Conditions for Moral

CONDITIONS FOR MORAL

ACCOUNTABILITY AND LIABILITY

Once we are satisfied with the grounds for deciding whether an action is morally right or wrong, we need to know when to hold a person morally accountable for his actions. Legal liability is not the issue here. A business executive or manager involved in ethical misconduct may or may not be found legally guilty of a crime but that has no bearing on the person’s moral responsibility for his actions. A finding of not guilty may only mean that the prosecution did not present a convincing case to a jury and that the accused party did not incur any kind of legal liability. A person’s moral responsibility, however, may still remain. He may still have to make restitution for money stolen, property damaged or destroyed, or physical or

psychological harm done to others.

2.1.1 Knowledge and Freedom

To be morally responsible for an action, a person must act intentionally and deliberately. That is to say, he must be fully aware of what he is doing and must act freely without any physical or psychological coercion. To the extent that a person’s knowledge or freedom is diminished or absent, moral accountability and liability are proportionately diminished or even nonexistent.

2.1.2 Ignorance

Ignorance excuses someone only when it is non-culpable, that is, when the person acting does not understand the nature of what is being done or cannot anticipate all the reasonably foreseeable consequences of the action. The question of ignorance is sometimes subtle in business situations.

Case:

For example, the managers in a particular division of a company were submitting padded expense vouchers to recover personal contributions made to political candidates. These contributions would be illegal if they were made directly by the company. Now, the top executive in a division is ordinarily considered responsible for his subordinates’ actions. In this case, however, there are several layers of supervision between him and these...