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The Morally Accountable Corporation: A Postmodern Approach to Orgainizational Responsibility

Alfred University

Can we say that corporations are "morally accountable" for their actions in the same sense as are human individuals? This essay describes three rhetorical strategies used by postmodern corporations to construct social realities and obscure individual causation and control. These rhetorical strategies are decen tering, deindividuation, and distanciation. Decentering is a process whereby individuals lose their sense of personal accountability as they are submerged within the corporate voice, obscuring matters of authorship, attribution, and responsibility. Deindividuation describes the process of assimilation into a corporation's symbolic reality. Distanciation is defined as the methods used to create, maintain, and alter this symbolic reality of diffused responsibility within the postmodern corporation. After examining these rhetorical strategies, it is possible to show that the postmodern corporation mediates and controls the reality of individuals; therefore, it, and not its members, should be viewed as morally accountable.

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