand expected. But this will in tum perpetuate the(understood and experienced) need to drive evenmore miles in personal automobiles. Meanwhile, ourbuilt spaces become progressively less welcoming forthe approximately one third of persons who are tooyoung, too old, too poor, too infirm or too inca-pacitated to drive. Hypennobility is a self-perpetu-ating path towards loss of freedoms and increasedinequality of capacities between rich and poor, be-tween healthy and ill, and so on. All of these socialharms are avoidable, since decreased personalmobility over a population would allow^ all of us tohave safer, friendlier, less policed, more equitableand democratic lives (Adams 1999, pp. 131-133).

Most ethicists would agree that automobilemanufacturers have a responsibility to make safer,more fliel-efFicient and less polluting vehicles — sofar as they are able to do so within the limits oftechnology and profitability. But one can hardlyexpect them to try to make and sell fewer auto-mobiles! The first task of business is to make andsell the product; and beyond that to cultivate asteady 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 andshareholders, it also contributes significantly togeneral economic prosperity. If we would Hke toaddress the harms of hypennobility, 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 devicesv hich serve a national defensive purpose and arevalued especially in times of intemational hostility.Yet having to use weapons of war is at best a nec-essary evil — not an intrinsic good — and should beminimized. However, the financial health of a firmthat is invested in making and selling weapons willbe fostered whenever the demand for their weaponsis constant or increasing (cf. Huxley, 1937, pp. 1—5).Among other things, this means that weaponsmakers (as persons or corporations) are Hkely to

40 A. Gowri

support armed conflict and to oppose truces orpolitical movements in favour of disarmament. Theyare also Hkely to pursue sales by expanding theirmarkets to foreign govemments (e.g. Flamm, 1997),poHce forces (e.g. Haggerty and Ericson, 1999) andeven private purchasers. Broader distribution ofweaponry will in tum enable its use in a broaderrange of settings; and proliferation of larger stock-piles wiU enable more extensive use.

Creation and perpetuation of weapons enablesorganized violent action. Having fewer weapons, of"lower" quality (i.e. with less advanced capabiHties),would be one way to reduce the capacity for harm.It is surely the case that people with guns — not gunsthemselves — kill people. Nonetheless, people withoutso many guns (mines, anti-personnel missiles, aircraftcarriers, rocket launchers, tanks, nuclear silos and soon) — or such good ones — are surely somewhat lessable to kill. Yet it seems unreasonable to suggest thatresponsible weapons makers should cease to invest intechnical developments; or should make and sellfewer weapons. As long as that is one's business, it isnecessary to keep seUing more as well as "moreeffective" weapons to stay in business (Saul, 1994,pp. 30-32). Certainly weapons makers are notresponsible for national mUitary poHcy or intema-tional arms escalation. If we would like to addressthe harm enabled by weapons development andproduction, then responsibility can't do it.

Moral extemalities

Making and selHng weapons of war enables militaryviolence. SelHng automobiles contributes to moreunequal, less friendly societies - which in tum hasadverse effects on human morbidity and mortality(Wilkinson, 1997). Transmitting addictive televisionprogramming contributes to making children obeseand iU. Risk rating contributes to depriving high riskpeople of social goods. In each of these cases, harmresulting from business activities is foreseeable, andcould be averted or at least significantly reduced; butin none of them does it seem possible to formulate arelevant ethical critique of business in terms ofresponsibilities that have been neglected and mightbe fulfilled. In each case, these effects are (co-)pro-duced by businesses; yet forestalHng harm seems tobe not a business problem but someone else's

problem. Helping people w ith uninsured losses is aproblem to be addressed by state aid or privatecharity; supervising children's pastimes is a parent'sduty; fostering friendlier, safer, more equitablecommunities is a job for regional planners andavoiding war deaths is a task for foreign policy andmiHtary leaders.

Each of these unintended, undesirable, yet pre-dictable effects can be understood as a kind ofexternality, since each involves the imposition offortuitous costs that result from business transactions,onto persons who may have Httle or no direct role inthose transactions. The economic concept of anextemaHty denotes economically significant conse-quences (costs or benefits) that manage to escapemarket reckoning and are' not incorporated intomarket price. Likewise, I would Hke to develop theconcept of a moral externality to identify morallysignificant consequences that seem to escape ethicalreckoning about what is owed by an actor - situa-tions that defy our capacity to assign responsibilityfor preventable harm.

Moral extemaHties as defined here should not beunderstood as a subset of economic extemalities butrather as a parallel phenomenon, consisting inmorally but not necessarily financially significant harm.Increasing childhood illness is admittedly unfortu-nate and costly; it is also morally problematic becausethe children who are harmed have Htde ability tochange their own circumstances yet. Likewise, manyinsurance underwriting criteria — such as Hving in arelatively dangerous neighbourhood (Squires, 1997)or being the victim of domestic abuse (HeHman,1997) - are disadvantages in themselves; so it seemsnot only unfortunate but also unjust if persons arepenaHzed for these characteristics (Evans, 1988,p. 163). Similarly, the harms brought about bymiHtary action are not only costly, but also unjustlydistributed. Of course moral extemaHties may beassociated with economic extemaHties — clearly, warcasualties are cosdy to a nation; yet their injusticealso transcends and is not fuHy captured in anymonetary price.

Since it is the moral significance of an effect thatidentifies it as a moral extemaHty, it may not alwaysbe possible to assign it a monetary price tag. Can wemeasure the monetary value of lost opportunities forsocial interaction and friendship in a hypermobilecity? The morbidity and mortality "cost" of cur-

When Responsibility Can't do it 41

tailed social interaction, which can be monetized tosome extent, is only a small part of the picture.Asking people to place a money value on theirfriendships would not resolve the issue either, be-cause it is nearly impossible for them to imagine thedifferent hypothetical pattem of relationships that mighthave been available to them in a less mobile city — letalone to assess the value of an entirely different Hfe inmoney terms.^

The usual response to (economic) extemal effectsof production is to use taxes, fines or regulatory feesto make businesses "intemalize" the costs they haveimposed on others. In theory, funds collected shouldthen be used to compensate the victims of extemalcosts. A parallel solution to the problem of moralextemaHties would be to make businesses intemalizeharmful effects to which they have contributed.Because moral extemaHties often represent non-monetary forms of harm, however, intemaHzing amoral extemaHty could not be accomplished bymoney alone; and would have to entail someappropriate contribution to preventing or reversingharms done.

But asking businesses to "accept" responsibiHty(Fingarette, 1967, Chapter 2) for moral extemaHtiesdoes not appear to be a promising tactic, perhapsbecause (by definition) these are effects that haveescaped responsibility in the first place. We canhardly ask an insurer to risk rate less carefuHy; atelevision station to encourage people to watchfewer hours of its programs; an automobile makerto sell fewer vehicles; or a weapons maker to seUless effective or fewer weapons. In each case, theact required to "intemaHze" or reverse harmswould constitute a direct impediment to businessactivities.

Double effects?

Some ethicists use the rule of double effect to addresssituations where a good (or at least moraHy neutral)end cannot be attained without also bringing aboutsome kind of secondary, harmful effect. The mlestates that in such situations, the harmful effect isexcusable only if it is (1) of lesser magnitude than thegood effect, (2) not the means by which the good isaccomplished, and (3) not intended by the actor; al-

though it may he foreseen and allowed to occur (e.g.Beauchamp and Childress, 1994, pp. 206-211).

Television programmers most Hkely do not intendto make children obese or iU, although they dointend to encourage them to watch more televi-sion. Automobile makers probably do not intend usto Hve in more disordered communities, althoughthey do intend for us to drive more miles inpersonal vehicles. Weapons makers probably do notintend to cause more casualties worldwide but dointend to seH more and more-lethal weapons.Insurance underwriters probably do not intend todeprive high risk persons of goods and socialopportunities, but they do intend to rate risks. Theintended act in each case is intrinsic to distributionof a presumably legitimate product; and theharmful effect in each case appears to be unin-tended. Since the harmful effect is not the meansby which the good is accomplished in any of thesesituations - for instance children are not made iH 50that they w iU watch more television — the rule ofdouble effect seems to apply so far.

Manufacturers will contend, moreover, thatavailabiHty of their product in each case constitutes agreater good than the harm that ensues. Televisionprogrammers can point out the good they do for allparents (as weH as other persons) in offering aninexpensive form of entertainment, deplore theharm to the health of a few children, and considerthemselves justified by the rule of double effect.Automobile makers can point out that they increasethe autonomy of each car owner (Lomasky, 1997),deplore the decay of social relationships, andexculpate themselves by the rule. Weapons makerscan argue that they are serving their nation's need formiHtary equipment to defend itself, deplore theescalation of casualties internationally, and Hkewiseinvoke the rule. FinaHy, insurers can point to themany people for whom an insurance poHcy providesfinancial security and needed indemnity payments(e.g. WiHiams et al., 1978, pp. 13-14; Woods, 1934;Wright, 1873, p. 113), express sympathy for theunmet needs of uninsured persons, point out that theformer greatly outnumber the latter; and considerthemselves justified by the rule. In each of these casesthe responsibility for harmful effects appears to"vanish" because it is an unavoidable Double Effectof seHing one's (useful) product.

42 A. Gowri

Arithmetical ethics

Are moral externalities as discussed here beyond hopeof any better ethical resolution? The idea that insurersare not blameworthy if risk rating harms uninsuredpersons — because the harm is of lesser magnitude than thegood that risk rated insurance does in general — rep-resents a kind of arithmetical approach to ethicalreasoning. As outHned above, the Double Effect rulein such situations suggests that unintended harmresulting from business processes may in a sense becancelled against — or "subtracted from" — goodsproduced. When the result of subtraction is positive,then so may be our assessment of the act. i et it is notclear that such operations of "moral subtraction"should be embedded in our ethical evaluations ofbusiness activities without further comment.

First, I do not beheve that we are generally happyto use arithmetical ethics in formulating judgementsoi^personal moral lives. Rather, a human being whosegood acts regularly result in unintended harm mightbe judged morally ineffectual at best; or beHeved tohave a character flawed by self-deception at worst.When a person's actions or words repeatedly harmothere - regardless of how they do so - we expect herto reflect on her role in the outcome; and to try tochange her habits, character or circumstances. Forinstance, we usually do not consider the good aperson's income does for her family before fmdingher blameworthy for stealing or practicing someother harmflil, illegal trade. Rather, the consequencesof stealing are first considered separately, independentof the good that may result from the same act. Even ifthe person truly has no choice but to steal to survive,we would StiU insist that she should continually seek aless harmful means of hvelihood. To the extent thatwe do not assess personal moral action arithmetically,there does not seem to be any basis for taking such anapproach in business ethics.

Second, persistent use of an arithmetical motif inour ethical evaluations may actually foster self-deception conceming how much harm is beingdone, how one might avoid doing harm, and theextent to which harmful effects are deplored. It isdifficult enough for anyone to realize the truemagnitude of harms done to others. For instance, itis easier to underestimate the harmful effects of war ifone has not suffered them directly. An arithmeticalapproach to evaluating moral harm may encourage

actors (and third parties) to further downplay theextent of others' suffering, simply because the in-tended, good effects of an act are always kept in viewalongside its unintended, harmful results. As we areconstantly invited to compare the two, we are likelyto see harms as less significant in absolute terms thanhad they been examined separately. By underesti-mating the harms side, the moral equation is thenmore easily made to yield a result greater than zero -which in tum rehabilitates the act overall (within anarithmetical ethical framework).

So long as we can tell ourselves that an action hasbrought about more good than harm, we are also lesslikely to ask how we might work against particularharms done. The very process of comparing harmswith goods suggests that the exact "magnitude" anddistribution of harms done is less important than thefact that goods exceed harms. As long as there is anet positive arithmetical result, it may not seemmorally necessary to work to increase its amount.Tallying the arithmetical result and expressing sym-pathy for one's victims may thus become a substitutefor trying to harm them less.

It is easier to deplore harm than to accept that onemust do something to correct the situation. Becausean easier act of benign intention (sincere as it may be) isallowed to substitute for more difficult correctiveeffort, actors may find it easier to exaggerate howmorally compassionate they really are; and may con-vince themselves or others that they deplore theharmflil effects to a much greater degree than is thecase (cf Boddington, 1998, pp. 49-50). As harmfuleffects are allowed to persist, actors may also becomedesensitized to these effects, and may be self-deceivedabout the extent to which an apparently "unin-tended" but foreseen harmful effect can graduallybecome — at some level, perhaps subconsciously —intended or at any rate willingly allowed to occur (cfBeauchamp and Childress, 1994, pp. 208-209).

Third, arithmetical moral reasoning is suspectbecause it is not always clear that harms entailed arecommensurate with the goods from which they aresubtracted. The act of comparing and subtractingharms from goods suggests that all consequences areof similar enough types that the operation of sub-traction makes sense. In other words, all harms andgoods are impHcitly placed on one hnear scale andranked from very good through very bad. Econo-mists speak as though all values may be made

When ResponsibiUty Can't do it 43

mutually commensurable through the medium ofmoney pricing. Establishing a unified scale of plusand minus money values is also indispensable in thepractice of business so that we know whether anyproject is (and continues to be) financially viable.But moral externalities as discussed here often consistof non-monetizable bads; therefore we cannot as-sume that they are commensurate with other harmsor goods. For instance, consider an operation ofcomparing or "subtracting" the harm of curtailedsocial interaction for one set of persons; from thepsychological benefits of autonomous hypermobilityfor a different, yet possibly overlapping, set of per-sons. It is questionable that any arithmetical sum ofthese two disparate, qualitative values can offer ameaningful net ethical result.

If we put ethical arithmetic and responsibility asidewe 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 businesspractices, first we must understand what is goingawry; and second we may seek ways to avert harmfulconsequences. Neither of these tasks requires us toaccept an arithmetical conception of goods andharms. Indeed, in accepting an arithmetical approach,we have courted the danger of mistaking moral forfinancial consequences, and even of trying to reducethe former to the latter." To quantify and subtractbads from goods is an abstraction from the com-plexity of the moral world. A less counterfactual wayof doing business ethics might be to describe andanalyze moral consequences w ithout reducing themto linear commensurability; in other words, we mayundertake ethical evaluation qualitatively. Rather thanjump to an ethical bottom line of dubious signifi-cance, any robustly qualitative method of ethicalevaluation would have to pay attention to the attri-butes, locations, and significance — not only themagnitude — of goods and harms. Admittedly,qualitative ethical analysis will entail its ownabstractions; yet hopefully these may represent themoral world somewhat more recognizably than doesa hnear 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 ethicistsmust also assess the objects and technological systemsassociated with people's actions. In terms of theconcem with human harm presented at the begin-ning of this paper, one way to do "it" better wouldbe to develop an ethical analysis of artefacts and theiruses, independent of the task of "tallying up" eachbusiness person's or corporation's moral score. Indoing so, business ethicists must to some extent partcompany with businesslike ways of thinking, andadopt an attitude more familiar to the cultural oraesthetic analyst.

Many economists and theorists of business write asthough the consequences of a product cease at thepoint of sale, when a "widget" is exchanged for itsmoney price. It is considered more significant(economically) that money changes hands during asale transaction, than that widgets are distributed inthe same act. This suggests, for instance, that timeallocated to acts of consumption should simply beoverlooked by economists. Productive work forwages takes time by definition, but consumption ofwidgets purchased with those wages is treated asthough it occurs instantaneously (Linder, 1970). Ingeneral the purpose of business is understood to liein the financial realm, and is generally furtheridentified as making profits — albeit within limits setby law and custom (Friedman, 1970; Stone, 1975,Chapters 8 and 12). Making widgets is not usuallydiscussed as a purpose of business. In fact, the act ofdistributing widgets appears almost to be a byprod-uct of the main task of making profits! Yet surely abusiness must distribute some tangible or intangiblewidgets (goods or services) to make profits.

Likewise, most business ethicists have downplayedthe importance of the widget. We have to a largeextent been v riting as though ethical consequencesof production end with the sale and purchase of agood — so long as the artefact fulfills its fiinctions asadvertised and is not directly harmful to the user.Ultimate effects on consumers, users and other peo-ple oiusing the artefact have been more or less exemptfrom ethical evaluation in those terms. Moreover,artefacts are tacitly assumed to produce good effects tothe extent people are willing to pay for and usethem. Conversely, harm may be manifest in nega-tive externalities and unintended effects. However,so long as a production process is understood to bringabout more good than (unintended and inextricable)

44 A. Gowri

harm, businesses are not generally held responsible forthe latter. Little further effort need be - nor has been— put to the task of describing the negative moralextemal effects of artefacts, their distribution and use.Yet even if the moral subtraction always yields po-sitive results, it would be valuable to improve ourunderstanding in this area — just as it is morally pru-dent for a basically good person to look for possiblyharmful consequences of his actions.

Colleagues who follow the argument to this pointhave sometimes observed that an ethics of the arte-fact appears to be fundamentally opposed to pro-duction and therefore anti-capitalist. Yet, it seemsquite plausible for strong capitahsts to embrace sucha mode of analysis. For instance. Hood (1996),clearly an admirer of Milton Friedman, suggests thatBen and Jerry's is an odd choice for a model businesssince its product is after all a high-fat luxury food.His choice for a more ethically responsible productthan ice cream is plastic - especially in its role as aconstituent of food storage systems, computers andbiomedical supphes. While Hood's general obser-vation that our judgement of a business should in-clude the nature of its product seems vahd, hisparticular choice of plastic is questionable. Wide-spread availability of cheap non-biodegradable plas-tics has contributed to a worldwide garbageproblem. This — no less than lives saved — v ouldhave to be part of our ethical evaluation of plastic asan artefact. At any rate, capitalists who are willing toargue that some products are boons to humanitybecause of the uses to which they may be put shouldalso be willing to consider the full spectrum ofethical consequences of these products. For a quali-tative ethics of the artefact the goal is not to decidewhether medical uses of plastic offer more or less goodthan medical waste does harm, for instance, but todevelop a fuU account of the moral consequences ofthe product.

Four possible methods for an ethics of the artefactare proposed here. A standard objection to ethicalanalysis of artefacts is that things do not have inten-tions, virtues or vices in themselves. It is only theuses to •which people put those things that may beethically evaluated. Nevertheless, the shapes thatthings take will tend to channel and constrain ourintentions, actions and relationships, as developedbelow (cf Winner, 1986). It is important toemphasize that the purpose of these methods is not

primarily to assign responsibihties or to condemn themakers of artefacts for their consequences, but todevelop our understanding of the moral conse-quences of production activities. These methodsmay not tell us exactly what to do; but the detailedrepresentation of the moral world that they offer willbring us closer towards understanding and thenceaddressing harmful effects of production.

What does the artefact do?

First, it is possible to evaluate the artefact itself as anagent - to consider what events its presenceaccomplishes, enables or forestalls. As suggested byJohnson ([Latour] 1988), treating a nonhuman beingas an agent means that we must ask what acts, bywhat persons, would be required to accomplish thesame tasks in the absence of the object. An artefactcan then be understood to "do," in its own w ay,what those hypothetical persons would be doing.Because those persons' acts may have had somemoral content, we can evaluate both ends and meansof the artefact's "acts" by reference to those hypo-thetical persons. This amounts to an evaluation ofthe artefact as nonhuman (moral) agent.

Such a method may be used to evaluate televisionprogramming as a child sitter - the use to which it isoften put by parents. If we did not have any televi-sion, then parents might have to engage a humanbeing to keep young children amused or pacified. Achild sitter might, hke the television, keep thesechildren largely immobile, silent and entranced forlong hours at a time (Winn, 1985, Chapter 3). Thismight be accomplished by administering psychoac-tive substances to them (laudanum was once popularfor this purpose) or somehow mesmerizing the chil-dren. As we might evaluate the acts of a hypotheticalperson entrusted with the care of children who usedsuch 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 acultural artefact be judged in this context.

How does proliferation shape the user?

Second, we may evaluate the ways that using anartefact is hkely to change a user's physical and

When Responsibility Can't do it 45

perceptual habits. Using any product requires thedevelopment of some skills and behaviours, and maytend to impede others. The user is thus shaped bythe artefact even as she uses it to shape her world.Business ethicists, mostly Westerners from the Ju-deo-Christian traditions, are used to considering theeffects of an act on its target; but are less used toconsidering the effects of an act on the actor. TheBuddhist doctrine of Right Livelihood suggests,however, that our habitual acts have effects on ourmoral selves; and that w e have a duty to understandand channel these effects (Schumacher, 1968).

To buy risk rated insurance is at some level todefine oneself as a personal locus of risks. Sinceinsurance is a product with a price, purchasers of riskrated insurance will cultivate a habit of consideringthe price and benefits of each plan they might pur-chase. They will look for the best available deal, thebest quality and features, at the lowest possible price.This in tum suggests habits of thinking of oneself asan individual risk, separating one's economic interestfrom that of other people, hoping to be a better riskthan others, and even being proud of one's (low) riskstatus. As the advertisements I regularly receive askme to consider: why should a basically healthyperson, a safe driver, who hves in a solid house in asafe middle class neighbourhood, and so on, bepaying for other people's higher risks? By contrast,nationahzed Medicare or Social Security plans —w here risks and benefits are shared through com-munity rating — foster a different habit of thought.Participants are not encouraged to develop the habitof thinking about themselves as better or worse risks,but rather to value the secure, communal nature ofinsurance benefits (Evans, 1988) and to develop ahabit of sohdarity with others (cf Stone, 1993,1999). An ethical assessment of the habits of mind(and body) cultivated in the users of a good shouldbe part of our ethical evaluation of the artefact.

How does proliferation affect non-users?

Third, we may evaluate the effects of proliferation ofan artefact on non-owners or non-users of an arte-fact. Economists tend to dismiss the consequences ofgoods and Avealth 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'swealth on another's welfare. Yet, there is evidenceof serious psychological as well as material conse-quences of relative deprivation. First, the psycho-social effects of lacking goods others possess (relativepoverty) now appear to be the most significantdeterminants of personal health and life span in theFirst World (Wilkinson, 1997). Second, knowingoneself to be relatively deprived may have effects onone's own consumption behaviour and thus one'swelfare. The broad dissemination of goods andimages of goods that one might (but does not yet)ow n tends to encourage conspicuous consumptionand inadequate inconspicuous consumption — i.e.expenditures on goods that are more beneficial thannoticeable. In North America we probably spendless on air quality, personal vacation time, and betterwater systems (Frank, 1999, Chapter 6) than wouldbe economically optimal.

Moreover, even if one has no desire to own oruse a product, the mere fact of its prohferationamong other users may have consequences for aperson's well-being that have nothing at all to dowith envy. The proliferation of automobiles inNorth America has fostered social geographies de-signed to better serve automobile users. Therefore,the portion of the population who do not or couldnot drive are no longer served so well by infra-structures as they once were. Thus increased use ofautomobiles has had real economic effects on non-users, even those who (at least initially) felt no envyof drivers. Johnson (Latour, 1988, p. 302) proposesthat artefacts may be understood to "discriminate" —w ith all the moral implications of that judgement —to the extent that persons are predictably differentlysituated with respect to the acts accomplishedthrough their use. One might say in his terms thatpersonal automobiles (and their highway system)discriminate against the very young, persons withoutfhll use of their hmbs, drinkers, epileptics, the se-verely visually impaired, those who cannot afford anautomobile, and uninsurable drivers, among others.

Similarly, the proliferation of cell phones hascontributed to a lower demand for pay telephones.Therefore, pay telephones are no longer installed ormaintained in locations where they were recentlyconsidered indispensable. The effect on non-users ofthe cell phone is that it is now more difficult to makea telephone call away from home; therefore many

46 A. Gowri

public spaces are less safe than they were. Personswith no particular prior need, desire or "envy" ofportable phones (such as this author) have had toacquire this service simply as a defensive expendi-ture, a substitute for goods no longer available. Orfrom another point of view, the price of a telephonecall in a public place has increased from having 250on hand to planning and investing $100 or more fora cell phone plan. The continued sale of cell phonesubscription services (including my own) now con-tributes to an ongoing exacerbation of socialinequality. Such distributive effects on non-usersshould 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 pohticalconsequences of an artefact's existence, distributionand use. Winner (1986, Chapter 2) argues that thedevelopment of nuclear power seems to "demand"more strict, hierarchical control of workers andmaterials involved in these enterprises as well asgreater control of state secrets. The production andstorage of byproducts that can be used in nuclearweapons creates an increased danger that lethalmaterials can be purloined for evil ends. Thereforewe cannot contemplate a more participatory style ofmanagement or govemance in this area. In this veryprecise sense, nuclear energy is an anti-democraticform of technology. Similarly, equipping a policeforce v^th more sophisticated weaponry (whileleaving their negotiation skills constant) will result intheir being perceived as more dangerous by a policedpopulation; and is likely in tum take us further awayfrom the stated ideal of democratic, less-conflictualcommunity pohcing (cf Haggerty and Ericson,1999).

We can also discuss plausible effects of artefacts oncivic cultures at a more mundane level. Widespreaddistribution of televisions and (freely available) pro-gramming watched by children means that an entireage cadre has grown up with some common images.The expected result is that the range of social andpolitical views found among this cadre will be nar-rowed. Conversely, a society in wliich automobilesproliferate is one in which we are less hkely to haveconversations about social issues with our neigh-

bours and people we see in pubUc places, sincewe usually traverse them in personal steel boxes. Tothis extent, the preconditions of participatorydemocracy are less well fulfilled than they would beif trains, buses and feet were our primary means oftransport.

Such political consequences of production tend totranscend the categories of intended as opposed tounintended consequences of business activities, andto defy the assignment of responsibilities. Askingwhether the social effects of a particular technicaldevelopment were desired or intended by its makeror not is somewhat beside the point. Rather, once aseries of choices has been made to develop particulareconomic means and to adopt them as customary,artefacts seem to take on an inertia of their own. Thecustomary expectation that people will use personaltelephones forces me to pay for one; but I do notblame cell phone service providers for my plight.The highway system invites and rewards us fordriving private automobiles, and our cars in tumdemand more miles of roadways; but •were theroadmakers to blame? The risk rated insurance sys-tem as it has been developed demands continued useand refinement of risk rating tables; but insurersmust rate risks given current market structures. Ingeneral, the production, distribution and use of ar-tefacts may narrow the range of penonal and poht-ical choices that will be available to us in future(Schlicht, 1998, Chapter 3; cf Winner, 1986,Chapter 2). This capacity of produced artefacts tocontribute — in partly if not perfectly predictablew ays — to an ongoing transformation of social Ufemust be incorporated into the ethical analysis ofbusiness.

Notes

Throughout the paper I sidestep the question ofcorporate moral agency or personhood, referring insteadto business activities and their effects. I believe theargument would remain unchanged whether one imagi-nes human managers or corporations as the agents of theseactivities. My own views on collective agents aredeveloped in Gowri (1997).

Only foreseeable and preventable harm is consideredbecause without these conditions, usually no ethicalanalysis of the consequences of an act is consideredappropriate.

When ResponsibiUty Can't do it 47

My working definition of ethics is reasoning in or about themoral realm. So "moral reasoning" is more or less equivalentto "ethical reasoning." But moral discourse (e.g. thou shaltnot!) is not always ethical discourse, nor is a moral authority(e.g. your mother) always an ethical authority.

Similarly, Stone (1975, p. I l l ) emphasizes thatcorporate responsibility does not mean a duty for businessentities to undertake charitable actions.

Likewise, Amow (1994) suggests that "socially respon-sible" investment strategies are not acceptable for insurersif they offer less secure retums than conventionalinvestments.

For instance, female/male is a common risk ratingcriterion but left/right-handedness is not, although thelatter is a significant risk factor for property damage,morbidity and mortality (Coren and Halpem, 1991;Hugdahl et al., 1993).^ However, some advocates hold the health insuranceindustry blameworthy for their collective failure to covera growing number of Americans (Himmelstein andWoolhander, 1995; Nader and Smith, 1990, pp.193-196). Former New York State Insurance CommissionerStewart (1971, Stewart et al., 1997) also treats theuninsured as a constituency for aU forms of insurance.

The idea that capitalist production results in positivemoral externalities, i.e. moral benefits for which nobody isresponsible, has been developed at length by Friedman(1962), for instance.

Notice that I am not saying that friendships are ofinfinite monetary value; only that their value is incom-mensurable with money or instrumental values for mostpeople (cf. Hargrove, 1992).

Stone's idea of "quaUfiedly disfavoured conduct"(1975, p. 31) likewise implies such an arithmeticalapproach to moral judgement, since again the bads abusiness does may be tolerated based on our need for thegoods that we expect it to produce.' Indeed, there appears to be a deep metaphorical

relationship between responsibility as a medium of ethical"exchange" and money. We accept or are assigned debtsof specified "amounts" in both realms; and must settlewhat we owe or be considered remiss. Debts may becancelled against "assets" of the same coin of greatermagnitude (as in double effect reasoning). Moreover, it ispossible for nobody in particular to owe anything (eitherresponsibility or money) to injured parties.

Scholars such as Yanow (2000) advocate for asimilarly enlarged scope in the area of public policyevaluation. The institutional "ethics audit" as a practicelikewise acknowledges that qualitatively diverse findingscannot be reduced to a single sum." The fact that commodities are known as goods is asymptom of ways that our notions of ethical and

economic value are perhaps inextricably tangled. IndeedI suspect that at some level many people assess the (moralor nonmoral) goodness of things by their price (cf. Linder,1970, p. 69).^* Ideally we would begin with smaller objects ofanalysis. Plastic in aU its forms is ubiquitous in contem-porary material lives and therefore quite complicated to

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