allen buchanan perfecting imperfect duties

Perfecting Imperfect Duties: Collective Action to Create Moral ObligationsAuthor(s): Allen BuchananReviewed work(s):Source: Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 27-42Published by: Philosophy Documentation CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3857239 .Accessed: 28/10/2011 14:25

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PERFECTING IMPERFECT DUTIES: COLLECTIVE ACTION TO CREATE

MORAL OBLIGATIONS

Allen Buchanan

Abstract: Ethical problems in business include not only genuine moral dilemmas and compliance problems but also problems arising from the distinctive characteristics of imperfect duties. Collective action by business to perfect imperfect duties can yield significant benefits. Such arrrangements can (I) reduce temptations to moral laxity, (2) achieve greater efficiency by eliminating redundancies and gaps that plague uncoordinated individual efforts, (3) reap economies of scale and achieve success where benefits can be provided only if a certain thresh old of resources can be brought to bear on a social problem, (4) solve assurance problems where voluntary compliance by some parties de pends upon their perception that competitors are doing their fair share, and (5) produce higher levels of contribution than would occur through independent action in response to imperfect duties, stimulated by the perception that there is a fair distribution of burdens of contribution among all parties involved.

1. An Advance in Business Ethics: Taking Compliance Problems Seriously

Dopular discussions of Business Ethics often over-use the term 'ethical 1 dilemma.' Not every ethical problem is an ethical dilemma. A more accu- rate view draws a basic distinction between two types of ethical problems that arise in business: genuine ethical dilemmas, in which the problem is to discover what one ought to do, when two or more valid ethical duties (or values or principles) conflict, and compliance problems, which occur when one knows what one's moral obligations are, but experiences difficulty in fulfilling them due to pressures of self-interest or loyalty to the group or organization. The distinction is important because the two types of problems call for different responses. In the case of genuine ethical dilemmas what is needed is ethical analysis; in the case of compliance problems, strategies for marshal- ling motivation are called for.

An exciting new direction in the Business Ethics literature stresses the need for taking compliance problems seriously. More precisely, the new direction rejects that simplistic approach to compliance problems which simply takes a conflict between duty and interest as an unalterable given and then facilely

(D1996. Business Ethics Quarterly, Volume 6, Issue 1. ISSN 1052-1SOX. 0027-0042.

28 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

admonishes business people to pull up their moral socks and do what is right regardless of the consequences.l Such moral guidance, if one can call it thats is understandably dismissed as impractical and facile by real world managers. Standard-bearers of the new direction in Business Ethics emphasize the crucial role of moral imagination in solving or avoiding compliance problems the need to devise creative strategies for achieving a closer congruence of ethical duties with interests.2

A second significant trend in the literature is the emphasis on the role of virtues in business life.3 These two new major thrusts in the discipline of business ethics are more than complimentary. Indeed, they can be seen as different ways of conceptualizing the same point: Managers must possess a broad range of virtues not only steadfastness of purpose and the ability to lead by example, but also the virtue of moral imagination, if they are to tackle compliance problems effectively.

While applauding these advances in the way the discipline of Business Ethics conceives of its subject matter, I shall argue that even this improved picture is seriously incomplete. Two more elements must be added: first, a recognition that the simple dichotomy between genuine ethical dilemmas and compliance problems is not exhaustive; and second, a deeper appreciation of the role of collective action in business ethics. The two elements are closely linked. In many cases the ethical problem is neither to discover just what our ethical duty is, nor to ensure that we fulfill a duty we already recognize ourselves as having. Instead, the task is to change our situation so that we come to have definite ethical duties, where before there were at best vague ethical goals. And often the most effective way to achieve this transformation of the moral landscape is through collective action: cooperation that (1) specifies concrete obligations, (2) distributes them fairly, and (3) provides effective incentives for compliance.

II. A Traditional Distinction: Perfect Versus Imperfect Duties

At least since the Seventeenth Century, the mainstream of Western ethical theory has distinguished between perfect and imperfect duties (or obligations).4 Duties of charity are said to be imperfect, duties of justice perfect. Perfect duties are determinate? both with regard to the content of what is required (what one is obligated to do) and with regard to the identity of the object of the duty (the individual or individuals to whom or for whom one is to do something). Imper- fect duties, in contrast, are indeterminate in both respects: The agent is free to exercise his or her own judgment and discretion in determining the content of the duty and the identity of the object of the duty (as well as the choice of occasions on which to perform the action).

Thus, if I have a duty of justice to return a certain sum of money I borrowed, I must return that particular sum to the particular individual from whom I borrowed it and within the time frame agreed upon. This is a perfect duty. If, on the other hand, I have a duty of charity to aid the needy, then I may choose the kind and amount of aid I render, choose to render aid to some persons rather than

PERFECTING IMPERFECT DUTIES 29

others, and also may choose to perform my charitable act later rather than now. This is an imperfect duty. Put somewhat crudely, perfect duties articulate definite moral requirements; imperfect duties only indicate broad moral goals.

This distinction clearly has wide application in business ethics. There are many instances in business life in which one recognizes an important moral goal and acknowledges that the worthiness of the goal places some obligation upon one, yet there is no specific, determinate duty to be discovered. For example, although we all have perfect duties not to engage in racial or gender discrimina- tion in hiring, we also recognize that we should do more than this. We believe that we should do something, take some positive steps toward helping to increase opportunities for minorities and women.5

There are many things we could do undertake special searches for qualified minority or women candidates, devote some resources to upgrading applicants' skills, exceed the letter of the requirements for mandated quota systems, etc. Yet no amount of moral reflection may yield a unique answer to the question: Just what should I do and when should I do it, given that there is an indefinite range of ways I might act to improve the opportunities of some women and some minorities, but also given that I cannot possibly do everything for every woman or every minority person whom I could benefit?

Similarly, as the head of a corporation I may sincerely believe that my company should do something to relieve the plight of the homeless, without having any clear idea as to exactly what should be done and for which of the homeless. Again, each C.E.O. of each of the for-profit hospitals in an area may sincerely believe that her organization ought to provide some care for the uninsured. However, no amount of moral reflection will in itself yield an answer to the question of how much any particular hospital ought to do and for whom. To take yet another example, the top managers of a major health care insurance company may acknowledge that they are obligated to depart to some extent from a strict policy of profit maximization, in order to provide coverage for some individuals, such as AIDs patients, who will otherwise not receive needed care. Yet try as they may, they may not be able to discern how much profit to forgo in the name of humanity. The problem is not simply that members of the management team may disagree with one another about "how much is enough," but also that each member may be uncertain in his or her own mind about what ought to be done.

It is crucial to understand that none of these cases is a situation in which there is either a genuine ethical dilemma or a compliance problem. There is no conflict of obligations because there is no determinate obligation to be found. No amount of ethical reasoning will discover a determinate obligation for the simple reason that there is no determinate moral obligation to be discovered. Nor is the task to devise a way of ensuring that the agents will be effectively motivated to carry through on a determinate moral obligation they already recognize themselves as having since no determinate moral obligation can be identified in the first place.

Imperfect duties have two other characteristics, in addition to indeterminacy. They are generally positive duties, the duty of beneficence the obligation to


help the needy being the paradigm case; and they are limited by the permissi- bility of avoiding excessive costs. Even if one limits the needy, as in one of the examples above, to 'those who need health care (but cannot afford it)," there is still no valid determinate duty to be found. At best, one can say that one ought to do something to help some of those in need, if one can do so without excessive cost. Aside from this latter qualification, such imperfect duties are indeterminate, open-ended.

Needless to say, in the competitive world of business, it will generally be the case that helping the needy (or taking positive steps to advance the opportunities of women and minorities) will entail costs. Resources devoted to the pursuit of these moral goals will be unavailable for other purposes, with the result that the bottom line may suffer.

But notice that whether any particular actions to help the needy or to advance the opportunities of women and minorities will in fact involve costs that are excessive (in the sense of being seriously damaging to a firm's competitive position) usually will depend upon whether, and to what extent, its competitors are undertaking similar actions. If they are not, then the firm that takes imperfect duties seriously may be at a competitive disadvantage.6 Yet without some reli- able commitment on the part of all of the relevant competitors as to what efforts they will be undertaking and for how long there is simply no way for a particular firm, no matter how beneficent its intentions, to know whether the costs it is incurring will turn out to be excessive.7 In other words, there is a problem of interdependency here: Unless all or most competitors specify the extent of their obligations, the obligations of any particular firm are necessarily indeterminate.

For the same reason, it is to no avail to say that the obligation of each firm is to "do its fair share." Where obligations are not specified and fairly distributed, no sense can be given to the notion of a fair share. Whether what one firm proposes to do is its fair share depends upon what its competitors will do.

For example, so long as there is no authoritative system for assigning determinate obligations among private and public sector institutions in health care, debates as to whether various private sector entities such as for-profit hospitals or insurance companies are doing their fair share to provide access to care are mere rhetorical exercises. Without a determinate division of concrete obligations, the notion of a fair share of the burden of providing access can be given no sense.8 Under such circumstances we can only speak of imperfect duties.

The concept of an imperfect duty has its attractions. For one thing, the idea that some of our duties are imperfect permits a certain flexibility in the moral life. It relieves us of what might be called the moral regimentation of our lives, offering considerable scope for individual judgment and even a degree of arbitrary preference as to whom we select to be the recipients of our aid, what form of aid we bestow, and when we bestow it. The recognition that some of our duties are imperfect allows us to pick our moral battles. We can reassure ourselves of our integrity by taking the long view: What is important is that we do something,


sometime, to help the homeless, to provide health care for the needy, to advance the opportunities of women and minorities, etc. We need not do this particular thing, for this particular individual, today.

This very flexibility, of course, creates powerful temptations to moral laxity to fail to take serious steps toward realizing the broad moral goals that imper-

fect duties exhort us to pursue. If we are overly selective in picking our battles we may never fight at all; or our efforts will at best be half-hearted, sporadic, and inefficient.

The distinction between perfect and imperfect duties corresponds to the distinction between two types of moral failure moral laxity versus moral backsliding. Moral backsliding is failure to comply with what one perceives to be a determinate duty. Moral laxity (as I shall use that phrase here) refers to a more subtle moral failure which generally can only be ascertained if a temporally extended view is taken of an agent's actions. I am morally lax if, over a significant stretch of time I fail to take serious steps toward helping to realize a moral goal toward the pursuit of which I have an imperfect duty.

The difference between these two moral failings can be best appreciated by considering what it is like for an agent to come to the realization that he or she is guilty of one or the other. If I realize that I am guilty of moral backsliding, then I know that I have failed to carry out my resolve to discharge a perfect duty. I also know that there is some particular individual or group whom I have wronged, and I know that there was some determinate action or omission that I was morally required to do regarding that individual or group, and that I failed to do. I acknowledged a definite moral requirement, but failed to meet it.

In contrast, I may become aware that I have been morally lax only after fairly complex moral assessment of my conduct over an extended period of time, and I may correctly believe that I have been morally lax even though I am aware of no instance in which I have wronged any particular individual or group. To conclude that I have been morally lax, I need not be aware of an instance in which I failed to carry through on a resolution to perform a particular action that I believed myself duty-bound to do. Instead, I may simply and correctly conclude that I have not done enough over the years to further certain moral goals whose worthiness I recognized.

The term 'laxity' suggests a failure of will or resolve (a slackness in or unrav- elling of the moral fiber, as it were), even though, as we have just seen, it does not refer to the particular sort of failure of will or resolve denoted by the phrase 'moral backsliding.' But if moral laxity is not the failure to carry through on the resolution to discharge a perfect (determinate) duty that one recognizes oneself as having, what sort of failure of the will is it? As we shall see, it is the failure to take significant steps toward realizing moral goals whose worthiness one acknowledges where that failure is due at least in part to one's not having focused one's will by imposing determinate duties on oneself by perfecting one's imperfect duties. Somewhat crudely, the difference between moral backsliding and moral laxity is this: In the former, one fails to hit a determinate moral


target that one clearly perceives; in the latter, one fails to focus on a determinate moral target.

In both cases, the motivational root of the failure may be the same- pressures of self-interest or sentiments of group loyalty that run counter to morality. Yet the nature of the failure is different. And because it is different, different strategies are called for in combatting the problem.

In the case of moral backsliding, the appropriate strategy is to find ways of strengthening the motivation to carry through on one's resolve to discharge a definite moral requirement that one already recognizes. (This may involve enlisting peer support, revising the firm's incentive structure to reward those who do their duty, etc.). In the case of moral laxity, as we shall see, different responses, requiring different skills and virtues, may be needed.

In addition to the temptation to moral laxity which its inherent flexibility entails, reliance on the concept of imperfect duties runs another risk: a serious lack of coordination of the efforts of various agents, acting independently, according to their own judgment and preferences as to how to advance moral goals they all regard as worthy. The result, quite predictably, is a patchwork of responses, with redundancies here and gaps there. Uncoordinated efforts to provide relief for the homeless, greater opportunities for minorities and women, or health care for the indigent may be highly inefficient.

III. Perfecting Imperfect Duties Through Collective Action

There are, therefore, good reasons indeed, sometimes morally compelling reasons to attempt to perfect our imperfect duties. If moral laxity is predictable when we are only guided by vague moral goals, conscientious persons will seek to change the situation so as to reduce the risk of moral laxity. Similarly, if one is sincere in one's intention is to act beneficently, but recognizes that in the current circumstances one's beneficence will be less effective than it could be if duties of beneficence were specified and coordinated, one will seek to change the situation so as to be able to achieve more efficient beneficence. In other words, being ethical often means striving to create an environment in which one can do a better job of being ethical. Frequently this will require efforts to perfect imperfect duties.

In some cases, a particular firm can do so unilaterally, without enlisting the cooperation of its competitors. The organization in question can simply create a specific duty and impose it on itself. For example, a large home-improvement supply retail chain may announce publicly that, for the next quarter, 1% of the revenues from sales of lumber will be donated to a particular local project to build low-income housing units. The retail chain creates a determinate obligation by articulating its content, designating the recipient, and imposing the obligation on itself through a public pledge

Notice that even this case of unilateral action is still in a significant sense an instance of collective action. In order tv increase its chances of complying with the specific obligation it imposes on itself, the retail chain makes a public


pledge, thereby creating an incentive for compliance-the anticipation of cen- sure if it fails to live up to what it pledges to do. This is an instance of the phenomenon known as "self-binding:" an agent's deliberate creation of a situation in which external forces (in this case public opinion) will serve to bolster the agent's motivation. So even in this instance of unilateral actioh to replace an imperfect duty with a perfect one, there is a collective action or cooperative element that is essential.

However, even when external forces are utilized in an effort to achieve self- binding, such unilateral strategies for perfecting imperfect duties may have serious limitations. A genuinely collective strategy, involving a cooperative effort among a number of firms to create perfect duties, will in many instances be superior. The most obvious advantage of a collective strategy is that it can provide better protection against loss of competitiveness: If the cost of contributing to the solution to a social problem is distributed fairly among competitors, none will be penalized for acting ethically.9

For example, instead of continuing to wring their hands and lament that they would all like to provide more uncompensated care if only they could afford to do so, the C.E.O.s of the for-profit hospitals in a given area might develop a plan to share the burden of providing uncompensated care. Such a plan would specify the obligations of each institution and provide incentives for compliance (and/or penalties for noncompliance). The most extreme form of such an agreement would be a multilateral legal contract spelling out in detail precisely what the obligations of the various parties were. Such an arrangement would be an instance of using the coercive power of the contract law to achieve mutual self- binding. In some instances, however, less formal approaches might suffice. If existing anti-trust law may restrict contractual arrangements for collective action within an industry, less formal approaches will be necessary.

The Clinton administration's health care plan can be seen as an attempt to provide a clearer specification and distribution of obligations for securing access to health care among various social institutions, private and public. Thus it can be viewed as an effort to eliminate the current situation in which there is a vague general consensus that providing access to health care should in some sense be a collaborative effort between government and the private sector, but in which the lack of clear moral division of labor offers opportunities for fruit- less mutual blaming as to who is not doing their fair share.

Whether the Clinton planfairly distributes the burdens of providing access to care for all is, of course, another question. Indeed, many small businesses com- plain that they are being required to shoulder an excessive burden. Nonetheless, those business leaders who bemoan the greater role of government in health care and the greater burden on business which the Clinton plan entails might well ask themselves whether such proposals would have been put forward if major play- ers in the private sector had exerted more strenuous efforts to develop their own systems for perfecting the imperfect duty to aid those in need of health care. At any rate, the practical lesson here is that when businesses fail to act collectively


to create an effective system of concrete duties to respond to an urgent social problem, government may wrest from them the capacity to determine for themselves how they will contribute to the solution to that problem.

It would be a mistake to assume that the only or even the primary purpose of such cooperative arrangements is to solve the free-rider problem, that their value and success depend entirely upon whether they eliminate the possibility of free-riding. Frequently the chief barrier to successful collective action is not the free-rider problem but rather the assurance problem.10 While a free-rider is someone who wishes to take advantage of the contributions of others, an individual seeking assurance that others will reciprocate simply does not wish to be taken advantage of. In other words, in some cases a sufficient number of individuals to make the collective effort succeed are willing to contributes if they have assurance that most others will do their fair share. In such situations what is needed is reasonable assurance of fair reciprocity, not an ironclad guarantee that no one will be able to take a free-ride. Thus, individual businesses may be quite willing to contribute to a worthy social goal, but only on condition that others (again, especially their competitors) will make a fair contribution as well. Let us call this the reciprocity condition a condition that must be met if the assurance problem is to be solved.

The point is that where duties to contribute remain imperfect, the assurance problem can be debilitating. This is more likely to be the case in business than in other areas of interaction, since it is there that competition is a pervasive fact of life. Where competition is intense, and each potential contributor is free to exercise discretion as to how much to contribute, to whom to contribute, and when to contribute, everyone will reasonably fear that others will construe their obligations in a rather minimal and self-serving way. In other words the subjec- tive discretion which the indeterminacy of imperfect obligations permits makes assurance problems pervasive in the competitive environment of business. Strictly voluntary, uncoordinated efforts to fulfill indeterminate duties will therefore predictably result in some potential contributors not contributing at all and others contributing less than they might have, had there been assurance that others were doing their fair share. And, as we have seen, where duties are imperfect, the very concept of a fair share lacks application.

However, if agreement can be reached on what all perceive to be a fair distribution of specific obligations (say, regarding aid to the homeless in a particular locale), then the content, object, and timing of each contributor's contribution will not be left to the contributor's discretion, but instead will be authoritatively specified and publicized among all the contributors. The assurance problem that naturally afflicts imperfect duties in a competitive setting can be eliminated by a system that perfects the duties in question.

There are some forms of collective action in which the assurance problem is not so serious because the scheme can yield significant benefits even if some participants fail to honor the obligations they assume by joining the project. Consider, for example, the growing popularity of programs such as the "adopt a


highway" project. Businesses or civic organizations may take publicized responsibility for removing litter (or, more often, paying to have litter removed) from a stretch of highway. The unit of responsibility (usually one mile) is specified authoritatively in the program and units are assigned to organizations who vol- unteer for the responsibility. The most tangible benefit for the sponsoring organization is the public relations advantage conferred by the sign announcing its service to the community in keeping a stretch of road free of litter. What is ingenious about this type of program is that it achieves the benefits of coordinated collective action, including the creation and assignment of determinate obligations with incentives for fulfilling them, while offering a benefit to participants that can be had independently of whether or not others participate in the scheme.

Another, less obvious advantage of collective action approaches is that the perception that one is participating in a fair system can enhance voluntary motivation to contribute and thereby reduce enforcement costs. A growing body of empirical research supports the generalization that when participants in a joint undertaking perceive the undertaking to be fair, the commitment to contribute increases.ll Furthermore, in some cases, a corporation may be willing to make larger contributions to what it perceives to be a fair arrangement for attacking a social problem than it would willingly make if it acted independently, without assurance that others especially its competitors-were doing their fair share.

In addition, collective action can often be more efficient than uncoordinated individual acts of beneficence. It can produce greater total benefits than uncoordinated individual acts for either or both of two reasons. First, there may be economies of scale that can be reached through pooling resources. Second, in some cases, success in tackling a serious social problem requires reaching a threshold of effort or resources that cannot be reached by individual actors.

1E The Moral and Empirical Bases of Perfecting Imperfect Duties Through Collective Action

The case for developing collective action strategies to perfect imperfect duties rests on two bases, one moral, the other empirical. First, there is the fundamental and commonsensical moral principle, already alluded to, that being ethical requires doing what we can to improve our chances of acting ethically. In other words, the same basic values that underlie the ethical goals expressed in imperfect duties should lead us to change the environment of action so that we will be more likely to act ethically and to be more effective in the pursuit of our ethical goals. In cases of the sorts discussed above, honoring this principle will require collective action to specify initially indeterminate duties, to distribute them fairly, and to provide appropriate incentives for compliance.

Indeed it is worth emphasizing that perfecting duties by specifying and dis- tributing them fairly is something which must be done before any effective and


responsible strategy for securing compliance can be undertaken. In that sense, the goal of perfecting duties through collective action is to create a situation in which there is a solvable compliance problem. Arriving at a point at which duties are sufficiently determinate to make it profitable to concentrate on strategies for securing compliance is itself moral progress.

Second, there is a set of empirical generalizations upon which the success of such strategies for perfecting imperfect duties through collective action rests. These include:

Proposition 1: The indeterminateness of imperfect duties encourages moral laxity. (The inherent vagueness of these duties and the discretion they allow agents encourage self-serving rationalizations, excuses, postponement of action, etc. Hence, by making duties more determinate, the risks of moral laxity can be reduced).

Proposition 2: The vagueness of imperfect duties increases the likelihood that different individuals will disagree about when enough is being done or about what exactly should be done regarding imperfect duties, and this disagreement can result in inaction or minimaZ efforts. (Concrete specification of duties through consensus-building processes or negotiation can remove this impedi- ment to action).

Proposition 3: When individuals lack assurance that others are doing their fair share, the likelihood that they will contribute decreases. (Collective action that specifies fair shares and provides incentives for compliance can provide the needed assurance).

Proposition 4: When individuals lack assurance that others will do their fair share, they tend to make smaller contributions than they would if they had such assurance, if they contribute at all. (Thus collective action that specifies fair shares and provides assurance of compliance can increase the total contribution of resources toward achieving moral goals).

Proposition 5: In the aggregate, the results of various individuals or organizations acting independently in regard to imperfect duties tend to be ineJ:ficient, due to (a) lack of coordination, (b) failure to achieve economies of scale, and (c) failure to reach a threshold level of resources neededfor success. (Collective action can provide the needed coordination, pool resources to achieve economies of scale, and reach effective resource-thresholds).

Obviously, each of these five empirical generalizations must be qualified by an "other things being equal" clause. Well-designed, rigorous empirical research is needed to provide additional support for each of these propositions and to ascertain accurately the parameters of their validity. It is not the purpose of this essay to survey the existing empirical literature that bears on these generalizations, nor to make methodological suggestions as how the gaps in that literature might be filled. The aim, rather, is to clarify the moral underpinnings of collective action in business ethics by exhibiting how collective action can serve as an appropriate response to a particular set of moral problems the distinctive problems presented by imperfect duties that are not usually clearly distinguished from the more familiar categories of moral dilemmas and compliance problems.


v The Limitations of Collective Action and the Ineliminable Need for Moral Judgment

Nothing in the forgoing discussion is intended to suggest that it is always

appropriate to attempt to perfect imperfect duties through collective action. In some circumstances collective action will not be appropriate, for any of a number of reasons. Sometimes the transaction costs of reaching agreement on a fair distribution of obligations will be excessive. One source of disagreement on fair distribution is cultural differences as to what the appropriate standard of fairness is. This factor may be especially significant in the context of international business.

However, even within one cultural group there can be disagreements about the appropriate standard of fairness. For example, should corporations in an industry-wide association contribute to an environmental clean-up project according to market share, according to total assets, or according to their respective contributions to the environmental damage which the project seeks to repair?

In other cases, creating organizations intended to perfect imperfect duties may have undesirable, unintended effects. In particular, there is the risk that once the organizational resources are assembled, they may be used for unethical purposes (for example, price-fixing or other anticompetitive practices). Moreover, no amount of institution-building will ever eliminate the need for individual judgment for the discernment needed to ascertain how to invest one's moral capital. Indeed, especially in a pluralistic society such as ours, different individuals will have, and should be allowed to pursue, different moral priorities. Collective action can only compliment, not replace individual virtue.

Clearly there can be no formula for determining which of the many morally worthy goals a given individual, or a given firm, ought to choose to pursue through a course of action designed to create determinate moral obligations. And there can be no question of a given firm attempting to pursue all worthy moral goals. Nevertheless, the choice is not entirely arbitrary. Considerations of expertise and impact should play a significant role. Thus, for example, it would generally be more appropriate for a computer software company to help to organize other similar companies to undertake specific courses of action designed to ensure that disabled persons will have access to the "information superhighway" than to engage in collective action in another area of moral concern, such as the problem of the homeless, with respect to which it has no special expertise and no likelihood of having an especially significant impact.l2

An equally important domain for judgment is the problem of moral compromise in the face of serious obstacles to achieving moral goals. The Sullivan Principles, perhaps the most successful and the most analyzed instance of a collective action program in the Business Ethics literature, graphically illustrate the complexity of the problem of moral compromise.

In 1977 Reverend Leon Sullivan proposed his Principles as a program for collective action after he failed to persuade the General Motors Corporation,

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upon whose Board of Directors he sat, to divest unilaterally its South African operations. Sullivan's change of strategy in the face of GM's intransigence included not only a move from unilateral to collective action, but also a lowering of his moral sights from disinvestment to channeling existing investments into a more progressive path. Instead of pursuing the more ambitious moral goal of disinvestment by all U.S. companies, Sullivan proposed a set of principles requiring training programs for nonwhites, an increase in the number of nonwhites in management and administrative positions, improved housing and working conditions for employees, better health and recreational facilities, etc. A key feature of the Sullivan scheme was a system of reporting and evaluation, administered by a neutral party (The Arthur D. Little Co.) which was designed to specify concretely a set of determinate moral targets.

Reverend Sullivan himself viewed the program as a compromise- one which he eventually abandoned, as he returned to the more ambitious demand for total disinvestment in 1987. (While others may have preferred the Sullivan Principles to disinvestment because they believed the Principles inflicted less hardship on nonwhites in South Africas this does not seem to be Reverend Sullivan's reason for abandoning the strategy of disinvestment).

Determining whether and when to compromise by lowering our moral sights creating a less demanding rather than a more ambitious system of determinate duties requires two distinct sets of decisionmaking skills, or, to use more traditional language, two types of virtues. The first is the ability to weigh complex and often conflicting empirical estimates about the feasibility of pursuing a more or a less ambitious immediate goal. (In the case of the Sullivan Principles, many who advocated them, including Reverend Sullivan until 1987, judged that it was not currently realistic to expect that most large corporations would disinvest in South Africa). The second virtue is the ability to know when a compromise is excessive, unacceptable from a moral point of view, regardless of whether it is more likely to achieve its stated goal. At bottom, this is a matter of integrity. Although, as was noted earlier, recent Business Ethics literature has begun to emphasize the role of virtues, including integrity, their role in judgments about acceptable moral compromise requires much more analysis, both in general and in the particular case of judgments about which collective action strategies to pursue in order to perfect imperfect duties.

Surprisingly, once the unique benefits of collective action are appreciatede it becomes apparent that one popular approach to the social responsibility of business is in some cases not so morally uncontroversial as it would first appear. Often writers on the social responsibility of business tout the simple message that a particular corporation can achieve a competitive advantage- by project- ing a favorable public image- if it takes a lead in responding to some urgent social problem. The pioneering corporate human rights policy adopted by the Levi-Strauss Company is frequently cited as a laudable instance of this way of doing well by doing good. However, once it is seen that in some instances a collective response to a social problem is more effective (for any of the reasons


explored above), matters become more complex and our moral praise for organizations such as Levi-Strauss may become somewhat tempered.

The difficulty is that the congruence between doing well through independent, unilateral action, and doing good may not be quite so close as many would like to think. Where only collective action can reach a crucial threshold of benefit, can reap economies of scales or achieve needed coordination, a corporation's decision to go it alone can come at a significant moral cost. In other words, once the moral advantages of collective action come into view, the stage is set for a moral problem which the cheery proponents of doing well by "stepping out from the pack" to do good tend to overlook. A corporate-decision maker may find herself faced with the choice of committing her firm to a course of independent action, where doing so can be expected to confer a definite advantage upon it by capturing the moral lime-light, or cooperating with others to achieve a greater good, even though this means forsaking the opportunity to step out from the pack and win special praise for its distinctive efforts. We might well ask, for instance, whether Levi-Strauss might have achieved even more good had it helped to initiate a collective human rights program (along something like Sul- livan Principles lines) rather than simply undertaking its own human rights policy. Especially for a powerful corporation whose participation in a collective effort may be critical for success, the decision to do good independently rather than cooperatively in order to "out-ethics" one's competitors, is far from morally neutral.

Vl. Conclusions

Collective action by businesses to create institutional arrangements that perfect imperfect duties can yield significant benefits. Such arrangements can (1) reduce the temptations to moral laxity presented by the extreme flexibility of imperfect duties; (2) achieve greater efficiency more bang for the moral buck, so to speak by eliminating the redundancies and gaps that often attend uncoordinated, individual efforts to further moral goals; (3) reap economies of scale, and achieve success in cases where benefits can be provided only if a certain threshold of resources can be brought to bear on a particular social problem; (4) solve assurance problems in cases where voluntary compliance by some parties depends upon their perception that competitors are doing their fair share; and (5) produce higher levels of contribution than would occur through independent action in response to imperfect duties, stimulated by the perception that the system fairly distributes the burdens of contribution among a wide range of parties.

Once the importance of collective action to perfect imperfect duties is recognized, promising developments in the field of Business Ethics are enriched even further. While the growing emphasis on compliance problems found in the recent Business Ethics literature is extremely important, more attention needs to be directed to strategies for transforming imperfect duties into perfect ones through appropriate collective action strategies.


Although it is extremely important to distinguish between ethical dilemmas and compliance problems and to take the latter seriously, this simple dichotomy does not provide an exhaustive classification of basic types of problems in Business Ethics. I have urged that we distinguish not only between genuine moral dilemmas, where our difficulty is knowing what duty requires, all things considered, and compliance problems, where we are at risk for moral backsliding, but also between the latter and situations in which the problem is to perfect imperfect duties, where the risk is moral laxity. Recognizing a three-part distinction among moral problems in business (and elsewhere) is not only theoretically perspicacious, but practically vital, since different types of problems call for different strategies. In many cases, the ethical problem faced by business people is neither how to reconcile conflicting but determinate duties, nor how to ensure that they will fulfill what they know to be their determinate duties. Instead, the central ethical problem is how to develop effective strategies for perfecting imperfect duties-for creating determinate duties, so that worthy moral goals may be pursued more consistently and effectively.

In addition, the analysis of strategies for perfecting imperfect duties outlined in this article has revealed an interesting relationship between two types of moral failings, moral backsliding and moral laxity. In effect, perfecting an imperfect duty means acting in such a way as to avoid moral laxity by creating a situation in which moral backsliding is possible but avoidable-that is, creating a solvable compliance problem. In most cases this requires collective action to set determinate moral targets, assign specific obligations to the cooperating parties so as to achieve a moral division of labor that will reach the targets, and provide adequate incentives for compliance with the specified obligations.

Where duties remain imperfect, we are tempted to rationalize our failure to take significant steps toward attaining the moral targets they indicate by appeal- ing to the indeterminate nature of the duty. We lack a focal point, a clear target for our moral resolve and, as a consequence, the more determinate urgings of self-interest or other competing motivations may win out. The result may be that, when we look back on our conduct over the long run, we find ourselves guilty of moral laxity. Knowing that we face this risk of moral laxity (having experienced this failing before) we can learn to take a more proactive approach in order to avoid it: We can undertake actions that set definite moral targets, that allow us to focus our resolve, and that put us in a position to take appropriate steps to ensure that we comply with the determinate requirements that we thus impose on ourselves. In that sense, perfecting imperfect duties involves solving compliance problems; but it also includes the creation of determinate duties, while compliance problems presuppose their existence.

Furthermore, while the recent focus on the role of virtues in Business Ethics is laudable, the scope of business virtues must be seen to encompass not only creativity in developing forms of collective action to perfect imperfect duties, but also the skill to make sound judgments about when the imperfect nature of


a duty should be accepted and when it should be viewed as a challenge calling for an imaginative collective response that creates determinate duties.l3 A firm grasp of the possibilities for and potential costs of collective action are needed if one is to know when one ought to continue to operate within the flexible but ill-defined moral space of imperfect duties, with the risks of moral laxity and inefficiency which this entails, and when one ought to join forces with others to try to achieve a sharper focus for one's moral commitments. Since collective action not only involves transaction costs but also the risk that collective ener- gies and resources will be diverted for immoral or counterproductive ends, the decision will often be a difficult one, requiring a weighing of moral values. Finally, virtues-including the central virtue of integrity- are also needed to ascertain when compromises in the setting of moral targets is a permissible concession to political, economic, and organizational realities.

Notes

lIt would be a mistake to say that the recognition of the importance of compliance problems

is entirely new in the business ethics literature. The point, rather, is that there is a growing

emphasis on compliance problems and a clearer awareness of the need to examine incentives

for compliance.

2See, for example, "Business Ethics as Moral Imagination" (working paper), Joanne B.

Ciulla, 1993. For a valuable statement of the importance of creativity and imagination in

procedures for analyzing ethical problems in business, see Denis Collins and Thomas

O'Rourke, Ethiccll Dilemmas in Business (Cincinnati: South-Western Publishing Co., 1994),

p. 10.

3An outstanding example is Robert Solomon, Ethics and Excellence: Cooperation and Integrity in Business (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

4For an enlightening synoptic history of the development and uses of the distinction between

perfect and imperfect duties, see J. B. Schneewind, ';Philosophical Ideas of Charity: Some

Historical Reflections," forthcoming in Faces of Chari;y, J. B. Schneewind, Dwight Burlin-

game, and Robert Payton, eds. For a critical discussion of how the distinction between perfect

and imperfect duties has been used to draw the line between justice and charity, see Allen

Buchanan, "Justice and Charity," Ethics, vol. 97 (1987), pp. 558-75.

SFor a valuable discussion of the role of the distinction between "negative injunctions" (such

as "Don't discriminate on racial or gender groundst') and "affirmative duties" (such as "En-

deavor to help increase the opportunities of minorities and women"), see John G. Simon,

Charles W. Powers, and Jon P. Gunnemann, The Ethical Investor: Universities and Corporate Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 15-22. These authors offer

several criteria to guide decisions about when affirmative duties are included in the "moral

minimum" that is ethically required of all persons, including business people. However, their

discussion does not address cases where these criteria are not met, but where one nevertheless

does recognize an affirmative, albeit indeterminate duty to contribute to a worthy moral goal.

6In some cases, of course, afElrmative action initiatives enhance a corporation's competitive-

ness, by utilizing highly qualified women or minorities who otherwise would be overlooked.

But even in these cases, there may be significant short-term financial costs to the corporation

that takes such steps.


'For an illustration of this point in the case of a policy of not engaging in bribery in international business activity, see Richard T. De George, "International Business Ethics," Business Ethics Quczrterly, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1994), p. 5.

8Allen Buchanan, "Private and Public Responsibilities in the U.S. Health Care System," in Robert P. Huefner and Margaret P. Battin, eds., Changing to National Health Care (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992), pp. 235-49.

9The most obvious concern is loss of competitiveness vis a vis other firms in the same industry. However, if all firms in a given industry agreed to and complied with an assignment of determinate obligations to help some need group but other industries did not, the former might conceivably be penalized by suffering a lack of competitiveness in capital markets. This possibility can be viewed in two ways: as an argument for economy-wide (cross-industry) collective action, or as indicating that in determining how duties are limited by excessive costs we must take into account a sufE1eiently broad conception of the loss of competitiveness as a cost. Given the complexity and difficulty of securing an economy-wide voluntary assumption of speciElc duties among firms in diverse sectors of the economy and the costs of attempting to utilize government to impose economy-wide duties, it may generally be more reasonable simply to recognize that the risk of loss of competitiveness in capital markets must be taken into account in determining how substantial a burden a given industry ought to assume in devising a collective action scheme.

10For an enlightening analysis of the importance of the assurance of reciprocity in successful collective action, see David Schmidtz, The Limits of Government (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 92-151.

1lW. Chan Kim and Renee A. Mauborgne, "Implementing Global Strategies: The Role of Procedural Justice," Strategic Management Journal, vol. 12 (1991), pp. 125-43. Kim and Mauborgne provide evidence that perceived fairness enhances voluntary compliance of sub- sidiaries in the implementation of global strategies in multinational corporations. This article also provides references to a wide range of social psychology literature in which the compliance-enhancing effects of perceptions of fairness is documented.

12Collective action involving educational institutions, computer software and hardware producers, government granting agencies, and organizations for disabled persons is already in progress to ensure accessibility to the "information superhighway." In March of 1994 the Asilomar Conference on Access to GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) issues a set of "Recom- mendations to Promote Accessible Interfaces." These included the establishment of an Elec- tronics Industry Association "Seal of Accessibility" for products meeting specific requirements designed to maximize accessibility for disabled users.

13I am indebted to Denis Collins and to two reviewers for this journal for their valuable comments on a draft of this paper.

(D1996. Business Ethics Quarterly, Volume 6, Issue 1. ISSN 1052-1SOX. 0027-0042.

allen buchanan perfecting imperfect duties

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