The middle managers are given directions by the CEO. The CEO needs to meet profit targets, or she'll be fired by the board. The board is beholden to the shareholders. There's always someone to pass blame to.
When you go to work, you don't give up your moral agency.
The consequences for each higher level on that ladder are significantly less. Those with the least to lose, shareholders, have most of the power. Therefore those should be held to the greatest account. Those with the most power. The reason the system is structured this way is exactly that, those with most power make the rules. And pass the responsibility down the chain to the lowest peons. The recent disasters, well 6 years old disaster, like the Deep Horizon Well fire come to mind.
> Those with the least to lose, shareholders, have most of the power.
The shareholders have the most to lose, not the least.
Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan's $100 million stake in your company (for example) is worth a lot more than all of those jobs put together. That's why they have all the power.
Not sure how I should respond to this. On one hand yes that's true. But on the other hand to what extent do the Board of Directors of any of the companies that it invests in respond to the stock holder? The stock holders in that sense are divorced from the running of the company and can't be held to account, because they can't influence the company at all. Their stock managers might be to some extent be liable. Again it's about the amount of power that you have in what the company does that determines your culpability in my opinion.
When you go to work, you don't give up your moral agency.