Is Worldcom a Person?

UVic philosophy professor Dr. Susan Turner, who teaches business ethics at UVic, says whether a corporation is considered a person is one of the central questions in the WorldCom and Enron Corp. dilemmas. “There are two broad schools of thought when it comes to viewing companies,” Turner explains. “According to the metaphysical view, where a company is viewed as a person, companies but not necessarily individuals can be punished by being forced into bankruptcy, split up or fined. In other words you can’t put a company in jail but you can sentence it to death. The more hard core view is that executives ought to be regarded as personally responsible for company acts through their choices and prosecuted in the same way any criminal suspect is.” Turner says she will be watching U.S. President George W. Bush’s July 9 speech on ethics with great interest. “It’ll be interesting to see if he goes for the more hard core view. If he does, that would mean a shift to holding corporate executives personally responsible for their companies’ actions even if they didn’t know about them. It would also mean recognizing that the past relationship between government and business has been far too cosy—something Bush will have to be politically careful about.”

-- 30 --