Systemic responsibility: a moral economy framework for the political-economic role of the firm

Abstract

This paper aims to address a critical “blind spot” in traditional business ethics and business–society scholarship: the tendency to treat macroeconomic and political-economic dynamics as external context rather than domains of corporate responsibility. It seeks to transition the discourse from a firm-centric model to one of systemic responsibility. The research uses an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on political economy and heterodox economics. By synthesizing these fields with normative ethics, the paper develops a conceptual moral economy framework to analyze the aggregated societal effects of corporate behavior. The paper introduces and defines the concept of systemic responsibility. It argues that corporations are not merely moral agents within a preexisting system but are active co-creators of the macroeconomic and political-economic structures that govern society. This influence is exerted through strategic, political and financial channels that aggregate across firms to shape systemic outcomes. The framework challenges the boundaries of existing theories like Stakeholder Theory and corporate social responsibility. It suggests that scholars must shift their unit of analysis from the individual firm to the broader systems that firms inhabit and help construct. The paper explores how systemic responsibility impacts three critical areas: distributive justice, intergenerational sustainability and democratic legitimacy. It provides a theoretical basis for holding firms accountable for systemic outcomes such as financial instability and widening inequality. By moving beyond the “firm-as-an-island” perspective, this paper offers a novel conceptual tool for understanding corporate duty in an era of systemic crises. It bridges the gap between micro-level business ethics and macro-level political economy.