Responsibilities

If it is true that: 1) economic determinism is false (in §3.3); 2) a businessman is not obliged, as a matter of rationality, to maximise (in §3.5); and 3) a businessman is not obliged, by his institutional position, to maximise (in §3.5 fn.); it follows that a businessman has considerable freedom of action, and hence is responsible for what he does. He can be asked ‘Why did you do it?’, and in some cases ‘Why did you not do something to prevent it?’. Even when someone is not responsible to anyone, he is still responsible for what he does, but often responsibility is delegated, and in most business enterprises there is a chain of responsibility, with subordinates being responsible to a superior. Such responsibility never excludes all discretion, and the duty to do what one is told does not override all other duties, legal and moral. Trustees and managers have a duty to look after the interests of their beneficiaries and shareholders, but not to the exclusion of all other considerations. The law lays down some as legal duties, but can never spell them all out completely; and legalism tends to diminish personal responsibility, and to suggest, contrary to the actual practice of businessmen, that morality has no place in business dealings, so long as they do not break the law. The cooperative nature of a business enterprise furnishes certain grounds of obligation, both to those within the organization on the basis of the shared values of the organization, and to those external to it on the basis of justice.