1. Corporate Moral Responsability for Disasters by Sveinn Eldon

2. Are corporations moral agents?
Only persons are moral agents because only persons have rights, or are they?
Corporations are only instruments, not agents, let alone moral agents.
How well or how badly corporations are used is a reflection on the moral character of those in charge of the corporation.

3. Are corporate executives morally responsible for disasters?
Executives are not responsible for ”natural disasters”.
Often executives excuse themselves by claiming that ’they did not know’, or could not be expected to posses the information needed to prevent the disaster. They often claim this even when someone in the firm had the relevant information to prevent the disaster.

4. A DC 10 in Paris 3/3 1976
John Brizendine president of McDonnell-Douglas denied all knowledge of failure to fix the cargo doors of DC 10s airplanes. A DC 10 crashed after a cargo door flew off, killing 346 people. Investigation revealed that McDonnell-Douglas was aware of the problem, but no one did anything about it.
Did the relevant information fail to reach John Brizendine, and does it matter if it did not, for his moral responsability for the accident?

5. Are executives responsible even when they are not told?
It is the job of the executive to know what is going on in the organisation.
It is nevertheless well known that relevant information does not always reach them, even if they have taken steps to ensure that it does reach them.
Executives can maintain an ’open door’ policy and reward those who inform them.

6. Ignoramus
Is ”I did not know” even if I had taken all reasonable steps to see to it I would know ever a sufficinet excuse to relieve the executive of moral responsibility for a disaster?
If a disaster did occur, the steps taken to obtain information were obviously not sufficient. Should the executive be held morally responsible for results (the disaster) or for his efforts (his taken steps to know)?
In examinations students are graded on their results (correctness of answers) not on their efforts (how hard they prepared).

7. Professional Responsibility
How important is the outcome of your actions or decisions for another party than yourself? Can the outcome be reversed? If I buy an Ipod and it does not work I can return it and get another one, but if I have an operation and the wrong operation is performed, it may be impossible to put that right again.
Professional responsibility arises when the consequences are far reaching and irreversible.

8. BE RESPONSIBLE...
Executives are professionals and they should be held morally responsible for preventable disasters, even if they took steps to be kept informed. They have a moral responsability not just to ’do their best’ but to actually prevent avoidable disasters, not just for trying to.

9. Should we forgive a good human being for being a bad doctor?
If a firm is in an given industry, the executives should be professionals and know what they are doing. The more far-reaching or dangerous the consequences of their actions or decisions may be the more we expect them to know what is going on.
We may appreciate that they did their best but if they did not know, we have every right to hold them as professionals morally responsible, because they should have known.

10. Control, are even top professionals always in full control?
How can anyone who tries his best to prevent a disaster be held morally responsible if a disaster occurs?
Are we holding executives and other professionals to a too high standard?
Are circumstances always within the control of even the most able professionals?
Should we rather hold them morally responsible for not trying to do their best, or not trying hard enough to do their best? Is human error never excusable in the case of professionals?