Harm and Consent

‘Consent’ is the cornerstone of morality in general, and more particularly of assessing the morality of business practices, given that they are defined as contractual. Consent is a key moral bottom line because it allows us to tell apart wrongful from morally acceptable interactions. Consent among parties is essential for a moral assessment of a harmful situation not only in business but also in almost all types of interaction. The same transfer of ownership from one person to another is not judged through the same moral lens if it is done voluntarily or through coercive means. The former case is generally called ‘cooperation’ and the latter ‘theft.’ The same goes for physical harm. An action involving physical violence, unanimously considered harmful, becomes morally acceptable when all parties involved give consent, such as in a boxing match or surgical intervention. That being said, this large agreement that consent is essential to determine the morality of a harmful interaction encloses fundamental disagreements concerning the precise definition of both ‘harm’ and ‘consent.’ Scholars and practitioners—but also citizens in general—are profoundly divided on the meanings of harm and consent, as they would not all locate the frontier between harmful and harmless and/or between consensual and non-consensual managerial practices in the same place. This chapter sets out a general survey of radically different conceptions of harm and consent, with the aim of showing how they shape moral assessments of business activities. The first section focuses on different approaches to harm and the next two on consent: the second more specifically on the conditions in which consent is formulated and the third on informed consent.