Responsibility in management

The lecture examines the question of responsibility in the management of companies and other organizations on the basis of concrete case studies and basic texts from the economic and philosophical tradition.

Guiding questions

(1) What is responsibility and who is responsible?

(2) What is the relationship between economic and ethical behaviour? Can one be traced back to the other?

(3) How does one make responsible decisions? What criteria or values are used to determine and justify one’s actions?

(4) Can responsibility be institutionalized? How far can take us a “corporate responsibility” approach?

(5) Can responsibility be delegated to the machine? What questions arise in view of the increase in AI in virtually all corporate processes?

Outline

A. Philosophical foundations

  • The question of the owner of responsibility: modern subject theories
  • The question of the possibility of free will
  • The limits of logical reasoning

B. Selected moral philosophical approaches

  • Antiquity: Moral philosophy as part of the doctrine of the state with the aim of individual and collective happiness
  • Immanuel Kant: The categorical imperative and ought as a fact of reason
  • John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism and morality as utility
  • John Rawls: Justice as fairness and the connection between deontological and utilitarian motives via the fiction of the veil of ignorance
  • Jürgen Habermas: Discourse ethics and ensuring a just process for the social negotiation of applicable moral rules

C. Individual responsibility

  • Gary Becker: “The economic way of looking at life” – The subject as a consistent rational utility maximizer
  • Emmanuel Levinas: “Ethics as first philosophy” – The subject as responsibility for the other

D. Institutional responsibility

  • The alienation of the entrepreneur from his company and the emergence of management
  • The Berle-Dodd debate and the question of who management is responsible to: the stockholders or the stakeholders
  • Milton Friedman and Alfred Rappaport: The orientation of the company towards profit and shareholder value
  • The Davos Manifesto 1974 and the more recent debate on purpose (Larry Fink et. al.)
  • Two (German) perspectives on “business ethics”: Josef Wieland and governance ethics vs. Karl Homann and the economic justification of moral behavior

E. Artificial responsibility

  • Gilles Deleuze and Nick Land: Capitalism as a machine and man as an obstacle in the constant acceleration of the system
  • The emergence of superintelligence (Nick Bostrom) or the myth of artificial intelligence (Erik Larson)
  • Hans Jonas and the principle of responsibility in a world dominated by technology

F. Final thoughts

  • The indissolubility of the question of responsibility from concrete, physically constituted human existence
  • Good action as action for the other: Economics as the doctrine of optimizing my limited time in the service of others

Case examples

Corruption: Should / may companies abroad participate in practices that are illegal in Germany?

Advertising to children: How should the freedom rights of entrepreneurs and companies be weighed against the protection needs of minors?

The rail accident near Eschede: What is the appropriate reaction of the management? How to deal with mistakes beyond legal liability?

Insurance or credit refused: What decisions should a machine make?