The word “limited liability” is linked with corporations. It indicates that no matter how much harm the company did, shareholders could not be required to pay more than the amount they had already put in. This has allowed the corporation to get away with literally anything, including child labour and exploiting those in third-world countries.
One of the most well-known corporations within the past twenty years that is guilty of this, is Nike. Surely, it is unethical for children at the age of 12 to 13 (law states that workers must be at least 18) to be working in factories with heavy machinery and dangerous material for a measly 25 cents a day?
R. Edward Freeman spoke of how businesses must have social responsibility, or they run the “risk of going into decline“. Nike did just that, it took up social responsibility in order to prevent itself from being “synonymous with slave workers, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse” but only AFTER the revealations.
Limited liability has resulted in unethical business practices where people have succumbed to the lure of ascendancy and take the psychopathic path to power and profit and ultimately, it is up to us individuals to remind ourselves of the social responsibilities we have.