Tenacity: The American Pursuit of Corporate Responsibility

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12022
• Published date: 01 December 2013
• Date: 01 December 2013

Tenacity: The American

Pursuit of Corporate

Responsibility

KENNETH E. GOODPASTER

ABSTRACT

This article attempts to answer the question, “What are the

most important ideas from serving as Executive Editor of the

f‌ive-year history project that culminated in the book, Corpo-

rate Responsibility: The American Experience?” The ideas

focus on (1) clarifying the phenomenon of tenacity; (2) looking

at three foundations of our tenacity; and (3) asking “How

fragile is our tenacity?” This article also presents three foun-

dational principles that underlie the American experience of

corporate responsibility. First, the Checks & Balances Prin-

ciple tells us that there are checks and balances in democratic

capitalism which give us conf‌idence that the pursuit of eco-

nomic goals will be moderated for the common good. Second,

the Moral Projection Principle shows that there is good reason

to consider the corporation not only as a legal person under

corporate law but also as a moral person. And, last, the Moral

Common Ground Principle ref‌lects that there are shared

moral values ascertainable by well-developed consciences in

individuals and in corporations. The article concludes with

this argument: The tenacity regarding corporate responsibil-

ity that has been so characteristic of American capitalism is

fragile—calling for serious vigilance if it is to endure.

Kenneth E. Goodpaster is Professor and Holder of the Koch Endowed Chair in Business

Ethics, Opus College of Business, University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. In February, 2013, he

was the Verizon Visiting Professor in Business Ethics, Bentley University, Waltham, MA.

E-mail: kegoodpaster@stthomas.edu.

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Business and Society Review 118:4 577–605

© 2013 Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.,

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.

This article takes its inspiration from a f‌ive-year project on the

history of corporate responsibility in the United States that I was

privileged to lead as Executive Editor. My distinguished colleagues

and the principal authors of this history were Professor Archie

Carroll of the University of Georgia, Professor Kenneth Lipartito of

Florida International University, Professor James Post of Boston

University, and Professor Patricia Werhane of the University of

Virginia and DePaul University. This work was recently published

by Cambridge University Press under the title Corporate Respon-

sibility: The American Experience. I should also mention that this

project was made possible by a generous grant to the University

of St. Thomas from the Halloran Philanthropies in Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania1(see Figure 1).

What this history project offered to all of us who participated

in it was a degree of perspective on the subject of corporate

responsibility that I doubt any of us could have claimed at the

outset of the work.2I have been asked on numerous occasions,

“What’s the most important idea—your biggest ‘take-away’—from

FIGURE 1 Cover of Corporate Responsibility: The American

Experience.

578 BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW