Collins, Stephanie (2023). Organizations as Wrongdoers. From Ontology to Morality. Oxford: Oxford University.
Varieties of Organizational Blameworthiness
4.1 Introduction
This book is titled Organizations as Wrongdoers. So far, I’ve said a lot about organizations, but not much about wrongdoing. The rest of the book changes that.
The present chapter defends organizations’ blameworthiness through three different lenses:
the volitionist lens,
(The volitionist lens focuses on the will, choices, or intentions of the entity.)
the attributivist lens, and
(The attributivist lens focuses on the entity’s evaluative attitudes, over which the entity might never have made a choice.)
the aretaic lens.
(The aretaic lens focuses not on what an entity chooses or values, but at what an entity is—specifically, on an entity’s character flaws or vices.)
Each lens offers a way to view an entity as wrongful, by focusing on a different aspect of the entity (see, e.g., Watson 2004; Smith 2005; Levy 2005; Shoemaker 2011).