To continue the previous blog regarding the BP oil spill：

While businesses are sometimes legally constituted as a person, is in my opnion, not a person. It cannot be expected to contain the same qualities that people are expected to have, namely, ethics. A CEO can be said to be unethical, a stockholder can be said to be unethical, but a business, theoretically and logically, cannot be said to be unethical because if otherwise, it ceases to be a business, which at the fundamental level is an agency for the sole purpose of making profit.

However, although a business does not have ethical values, it is still capable of displaying ethical actions for the purpose of maximizing profit. An unethical business will most likely become a failed business because of the enormous amount of pressure from different stakeholders, such as environmental groups and government agencies, and would often be forced to follow regulation or be legally prosecuted. Therefore, business do not perform ethical actions because they have ethical values, but rather because those actions serves to maximize their profit in the long run.

Source:

Dina Cappiello. “BP ultimately responsible in Gulf spill”. Yahoo! News. extracted from the internet September 14, 2011.

http://news.yahoo.com/report-bp-ultimately-responsible-gulf-spill-174211824.html