John Ladd, Professor of Philosophy at Brown University, contended that much thinking about responsibility with respect to corporations rests upon "the fallacious assimilation of corporations to moral persons." According to Ladd, "the concept of moral responsibility, as contrasted with other kinds of responsibility, cannot properly or even meaningfully be attributed to corporations . . ." He maintained that once we recognize this, we will be able to sort out more clearly and coherently mutual rights, duties, and responsibilities in society in relation to each other."

Ladd acknowledged that certain kinds of responsibilities may be ascribed to corporations. In this regard he listed the following four: role responsibility, that is, the type of responsibility that goes with roles tasks and jobs; causal responsibility, which is simply the responsibility for having caused something; liability responsibility. which concerns who must pay damages; and capacity responsibility, that is, the psychological capacities required for holding a person legally accountable. Ladd observed that ". . . all four (of the above) senses of responsibility can be attributed to corporations, for corporations can (a) fill roles, they can (b) cause things to happen, they can be (c) liable, e.g. for damages, and they have (d) the capacities of 'understanding, reasoning and control of conduct.' It is easy to see why (these) senses of responsibility apply to corporations; for they are essentially legal entities and as such are subject to law. . ."

Ladd insisted, however, that the situation is quite otherwise with respect to moral responsibility. In this regard, he said the following: ".(moral responsibility) is about what people ought to do to bring about or to prevent future states of affairs. It is based on the duty each one of us has to watch out for what may happen to others or to oneself. As such, it implies concern, care, and foresight. To be responsible in this sense is a virtue that cannot be meaningfully predicated of a corporation conceived of as a formal organization, that is, as a structure of rules, offices, and jobs, etc."

For similar reasons, Ladd maintained that the notion of a duty of loyalty to a corporation makes no sense. In his words, ". . . we need to ask whether or not there is any validity or merit in the concept of loyalty to an organization. We should note right away that the loyalty in question here is not at all like the loyalty that physicians and lawyers are expected to have towards their patients and clients; for the latter kind of loyalty simply amounts to observing the duties of devotion, zealousness, and avoidance of conflicts of interest that are owed to their patient and clients as individuals as a result of the relationship."

Ladd maintained that only persons can stand related to one another in terms of bonds of loyalty. It therefore makes no sense to suppose that one has duties of loyalty to a corporation. " . Before we can speak meaningfully of loyalty in the context of a corporation," Ladd said, "we need to ask: who in the corporation is the object of tiffs loyalty? Is it the managers? the stockholders? One's fellow employees? or all of these? Obviously, loyalty to these different groups requires quite different kinds of conduct, some of which may be inconsistent." Ladd also noted that if one identified the corporation itself as the object of loyalty, another paradox presents itself. Ladd contended that "loyalty is thought to be a twoway thing. (It) is a bond tying people to each other reciprocally." By contrast, however, he said, corporate loyalty, by its very nature, can only be one way. In Ladd's words, "dedication and devotion can only be in one direction-from the employee to the corporation."

Ladd contended that we "cannot and should not shift our moral responsibilities onto abstract entities like corporations .. . .there is a sense in which all of us, engineers and non-engineers alike are responsible for, say, things like Pinto accidents, because we accept a way of life . . . that assumes that what is good for business, is good for us-for society; and correlatively it is good for business to mind one's own business."