Personal vs. Corporate Morality
3.3.6 Personal vs. Corporate Morality This is an appropriate place to discuss a tricky issue in engineering ethics: Is there a distinction between the ethics practiced by an individual and the ethics practiced by a corporation? Put another way, can a corporation be a moral agent as an individual can? This is a question that is central to many discussions of business and engineer- ing ethics. If a corporation has no moral agency, then it cannot be held accountable for its actions, although sometimes individuals within a company can be held accountable. The law is not always clear on the answer to this question and can’t be relied upon to resolve the issue.