Group agents and moral status: What can we owe to organizations?

Abstract

Organizations have neither a right to vote nor a right to life. But we can owe them to keep our promises or show them gratitude. So we owe some things to organizations, but not everything we owe to people. What explains this? Individualistic views explain it just in terms of features of organizations’ individual members. Collectivistic views explain it just in terms of features of those organizations. Neither view works. Instead, we need to synthesize these approaches. Some individual interests are distinctively collective. Individuals have an interest in participating in successful collective action. This explains organizations’ apparently fragmented moral status.