Do corporations have a duty to be trustworthy?

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, corporations have faced a crisis of trust, with growing sentiment against ‘elites and ‘big business’ and a feeling that ‘something ought to be done’ to re-establish public regard for corporations. Trust and trustworthiness are deeply moral significant. They provide the ‘glue or lubricant’ that begets reciprocity, decreases risk, secures dignity and respect, and safeguards against the subordination of the powerless to the powerful. However, in deciding how to restore trust, it is difficult to determine precisely what should be done, by whom, and who will bear the cost, especially if any action involves a risk to overall market efficiency and corporate profitability. The paper explores whether corporations have a moral duty to be trustworthy, to bear the cost of being so and thus contribute to resolving the current crisis of trust. It also considers where the state and other social actors have strong reason to protect and enforce such moral rights, while acknowledging that other actors have similar obligations to be trustworthy. It outlines five ‘salient factors’ that trigger specific rights to trustworthiness and a concomitant duty on corporations to be trustworthy: market power, subordination (threat and intimidation), the absence of choice, the need to preserve systemic trust, and corporate political power which might undermine a state’s legitimacy. Absent these factors and corporations do not have a general duty to be trustworthy, since a responsible actor in fair market conditions should be able to choose between the costs and benefits of dealing with generally trustworthy corporations

The institutional laundry: how the public may keep their hands clean

A number of recent authors have argued for the problem of ‘democratic dirty hands’. At least within a democracy, public officers can be rightly said to act in the name of the public; and thus, as agents to principals, the dirty hands of public officers are, ultimately attributable to that public. Even more troubling, so the argument goes, since dirty hands are necessary for public officers in any stable political order, then such democratic dirty hands are necessary for any stable democracy. Our dirt is the unavoidable cost of democratic survival. In this paper, I offer an argument against this disconcerting conclusion. My central claim is that proponents of ‘democratic dirty hands’ have missed the import of another feature of contemporary governance: public institutions. Public institutions, as organisational agents, intermediate the relationship between public officer and public; and in so doing, the dirt necessary for stability may be ‘laundered’: the public may still gain the benefit of a public officer’s hands, but remain clean of the dirt. I illustrate this case by an extended discussion of the case of La Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (‘CICIG’)

Public Integrity: from anti-corruption rhetoric to substantive moral ideal

Recently, policy actors have posited the promotion of public integrity as a new response to corruption in government and the decline in trust in public institutions. However, often, this use of the term «public integrity» amounts to little more than rhetoric. Upon closer inspection, for many of those advocating its adoption, «public integrity» just means the absence of corruption, or whatever policy instruments will best prevent corruption. Thus, the putative new «public integrity agenda» is not new at all, but rather a rhetorical rebranding of the longer-standing anticorruption agenda. In this paper, we argue that such rhetorical use of the term «public integrity» is not harmless, but in fact risks damage to the overall cause of good governance and in particular the prospects of a genuinely novel, standalone, substantive «public integrity» agenda

From anti-corruption to building integrity

Fighting corruption is an important public policy objective. However, recently, a number of theorists, practitioners and organisations have started to recognise the limitations of this agenda. According to them, aiming to merely make individuals and institutions ‘not corrupt’ is a pretty low ethical bar. Instead, we should be aiming to build their public integrity. However, what does this mean? And, how might one go about it? This chapter aims to assess current answers to these questions. It is in four parts. First, it sets out the particular critiques of the ‘anti-corruption’ agenda that have motivated this new ‘pro-integrity’ agenda. Second, it examines various accounts of the meaning of ‘public integrity’. Third, it sets out the threads of an emerging field of integrity management. Finally, it steps back to look at systemic and constitutional implications, examining ‘integrity institutions’, ‘integrity systems’, as well as emerging arguments for a fourth, ‘integrity branch’ of government

Good governance: Contemporary issues in political philosophy

The legislature and the judiciary have been a constant focus of contemporary political philosophy. However, the executive – ‘the government’ itself – has been comparatively neglected. Today, this is changing with a well-spring of new work that bears upon what we might call the ideal of ‘good governance’, that is, how governments (and/or their agents) should exercise their powers. This review paper begins by clarifying the concepts of ‘governance’ and ‘good’ governance (§1). It then highlights five sets of values, working nominally from the most foundational constraints on the exercise of government power to those that should guide the exercise of discretion: legitimacy and rule of law (§2); respect and trustworthiness (§3); efficiency and rationality (§4); public participation and accountability (§5); and the public interest and fiduciary duties (§6)