J Bus Ethics DOI 10.

1007/s10551-012-1477-1

Going the (Ethical) Distance

Lee Shepski

Received: 28 January 2011 / Accepted: 27 August 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract Nearly every day we participate in the vast, interconnected global economy. In doing so, we engage in chains of transactions that ultimately result in our beneting from, or enabling, wrongdoing by others. In some cases this seems to be in itself wrong, but in many cases it seems unproblematic. I develop a concept of ethical distance and argue that our responsibility for the wrongdoing of others is a function of our ethical distance from it. Furthermore, I argue that the concept of moral responsibility is vague, but that when we become clearly responsible for wrongdoing by others, we ought to sever our connection to it. Keywords Ethical distance Moral responsibility Transaction partners Vague predicates

thing unsavory. Yet we must participate in the economy, or die, or live as hermits in a wilderness. So how closely may we associate with immoral activity and still keep our own hands clean? Consider the following hypothetical case. Hits R Us is an assassination services rm. Jims Catering is an ordinary catering company, but it occasionally hires Hits R Us to bump off key employees of its competitors. Sophias Event Planning, in turn, often utilizes Jims Catering. Big Research University, meanwhile, contracts with Sophias Event Planning to handle events like Homecoming and Alumni Weekend. The situation is like this:
Big Research University
hires

Sophias Event Planning

hires

Jims Catering

hires

Hits R Us

Introduction Nearly every day we participate in the vast, interconnected global economy: we buy cups of coffee, we go to our jobs, we decide upon allocations for our 401(k) plans. In doing so, we most likely rub shoulders with people we might prefer to avoid: somewhere in the chain of transactions in which we participate, someone has probably done some-

Lee Shepski passed away unexpectedly as his essay was moving to press. It was his wish to publish the essay. L. Shepski (&) Department of Philosophy, University of Tennessee, 801 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0480, USA e-mail: dreidy@tennessee.edu

Almost no one is willing to say that they would patronize or work for Hits R Us. It seems pretty clear that it is wrong to knowingly work for such a rm, even if one has no direct involvement with performing assassinations (say, by working as a receptionist or custodian). And something seems wrong with choosing to work for, and perhaps purchase from, Jims Catering. But what about Sophias Event Planning or Big Research University (BRU)? Presumably, students, faculty, and staff at BRU are not aware of the connection to Hits R Us, or surely protests would arise. But here is the rub: given the interconnectedness of the economy, and given the realities of human nature, we can be condent that many of the transactions we engage in will be part of some chain that links in some way to unethical behaviorand most likely seriously unethical behavior at that. In consequence, without being aware of any particular connection to wrongdoing, we can reasonably infer that each of us is

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linked by some transactional chain to seriously unethical behavior.1 This raises what I call the problem of ethical distance. It is a more general problemand one more frequently encounteredthan the problem of socially responsible investing. First, the problem of ethical distance touches essentially everyone, and not only those with spare (or retirement) capital to invest: we all need to work somewhere, and we all need to buy things. Second, unlike some mutual funds, it looks beyond the question of what types of business activities a rm is engaged in. Jims Catering, for example, is engaged in a perfectly innocent form of money-making (that is, catering), but how it goes about succeeding in that activity is deeply unethical. Third, the problem of ethical distance recognizes that not only direct involvement in unethical behavior is ethically problematic, but a wide variety of indirect links to seriously unethical behavior can be problematic as well. (Witness the uneasiness you presumably feel over the idea of working for Hits R Us in any capacity.) The problem is also different from the problem of corporate social responsibility (the problem of whether, how, and why corporations have responsibilities to society). Instead, the problem of ethical distance is a problem for individualsall of usas we interact with corporations and with each other. In this essay, I develop the concept of ethical distance and address the following questions: Under what circumstances do we become responsible for the unethical activities of those we transact business with (and those that they transact business with, and so on)? (b) What, if anything, should we do about it? I argue for the following conclusions: (1) responsibility for a particular activity or outcome varies inversely with our ethical distance from that activity or outcome; (2) there is no precise point along the axis of ethical distance at which we can denitively say that we gain or lose responsibility for a particular action or outcome; (3) nevertheless there are clear cases when we do; and (4) we
1

morally ought to avoid being responsible for unethical activities and outcomes. To use philosophical jargon, I argue that morally responsible functions as a vague predicate and that we morally ought to avoid doing things that bring us into the position of being clearly blameworthy for unethical behavior.2

Preliminary Remarks Throughout this essay, I make free use of several important conceptsin particular, the concepts of moral responsibility, moral blameworthiness, moral permissibility, moral reasons for action, and the notion of a moral ought. These are philosophically difcult and controversial concepts, and the precise nature of each can be the subject of entire books. There is no way that I can give adequate treatment of these notions here, but I avail myself of intuitive conceptions of them, and also of the idea that these are not empty or trivial concepts. That is, I assume that in the real world, there are cases when each of these concepts applies and when it is appropriate for us to inuence our behavior in light of how they apply. This is all I will have to say by way of explication of these intuitive concepts, except for the concept of moral responsibility. This is a particularly vexed concept, and further clarication regarding my usage of it is called for. In philosophical circles, there is an ongoing debate regarding whether it makes sense to consider people morally responsible for anything they do.3 On the one hand, if we live in a deterministic universe, where everything we do has been predetermined since long before any of us was born, how can we hold anyone accountable for what they do? In such a universe, no one can do other than what they in fact do. On the other hand, if we live in an indeterminstic universe, then what causes our actions? If we give full rein to the implications of quantum mechanics, our actions might ultimately even be in some sense random, and in such a world, it would seem odd to hold any of us accountable for what we do. (Indeed, in such a world, does it even make sense to say that we do anything?) This is an extremely bare and rough sketch of a rich debate, but I hope to provide some avor of it, only in order to say that this is not the type of moral responsibility I am concerned with here. It is possible to abstract from such deep
2

(a)

I cannot adequately defend this (empirical) claim here. However, even beyond (what I take to be) the claims prima facie plausibility, two things may be said. First, one only need open the newspapers for a few weeks to see large organizations accused of some wrongdoing or other. Given the pervasiveness of large organizations in the modern economy, we all interact with large organizations frequently, and they frequently interact with one another. The sheer number of such transactions thus makes it likely that we are all transactionally connected to wrongdoing. Second, the mere likelihood of this connection (and not necessarily its actuality) is sufcient to make my topic of ethical interest and import, for if a given action is likely to implicate someone in wrongdoing, that person may have a duty to avoid it, on pain of negligence. In making this latter claim, I follow Kolers (2001).

There are similarities between my treatment of this problem and that provided in Mellema (2003). However, there are signicant differences as well. In particular, Mellema devotes considerable attention to the question of how ethical distance affects cases of collective responsibility, while my concern is with individual responsibility. 3 The philosophical literature on this is very large. A good place to begin is Fischer and Ravizza (1993).

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questions about moral responsibility and utilize a more prosaic conception of it. On a more mundane level, we can recognize that sometimes we are responsible for actions and outcomes, and sometimes we are not. To adapt one of David Humes famous examples, the person who steps on someones toes is responsible for the resulting pain in a way that a simple bystander is not. Similarly, someone who intentionally spills coffee on their dinner companion after a heated argument is responsible for doing so in a way that a restaurant server, laden with trays and who accidentally trips, is not. Roughly, the idea is that we become responsible for actions (and resulting outcomes) when we intentionally connect ourselves with them in some way. Some of the various ways in which this connection can be made are explored in more detail below. Even here much more could be said, but for present purposes an appeal to everyday conceptions of action, intention, and responsibility will sufce.4 Finally, since this is an essay about our business relationships, let me say a few words about which business relationships I am discussing. It is not safe simply to assume that ethical conclusions about one type of relationship, such as being an investor, necessarily apply to another type of relationship, such as being an employee. Likewise, we cannot assume that these relationships are ethically symmetrical; being an employee may be, in some ways, importantly ethically different from being an employer. For present purposes, I am interested in the types of relationships that individuals enter into most widely. Thus, I focus on the following: being an investor, being a consumer, and being an employee. I aim to show that, as far as the problem of ethical distance is concerned, the same conclusions can be reached about each of these relationships.

Banks ofcers, or the Bank itself as an entityare partly responsible for the additional cases of cancer. Why? Banks pay interest because they use their depositors money to invest in and lend money to third parties So if First National uses my money to support businesses that in turn act immorally, we must defeasibly infer that I am partly responsible. Denying this would turn First National into a money laundromat, and ethics must not respect money laundering. (pp. 439440) Kolers is careful to specify that he is using money laundering in an ethical rather than a legal sense, and so his conclusion stands even if no one involved is breaking any laws, and even if no one is trying to hide what they are doing. He goes on to argue that we must institute especially challenging screens on our investments. Not only must we avoid investing in companies that engage in unethical behavior, but we must restrict our investments to those companies that similarly screen their own investments, on pain of our own prots being unsuccessfully laundered. This requires an iterated set of screenswe must screen the activities of the companies we consider investing in, and the activities of the companies they invest in, and the activities of the companies they invest in, and so on. Not only is this debilitatingly difcult, but since almost no actual business screens its own investments this thoroughly, almost no actual business becomes ethically eligible for investment. We are led to what Kolers calls the Austere Conclusion. To remain ethical ourselves, we must restrict our investments to a handful of small community banks and small companies that sufciently screen their own investments (if there are even any of these). This might remain merely of academic interest if we could be condent that unethical activity was exceptionally rare. In that case, we might conclude that such stringent ethical screening of investments becomes unnecessary. However, that is not the world we live in. Kolers is at pains to provide examples of ethically objectionable behavior on the part of large corporations, and he suggests that a handful of industries might be systematically immoral (p. 444). However, even if we disagree with specic examples, we can be condent, unfortunately, that unethical behavior is not exceptionally rare. Scandals abound in the news media, and surely much unethical behavior goes publicly unreported. If it is true that ethics must not respect money laundering, then we must avoid chains of investment (however long and tenuous) that link us to such behavior. Given the interconnectedness of the modern economy, this will restrict our investment options severely. It might be objected that we are often unaware of unethical activity and that we cannot be held responsible for activity we know nothing about. Kolers replies that we

The Austere Conclusion Kolers (2001) provides one of the few sustained discussions of what I am calling the problem of ethical distance. Kolers primary example is a hypothetical First National Bank that lends money to BigChemCo, which in turn builds a plant upriver from a Latin American village and pollutes the water supply, causing dozens of extra cases of cancer (p. 439). Let us grant that BigChemCos actions in this case are immoral. Kolers concludes that even the depositors of First National Bankand not, say, just the

Alternatively, my discussion could be cashed out in terms of blameworthiness (instead of responsibility). Given the intuitive conceptions I am working with, I do not think this would alter the central arguments of the paper.

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have an ethical obligation to attempt to nd outhence the requirement for iterated ethical screening of investment. I would reply, more simply, that we do not really need to attempt to nd out. Given the vast interconnectedness of the global economy, once we accept that ethics must not respect money laundering, that is all we need to know that virtually any investment we might make is tainted. We may not know where the taint stems from, but we can be condent it is there. The Austere Conclusion is austere indeed. The conclusion becomes even more austere when we realize that it also may apply to our employment and purchasing relationships (and not just our investment decisions). If it is impermissible to invest in a company that fails to screen its own investments (or its own behavior), then why would it be permissible to work there? Similarly, if ethics must not respect money laundering, why would it respect making purchases from ethically tainted rms?5 Furthermore, the idea that investing, employment, and purchasing are ethically in the same boat as one another gains intuitive support if we return to the example with which I opened the paper. Recall Jims Catering, which occasionally hires assassins. Would you invest in Jims? Hire Jims? Work at Jims? Presumably not. However, if we must apply the Austere Conclusion to our employment and purchasing decisions, as well as our investment decisions, we will have very little opportunity for ethical participation in the economy at all. The Austere Conclusion appears to doom us to live economically cold, small lives. Intuitively, however, this is too much to take. We might reject the Austere Conclusion simply on the grounds that it is too demanding.6 However, we might also reject it on the grounds that it does not comport with our ethical intuitions in specic cases. The Austere Conclusion seems to imply that it is wrong to own shares in virtually any mutual fund, wrong to work for almost any business, wrong even to buy a cup of coffee or a dozen eggs. Surely, it is not wrong to do these things. In fact, the ethical permissibility of doing these things seems to be something we can be even more certain of than the Austere Conclusion itself. Therefore,

something must be wrong with the Austere Conclusion.7 I think its problem is its reliance on the idea that ethics must not respect money laundering. This principle seems to apply in some cases, but it must be amended in order for equilibrium to be restored to our ethical thought.

Money Laundering What sorts of relationships must be avoided if money laundering is unethical? In places, Kolers speaks of supporting immoral activity, and elsewhere he speaks of participating in unethical activity. Unfortunately, both of these notions are vague, and Kolers does not develop them. He also speaks of funding and of beneting from immoral activity, but he is never entirely clear on what his anti-money laundering principle rules out, or why. At this point, it is useful to turn to a treatment of the problem given by Irvine (1987). Irvine considers two principles that I will focus on here.8 The rst of these is the Tainted-Prots Principle, according to which it is immoral to act so as to prot from the wrongdoing of others. Irvine imagines a hypothetical company, called XYZ, which uses slave labor to produce a poison the only known use of which is to produce lingering, painful death. According to the TaintedProts Principle, it would be wrong to buy stock in XYZ because its prots are tainted, so that by becoming a part owner of the company in question and sharing in its tainted prots, I myself become morally tainted (pp. 235236). This is an intuitively plausible principle, as we instinctively recoil from accepting blood money. Moreover, this principle ts well with the anti-money laundering principle. If Susan prots from XYZ stock and gives the money to John, who in turn gives the money to Paula, Paulas ethical
7

For discussion of the notion of taint, see Mellema (2003) and Irvine (1987). 6 This objection is sometimes leveled against versions of utilitarianism, the locus classicus being Williams (1973). Williams grounds the objection in the permissibility of pursuing personal life projects, which can be ruled out by excessively demanding ethical systems. Other times the objection is grounded in the idea that it is possible to go above and beyond the call of duty and that, thus, any claims that ethics requires extreme sacrice are suspect. Other times the objection is grounded in the idea that ethics must provide guidance for living a good and reasonably achievable human life, and that, thus, extremely demanding ethical systems cannot be correct. Chappell (2009) contains a collection of recent discussions of the demandingness objection.

Here, I am making an intuitive appeal after the manner of John Rawls method of reective equilibrium. This method calls for seeking equilibrium between our general and our specic ethical judgments. The Austere Conclusion is a general judgment; our judgments about such things as whether it is ethically permissible to buy a cup of coffee are specic ones. Ultimately, we must give up (or rene) certain of these judgments to reach equilibrium. Insofar as I give preference to those judgments in which we have greater condence, philosophers will also recognize a familiar move from anti-skeptical arguments given by some epistemologists. 8 Irvine considers another principle, the Evil-Company Principle, which I do not discuss in the text. According to this principle, it is wrong to invest in evil companies, which are dened (roughly) as companies that either directly engage in evil activities or that produce products whose primary use is evil. Irvine rejects this principle on the grounds that it would be acceptable to invest in a company that is presently evil if that investment would be used to convert the company away from its evil practices (e.g., by replacing slave labor with free labor). Irrespective of this counter-example, I nd the EvilCompany Principle unhelpful, because we are left wondering why it is wrong to invest in evil companies. The principles I discuss in the text address this.

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position seems to be the same as if she had invested in XYZ herself (assuming, for the moment, that she knows the origin of the gift). It doesnt matter that the funds have changed hands in the meantime; if the prots are tainted, they are tainted.9 Despite the initial appeal of the Tainted-Prots Principle, however, Irvine provides a compelling counter-example to it. He imagines a crime-ridden neighborhood, and he notes that there are several ways one might prot from this situation. For example, one might offer guard or insurance services. Contrast this with opening a store that specializes in the sale of crowbars, tools to pick locks with, glass cutters, etc. (p. 236). Irvine observes, correctly enough, that there is nothing obviously wrong with the guard or insurance services but something decidedly problematic about the last scenario. On the basis of this example, Irvine rejects the Tainted-Prots Principle entirely, and replaces it with the Enablement Principle. According to this principle, it is wrong to enable immoral activity (such as by selling tools for burglary in a high-crime neighborhood). The Enablement Principle is also intuitive, but it faces difculties of its own: Irvine acknowledges that the Enablement Principle may not seem applicable to the investments that most ordinary investors make, for two reasons. First, individual investors normally make relatively small investments in large rms, and they normally buy old stock (stock that has previously been purchased by other investors). For both of these reasons, typical investments by typical investors may not seem to enable rms to do much of anything. If it is wrong to buy a small amount of stock in XYZ from a previous investoras Irvine appears to assume, and as seems correctthe Enablement Principle does not seem able to explain this. Irvine offers two replies. First, he argues that secondary markets in stocks enable the primary ones, and thus buying stock from previous investors ultimately does enable the rms in question (and not just the previous investors). Second, Irvine buttresses the Enablement Principle with an appeal to a Universalizability Principle. On Irvines version of this latter principle, it can be wrong to do something if everyones doing it would have undesirable consequences.10 Irvines example is that it can be wrong to walk across the grass because there would be harmful consequences if everyone did so (even if no harm would come from your doing so). If we accept this sort of Universalizability Principle, then it can be wrong to make even a small investment in a rm like XYZ because
9

The fungibility of money creates difculties here. For the sake of simplicity, I am here assuming that it is the same money that is changing hands. 10 This is different from Immanuel Kants famous version of the Universalizability Principle. Interpretation of Kant is problematic, but Kants principle appeals to what it is possible for a rational being to will into occurrence.

if everyone made such an investment, the rms evil activities would be enabled. I nd these replies to be beside the point, for two reasons. First, they do not address the motivation for assuming in the rst place that it would be wrong to buy a small amount of stock in XYZ from a previous investor. Irvine seems to work from the implicit intuition that this would be so, and then he struggles to explain this in terms of the Enablement Principle plus a Universalizability Principle. It seems more natural to suppose that what ultimately motivates this intuition is the Tainted-Prots Principle. Second, we do not need to ultimately choose between the Enablement Principle and the Tainted-Prots Principle. Instead, we canand shouldaccept both. By considering a further example, we can see that Irvine is too quick to entirely dismiss the Tainted-Prots Principle. Suppose that a previous investor in XYZ offers to simply give you her protable shares in the enterprise. If you were to accept the shares, you would not be enabling the activities of the rm, but you would be proting from them. Moreover, even if everyone (or as many people as possible) were to accept such a gift, the activities of XYZ would not thereby be enabled. Thus, on the reasonable assumption that it would be wrong to accept the shares, the difculty seems to be the taint in the prots. The Enablement Principle does not provide the whole story as to when we can be responsible for the wrongdoing of others. But what are we to say in response to Irvines initial counter-example to the Tainted-Prots Principle? (Recall that this involves the ethically unproblematic behavior of proting from high crime by providing guard and insurance services.) There are two approaches we might adopt. First, we might rene our understanding of the principle so as to evade this specic counter-example (and others like it). For example, we might say that proting from offering guard services in a high crime neighborhood is not to prot from immoral activity. Although it is true that the prots would vanish if the crime vanished, the crime does not produce the prots. It is the guarding that produces the prots, and since guarding is not immoral, the prots are not tainted. Alternatively, we could accept the Tainted-Prots Principle as one that is subject to certain enabling or disabling conditions.11 I am not prepared to lay out such enabling or disabling conditions here, but if we accept the plausibility of the existence of such conditions, then we will not reject a moral principle simply on the grounds of a single counter-example. Rather, we will choose to hold the principle defeasibly. Ultimately, we can and should say that, in appropriate circumstances, it is wrong to accept tainted prots, and that
11

This is the sort of approach that moral particularists, such as Dancy (2004), would favor.

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it is wrong to enable immoral activity. In fact, we seem to need both principles to explain all the intuitive cases we would like to explain. With both principles in hand, we can also explain the concept of money laundering. If it is wrong to accept tainted prots, the anti-money laundering principle says it will be wrong to accept those prots no matter how many intermediaries there are between ourselves and the original producers of those prots. The taint cannot be washed out. Similarly, if it is wrong to enable immoral activity, the anti-money laundering principle says it will be wrong to enable any wrongdoing, no matter how many intermediaries there are between ourselves and the ultimate wrongdoers. It is no better to enable the enablers of wrongdoing than to simply enable the wrongdoing. Given this, if we reject money laundering, we still apparently remain faced with the Austere Conclusion. Investing in almost any rm likely involves accepting some share of tainted prots. Similarly, if we work for others, our salaries are likely to be paid with some share of tainted prots. Furthermore, when we make purchases, we enable the activities of those we buy from, and ultimately, given the interconnectedness of the economy, we are bound to enable unethical activity by others. To avoid the Austere Conclusion, we must weaken our commitment to the principle that ethics must not respect money laundering. At the same time, the principle retains intuitive force in at least some cases. Recall again the example with which I opened the essay: Big Research University hires Sophias Event Planning, which hires Jims Catering, which hires Hits R Us, which is an assassination services rm. If we say that ethics allows money laundering, then nothing would be wrong with Big Research University or Sophias entering into these business relationshipseven with their eyes fully open. Surely this is not right.

Doing the Laundry The solution is to recognize greater complexity. Ethics canand doesrespect money laundering under the right conditions. Even Kolers implicitly recognizes this, for he ultimately moderates his commitment to the Austere Conclusion, arguing that it is permissible to make tainted investments if this is coupled appropriately with shareholder activism that agitates for ethical reform. But what is this activism if not a form of laundering? Moreover, whether or not we agree that shareholder activism by itself succeeds in laundering tainted prots, it seems beyond dispute that in some circumstances laundering is possible. Consider, for example, a political candidate who discovers, after the fact, that a certain campaign contributor earned her fortune via unethical means. Such examples occur in real life, and when they do, candidates often donate the

money to charity. What else are they to do? To keep the money violates the Tainted-Prots Principle (aside from looking bad politically), and to return the money to the immoral contributor would seem even worse. So contributing to charity seems the right thing to do. But note that now there are charitiesand individuals served by those charitieswho are beneting from the tainted funds. Surely these charities and individuals are not to blame for accepting funds under these circumstances. Their alternative is simply to refuse the funds, in which case the funds will (presumably) be used for less admirable purposes, which hardly seems ethically preferable. Thus, it seems possible, under the right circumstances, for ethics to respect money laundering.12 Since this is true in principle, it is worth further pursuing the conditions under which it may apply. We have seen that enabling or proting from the wrongdoing of others can transmit responsibility for that wrongdoing. My proposal is that such responsibility varies inversely with our ethical distance from the wrongdoing. I suggest that ethical distance is a function of (at least) the following things: (1) our knowledge of the wrongdoing and of our connection to it; (2) the number of intermediaries between ourselves and those doing the wrongdoing; (3) the proportion of our prots that is attributable to the wrongdoing (or, in the case of enabling, the degree to which our activities enable the wrongdoing); (4) the degree to which our connection to the wrongdoing is voluntary; and (5) social or institutional roles we may occupy that might enable us or require us to moderate or prevent the wrongdoing. Let me discuss each of these in turn. Returning again to my original example: Big Research University (BRU) hires Sophias Event Planning, which in turn hires Jims Catering, which in turn hires Hits R Us. It is arguable that BRU is both enabling and beneting from the behavior of Hits R Us (revenues ultimately ow to Hits R Us from BRU, and BRU benets from having its events planned by Sophias, which benets by hiring Jims, etc.). However, if BRU has no knowledge of the activities of Hits R Us, and no reason to suspect such activities, BRU is ethically distant from such activities. The same would be true if BRU was aware of the activities of Hits R Us but had no knowledge of, and no reason to suspect, the
12

Kolers rejects the idea that it is permissible knowingly to seek or accept tainted prots for the purpose of donating them to charity, but I do not see why this should be the case. If ones prots in their entirety are donated to a worthy cause, that seems sufcient to me to launder tainted prots. However, the situation is different if the Enablement Principle comes into playthat is, if ones economic activity is enabling immoral activity. In that case, donating prots to charity results in a sort of Robin Hood launderingharming some to benet others. Kolers rejects this, I think rightly. Apart from Kolers, I have been unable to nd discussions of this specic issue in the philosophical literature.

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ultimate connection between Sophias Event Planning and Hits R Us. This is a matter of degree, however. If ofcials at BRU have heard credible rumors of the activities of Hits R Us and do nothing to investigate them, and also nothing to change their business relationships, the ethical distance between BRU and Hits R Us decreases. Note that at this point, I am not making any specic claims about when or whether BRU should alter its business relationships, nor about when or whether BRU becomes responsible for the activities of Hits R Us. Instead, I am (so far) arguing that BRUs ethical distance from the wrongdoing varies based on epistemic factors such as the strength of BRUs evidence of its connection to that wrongdoing. To provide another example, an individual consumer who hears credible reports that a particular manufacturer is exploiting slave labor in a third-world country but continues to buy products from that manufacturer is ethically closer to the exploitation than another consumer who has no reason to suspect the occurrence of the immoral activity. Our ethical distance from wrongdoing committed by others is determined in part by our epistemic situation. Another factor that inuences our ethical distance from wrongdoing is the number of intermediaries between ourselves and those committing the wrongdoing. We are more responsible for wrongdoing the more directly we enable it or benet from it. Thus, Jims Catering is ethically closer to the activities of Hits R Us than Sophias Event Planning is, and Sophias is ethically closer to it than Big Research University is. Note again that I am here neither making claims about where responsibility begins and ends nor about when we ought to take action to alter our business relationships. Instead, I am supposing that responsibility comes in degrees, and that it varies in part in relation to the number of intermediaries between ourselves and those engaged in wrongdoing. To provide an additional example, if an individual consumer buys a cup of coffee from a local coffee shop, and the coffee shop buys its coffee from coffee suppliers that cheat individual coffee growers (say by using inaccurate weights and measures), then the coffee shop is ethically closer to the wrongdoing than the individual consumer. Similarly, to return to the example from Kolers discussed earlier, if Big Research University opens a deposit account with First National Bank, which in turn lends to BigChemCo, which (ex hypothesi) immorally pollutes water supplies, then First National is ethically closer to BigChemCos wrongdoing than Big Research University is. And BRU is closer to the wrongdoing than its own students, employees and suppliers.13
13

It is arguable that not all employees of BRU share the same ethical distance; for example, those deciding where to invest BRUs funds may be ethically closer to BigChemCo than those whose jobs do not involve this. This leads to the issue of duties and opportunities related to the occupation of institutional roles, which is discussed below.

A third factor determining ethical distance is what I would like to call the dilution factorthat is, the proportion of our prots that are attributable to unethical activity, or, in the case of enabling, the degree to which our activities enable the wrongdoing. Suppose that First National Bank normally has ethically pristine lending practices, but for some reason, it holds the one ethically problematic loan to BigChemCo in its portfolio (perhaps this loan is a holdover from an earlier time period). In this case, depositors in First National will be receiving only a miniscule proportion of their interest from tainted prots, and they will bear less responsibility for wrongdoing than they would if First National lent mostly, or exclusively, to ethically questionable companies. Similarly, a student at Big Research University bears some connection to Hits R Us, for a portion of their tuition revenue ows to the assassins. However, this will be a small proportion of such tuition revenue, and the student will be ethically farther from Hits R Us than someone who directly hires Jims Catering. A fourth factor determining ethical distance is the degree to which our connection to wrongdoing is voluntary. What it means for something to be voluntary is a complex philosophical question dating back (at least) to Aristotle; I cannot adequately address that question here, but I work with the intuitive idea that some actions can be more voluntary than others. Aristotle gives the example of sailors caught in a storm, faced with the risk of shipwreck; in order to lighten their ships load and increase their odds of surviving the storm, the crew throws the cargo overboard. In one sense, this activity is voluntaryit is not mere reexbut certainly this is not the paradigm of voluntary activity. The sailors do not want to throw the cargo overboard, and if they had any reasonable alternative to doing so, they would not do it.14 Consider now, for example, an individual who is out of work and desperate to feed her family; a job offer nally comes, from BigChemCo. This individual may be aware of the (ex hypothesi) immoral activities of her potential employer, but she may not possess much reasonable alternative, under the circumstances, to accepting the job offer. Even if we think, perhaps starkly, that she should abstainbetter to go hungry than work for such a rmcompare her to another individual who has plentiful job offers but chooses to work for BigChemCo because of a higher salary or a more pleasant commute. The latter individual has (in the relevant sense) more freedom of choice, and thus, her employment with BigChemCo is more voluntary than the employment of the rst individual, who has little alternative. The rst individual is, thus, ethically further from the companys
14

For a portion of Aristotles discussion of these issues, including the cargo example, see Nicomachean Ethics III.1-5.

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wrongdoing than the second individual. Again, this says nothing about whether either or both should refrain from working there, but there is an ethical difference between the two. They do not have the same ethical distance from the wrongdoing in question. To provide another example, consider administrators at BRU making a decision about which events planning rm to hire for an upcoming event. Compare the situation in which Sophias Event Planning is the only events planning rm in town with one in which such rms are plentiful. In the latter case, a choice to hire Sophias is more voluntary than in the former. Hence, in the latter case, the ethical distance between BRU and Hits R Us is less than in the former. Finally, ethical distance may vary based on specic social or institutional roles we occupy, and what we do with those roles. The latter qualication is important, for simply being in a particular role may either increase or decrease our ethical distance from wrongdoing, depending on what we do with our position. Consider, for example, administrators at Big Research University who are tasked with deciding where to deposit university funds. If these administrators choose to deposit with First National Bank, which in turn lends to BigChemCo, they are closer to BigChemCos wrongdoing than other employees of Big Research University. Alternatively, if these administrators use their position in order to attempt to steer the deposits elsewhere, or to inuence the lending behavior of First National, then even if they are unsuccessful, they become ethically more distant from BigChemCo than they otherwise would be.15 An adaptation of one of Mellemas (2003) examples provides another illustration of this. Suppose that Jason works for a large corporation and shreds documents that he has a legal obligation to preserve, and suppose the shredding is witnessed by three fellow employees, who know what is occurring but do nothing to stop him. Suppose that one of these fellow employees is Jasons immediate supervisor, another is a co-worker from the same department, and a third is an employee from the IT department who is present in order to work on one of the departmental computers. According to my concept of ethical distance, and on the reasonable assumption that supervisors have a duty to prevent wrongdoing by their subordinates, the supervisor is ethically closer to the wrongdoing than either the departmental colleague or the IT employee. It also seems plausible that the departmental colleague is ethically closer to the wrongdoing than the IT employee, on the assumption that employees ordinarily have greater responsibility for what occurs in their own departments than in others. Again, this is not to say that the colleague from IT has no ethical obligation to interfere
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with the wrongdoing; it is also not to say that she does have an obligation to interfere. Rather, it is to make the relative claim that, of the three employees, the IT colleague is ethically farthest from the unethical shredding. To recapitulate, I have claimed that our ethical distance from wrongdoing committed by others varies as a function of: (1) our knowledge of the wrongdoing and of our connection to it; (2) the number of intermediaries between ourselves and those doing the wrongdoing; (3) the proportion of our prots that is attributable to the wrongdoing (or, in the case of enabling, the degree to which our activities enable the wrongdoing); (4) the degree to which our connection to the wrongdoing is voluntary; and (5) social or institutional roles we may occupy that might enable us or require us to moderate or prevent the wrongdoing. At this point, two objections may be raised. First, someone might complain that there is no unied concept of ethical distance at all, and that I have merely identied a motley crew of attributes that inuence our degree of responsibility for wrongdoing by others. I would largely agree with this claim, but it matters little. I am not making a metaphysical claim about the existence of a moral property denoted by the phrase ethical distance, and I am not claiming that we have a pre-existing, unied concept of ethical distance. Instead, I am trying to introduce a new concept, one that is indeed a function of various other concepts which may not otherwise be related. The justication for doing this is simply linguistic facility. Second, someone might complain that the notion of ethical distance, as I have formulated it, is overly complex and cumbersome. In reply to this, I would say that we must be willing to accept complexity in ethics.16 In ethics, simple answers and simple principles are likely to lead us to wrong answers. As to whether the notion of ethical distance is too cumbersome to be of any use, I attempt to put it to use in the next section, and the reader may judge how successful I am. However, it is true that there is no formula to follow in applying the concept, and no precise rule for measuring ethical distance. Rather, judgment is called for in individual cases. I take this, however, to be a virtue of my account.17

16

This, incidentally, ts with Kolers idea that shareholder activism can be used to moderate the Austere Conclusion.

As Aristotle says in Nicomachean Ethics I.3, We must not expect more precision than the subject-matter [ethics] admits of. This is W. D. Rosss translation from Ackrill and Urmson (1998). 17 Virtue theorists, moral particularists, ethical pluralists, and even many Kantians will agree with the importance of judgment in particular cases.

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The Concept of Ethical Distance in Practice So far, nothing I have said tells us when we are too close to wrongdoing. Instead, I have claimed that responsibility comes in degrees, and that responsibility varies inversely with ethical distance. However, this claim provides little guidance about when it is permissible or impermissible to engage in certain business relationships. My proposal is two-fold. First, the strength of our moral reasons comes in degrees, as well. Thus, the stronger our responsibility for a given instance of wrongdoingthe smaller our ethical distance to itthe stronger our reason to sever our connection to that activity. However, we can have some reason to disconnect ourselves from given activity without having a moral obligation to disconnect from it. This is because morally responsible is a vague predicate, like the classic philosophical example of bald. A vague predicate is one that clearly applies in some cases and clearly fails to apply in others, but for which there is a range of cases in which it is difcult (or impossible) to say whether the predicate applies. So, for example, a man who begins with a full head of hair is clearly not bald. If he begins to lose hair and continues to do so, at some point he will clearly become bald, but it will be difcult (if not impossible) to say the precise point at which it is appropriate to call him bald. To use another famous example, one grain of sand does not form a heap, nor do two grains, nor three, but some number (say ten thousand) clearly does. However, we cannot say precisely how many grains of sand are required for there to be a heap of sand. Both heap and bald function as vague predicatesand I am suggesting that morally responsible does as well. There are some cases in which our ethical distance from wrongdoing is great enough that we are clearly not responsible for it, and other cases where it is small enough that we clearly are responsible for it, and a range of cases in the middle where it is difcult to say precisely whether we are responsible or not. My proposal is that when we become clearly responsible for the wrongdoing of others, then we have an ethical obligation to sever our connection from it. Even in cases where we have no such obligation, however, we may still have some reason to do so, in so far as we have some degree of responsibility for the wrongdoing. In such cases, severing our connection to the wrongdoing will be optional (and perhaps supererogatory). With this in mind, let us apply the concept of ethical distance in some specic, real-world cases: (1) making an investment in a mutual fund; (2) accepting employment (say, at a university); and (3) purchasing a cup of coffee at a coffee shop. In each of these cases, without further information, there is no specic reason to suspect that we are proting from or enabling wrongdoing. However, given the interconnectedness of the economy, even without further information,

there is good reason to suppose that each of these transactions does link us, at some distance, to unethical behavior. Thus, we might be responsible for wrongdoing that does occur; given the high likelihood of the existence of wrongdoing, lack of knowledge of specic wrongdoing does not create enough ethical distance to remove our responsibility for wrongdoing that may occur. However, other factors create enough ethical distance between us and any wrongdoing that may exist such that, in many cases, each of the above three transactions is permissible. The Austere Conclusion does not stand. In the case of investing in a mutual fund, the number of intermediaries between oneself and wrongdoing may be relatively small; it is a few short hops from executive to fund manager to shareholder. Tainted prots, then, would seem to remain tainted, for investing in a mutual fund that invests in a problematic rm would not be much different than accepting a gift given from dividends in shares in Hits R Us. However, in the case of a mutual fund, the dilution factor will come into play heavily. Most mutual funds invest in a large (and ever-changing) number of companies, and the amount of the funds return that is due to any single company is likely to be relatively small. Moreover, the portion of any single companys prots that is due to unethical activity is also likely to be only a portion of that companys prots. This makes the portion of an individual investors return that is traceable to unethical activity even smaller. Moreover, much investing in mutual funds is done through retirement plans that restrict individuals investment options. In these cases, individuals may not have much reasonable alternative other than to invest in some mutual funds; this lack of reasonable alternative creates even more ethical distance between the individual investor and wrongdoing that may occur. In the ordinary case, then, and especially in the case of retirement plans, investing in mutual funds would seem to be permissible. There is sufcient ethical distance between individual investors and any wrongdoing that may occur. Having said this, however, if an investor has reason to believe that a signicant share of a given funds prots is due to wrongdoing, that fund should be avoided. What of accepting employment at a university? Universities generally receive their funds from tuition, gifts, investment proceeds, and (in some cases) tax revenues. Moreover, universities generally do not screen the sources of these funds. Any of them could be the source of illgotten gain, and surely some of them are, in some cases. These funds, in turn, are used to pay the salaries of employees. Once again, there are not many intermediaries between employees and the source of the fundsindeed, the university, conceived as an entity, may be the only intermediary. However, once again, the dilution factor comes into play. The proportion of any individuals salary

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that is due to unethical activity is likely to be small, thus creating a fair amount of ethical distance between individual employees and any tainted prots (in this case, salary). There is another side to the issue of accepting employment, however, and that is the issue of enablement. When one accepts employment, whether at a university or elsewhere, one often directly enables the activities of ones employer. However, much depends on specics as to what activities are enabled. Perhaps ranking administrators and development ofcers enable all the activities of a university, but individual employees, from custodians to ofce staff to professors, do not equally enable all activities. If, as some philosophers argue, it is wrong to conduct certain sorts of research, then one ought not to accept positions that enable those sorts of research, but many positions at universities will not do so. In the vast majority of cases, accepting employment at a university will not enable immoral activities, and, indeed, such employment can contribute to fostering the opposite (say, by providing the opportunity to teach ethics classes). Finally, what of the simple act of purchasing a cup of coffee at a coffee shop? Some will argue that individual coffee growers, often poor and located in developing countries, are often immorally exploited by their more powerful business partners. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that this is true. It remains difcult to say whether buying a cup of coffee at the retail level is itself immoral. There is a chain from coffee cooperative to wholesaler to retailer to individual consumer, and this increases the consumers ethical distance from the exploitation. This would seem to be one of the cases where it is difcult to say whether the individual consumer bears responsibility for the exploitation; there is considerable ethical distance in this case, but is it enough? There may thus be some ethical reason to, say, purchase fair trade coffee, but this may not be ethically obligatory. Alternatively, if there is no immoral exploitation of individual coffee growers to begin with, then the question of whether it is permissible to buy a cup of coffee simply becomes the question of whether it is permissible to participate in the global economy at all. Once again, we can be condent that at some point in the various, long, and tangled chains of transactions involved in providing cups of coffee, there is some unethical activity. When we buy a cup of coffee, to some degree, we presumably both benet from and enable this unethical activity. But here the chains are likely to be long indeed, and the proportion of our contribution to the unethical activity small. The existence of unethical activity and the interconnectedness of the global economy lead us toward the Austere Conclusion, but the concept of ethical distance prevents us, ultimately, from reaching it.

Conclusion I have argued that our ethical distance from the wrongdoing of others is a function of a variety of factors, and that our responsibility for such wrongdoing varies inversely with our ethical distance from it. Furthermore, I have proposed that the concept of moral responsibility is vague. At some point we become clearly responsible for the wrongdoing of others, and in such cases we have an ethical obligation to sever our connection to it. In cases when our ethical distance from wrongdoing is sufciently great, however, it is permissible to remain connected to it. This allows us to participate in the economy in ordinary ways, such as by investing in mutual funds, accepting employment, and making purchases. However, there are no rm general rules for deciding which cases are morally acceptable and which are not. In each case, we must bring our intuition, judgment, and the concept of ethical distance to bear. Why should we accept this set of answers to the problems raised by the existence of unethical activity in the economy? Simply, because it works. The Austere Conclusion is unacceptable, both because it is too demanding and because it does not t with many of our intuitive judgments in individual cases. At the same time, there are clear cases where connection to wrongdoing is itself immoral. By accepting the concept of ethical distance and applying it as I have done here, we can reconcile our various moral intuitions. The solution I have offered here is a plausibleand perhaps the onlyway of doing so.
Ethical Standards research. This article is not based on any human or animal

Conict of interest This article has not been sponsored by funding from any organization (other than the authors normal professorial salary).

References
Ackrill, J. L., & Urmson, J. O. (Eds.). (1998). The Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press. Chappell, T. (Ed.). (2009). The problem of moral demandingness: New philosophical essays. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dancy, J. (2004). Ethics without principles. New York: Oxford University Press. Fischer, J. M., & Ravizza, M. (Eds.). (1993). Perspectives on moral responsibility. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Irvine, W. B. (1987). The ethics of investing. Journal of Business Ethics, 6(3), 233242. Kolers, A. (2001). Ethical investing: The permissibility of participation. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 9(4), 435452. Mellema, G. (2003). Responsibility, taint, and ethical distance in business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 47, 125132. Williams, B. (1973). A critique of utilitarianism. In J. J. C. Smart & B. Williams (Eds.), Utilitarianism: For and against (pp. 77150). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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