Stakeholder-Oriented Firms Have Feelings and Moral Standing Too

Quintelier, Katinka J. P.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.814624

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol. , 21 February 2022

Sec. Organizational Psychology

Volume 13 - 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.814624

Stakeholder-Oriented Firms Have Feelings and Moral Standing Too

$\r\nKatinka J. P. Quintelier*$ Katinka J. P. Quintelier^*

Department of Management and Organization, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

A central claim in stakeholder theory is that, if we see stakeholders as human beings, we will attribute higher moral standing or show more moral consideration to stakeholders. But would the same hold for firms? In this paper, I apply the concepts of humanization and moral standing to firms, and I predict that (1) individuals attribute higher moral standing to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms, because (2) individuals attribute more experience (such as feelings) to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms. Five experiments support these predictions across different operationalizations of stakeholder and profit orientations. The analyses show that moral standing attributions are not fully explained by attributions of agency (such as thinking) to firms, or by attributions of experience or agency to human stakeholders (instead of firms). By unearthing the importance of experience attributions for moral standing attributions to firms, this work provides novel insights in ongoing legal, philosophical and public debates related to firms’ moral standing. The findings also bring the debate about firms’ moral standing to the heart of stakeholder theory, and lead to new normative and descriptive research questions about the interests of firms and their stakeholders.

Introduction

Certain court decisions have given corporations (for-profits as well as non-profits) moral standing, or rights and protections that are typically given to human beings only. In 2012, a representative of AT&T argued in court that AT&T had privacy rights because AT&T—as an organization rather than as a collection of individuals—could be embarrassed (FCC v. AT and T Inc., 2011). At times, such arguments resonate: the U.S. Supreme Court has granted corporations legal rights and protections, by virtue of these corporations’ capacity for having feelings (Garrett, 2014; Iuliano, 2015). At other times, court officials deny that corporations have moral standing. For instance, a Philippine court argued that corporations are “not entitled to moral damages” because they have “no feelings, no emotions and no sense” (LBC v. CA, 1994).

How can we explain this apparent disagreement? The above examples suggest that, when individuals perceive corporations as having a mind—human-like mental characteristics such as feelings, embarrassment, emotions or sense –, they are likely to attribute moral standing to these corporations. But this raises other questions. Which corporations are more likely to elicit mind attributions? And which dimensions of mind, this is, what kind of attributed human-like mental characteristics, are likely to elicit moral standing attributions? To investigate this, I apply the psychology of humanization, and how it underlies moral standing attributions, to one specific set of corporations: firms, or for-profits.

In this paper I empirically investigate the effect of a business orientation—a set of firm-level prescriptions about how a firm (a for-profit corporation) should balance stakeholders’ interests and profit (cf. Jones et al., 2007; Phillips, 2011; Freeman et al., 2020; Quintelier et al., 2021)—on mind and moral standing attributions to the firm. I compare stakeholder- and profit-oriented firms, as they are of growing importance for current theory (Freeman, 1984; Freeman et al., 2010, 2020; Parmar et al., 2010) and practice (Harrison et al., 2020). I then distinguish between two dimensions of mind—experience and agency—because empirical work has shown that experience attributions, compared to agency attributions, are stronger predictors of lay people’s moral standing attributions (Gray et al., 2012). Individuals attribute more experience to an entity if they perceive the entity to be more able to have emotions, feelings, or consciousness; and individuals attribute more agency to an entity if they perceive the entity to be more able to have intentions, free will, or a mind of its own (Gray et al., 2012). Insights from the psychology of humanization lead to the first prediction that individuals attribute more experience to a firm when they perceive the firm as stakeholder-oriented than when they perceive the firm as profit-oriented. This leads to the second prediction that higher experience attributions to a firm increase moral standing attributions to the firm. Five experiments support these predictions, across four different operationalizations of a stakeholder and profit orientation. Eliminating alternative explanations (Bernerth and Aguinis, 2016), the findings also show that moral standing attributions to a firm are not fully explained by attributions of agency to the firm. Moral standing attributions to a firm are also not fully explained by experience or agency attributions to the human stakeholders of the firm.

This work contributes to ongoing debates in business ethics about corporations’ moral standing. Both in the US and Europe, courts have decided that corporations have rights and protections similar to the rights and protections human beings have (Friedman, 2020). In contrast, according to Silver (2019), business ethicists tend to reject the idea that corporations have moral standing, and they tend focus on discussion about corporate moral responsibility instead. In addition, some court decisions granting moral standing to corporations have led to outrage among the general public (Levitt, 2015; Blair and Pollman, 2017). Despite this ongoing legal, public and professional debate, there is scant research about the psychological processes influencing moral standing attributions to corporations (for one exception, see Mentovich et al., 2016). This study is the first to empirically support the role of experience attributions in explaining individuals’ moral standing attributions to corporations; as such, it unearths experience attributions as a relatively overlooked argument in the debate.

The findings also open up novel research questions in stakeholder theory. The question of corporate moral standing turns out to be particularly important for stakeholder-oriented firms. If firms increasingly present themselves as more stakeholder-oriented (Harrison et al., 2020), this might gradually shift public opinion or court decisions on firms’ moral standing. This raises questions about how individuals will reason about the rights of the firm vs. the interests of its stakeholders (Quintelier et al., 2021). In sum, future work in business ethics and stakeholder theory can benefit from integrating additional insights from the psychology of humanization.

Theory and Hypotheses

When introducing the concept of moral standing (French, 1979; Donaldson, 1982; Werhane, 1985; Velasquez, 2003; Blair, 2015; Sepinwall, 2015; Hess, 2018), it is important to distinguish moral standing from responsibility. Moral psychologists speak of moral standing as the extent to which an entity can be harmed or wronged, and is deserving of moral consideration, for instance in the form of rights and protection (cf. Sytsma and Machery, 2012; Piazza et al., 2014; Silver, 2019). In contrast, responsibility means that the entity is held responsible for its actions (cf. Ashforth et al., 2020), that it has obligations or duties, or that it can be blamed for its actions (Manning, 1984; Velasquez, 2003). As noted by Hess (2013), moral standing and responsibility are sometimes conceptually conflated, but they are not the same. The difference can perhaps be made intuitively clear by pointing out that we show consideration for babies—they have moral standing—but we do not hold them responsible for their actions. Work in business ethics covers firms’ responsibility in great depth (Velasquez, 2003; Ruiz-Palomino et al., 2011; Hess, 2013, 2014, 2016), but questions about firms’ moral standing currently receive less attention in business ethics (for one exception, see Silver, 2019).

To investigate the psychological processes underlying moral standing attributions to corporations, it makes sense to look at firm-level constructs such as a business orientation. Legal scholars distinguish between for-profits and non-profits, and have suggested that non-profits have more rights than for-profits (Garrett, 2014). Management scholars also identify different firm-level constructs. Relevant to the current argument are stakeholder-oriented firms, which balance the interests of a broad group of stakeholders, and profit-oriented firms, which see (short-term) profit maximization as the goal of business (Jones et al., 2007; Phillips, 2011; Parmar et al., 2019; Freeman et al., 2020). The relevance of firm-level constructs in legal discourse begs the question if individuals also attribute more moral standing to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms. Stakeholder orientations are also increasingly relevant, as in 2019 181 CEO’s of leading U.S. American firms committed to leading their firms for the benefit of all stakeholders (Harrison et al., 2020). In addition, stakeholder theory is increasingly adopted as a theoretical lens across disciplines and countries (Laplume et al., 2008; Parmar et al., 2010; Fares et al., 2021). Because of this practical and theoretical relevance, I investigate the effect of a stakeholder vs. profit orientation on moral standing attributions to a firm. The next section explains the concepts of a stakeholder and profit orientation.

Stakeholder and Profit Orientation

I conceptualize the concept of a business orientation, which consists of a stakeholder and a profit orientation, in line with thinking in stakeholder theory (Jones et al., 2007; Freeman et al., 2010, 2020). A business orientation describes the extent to which a firm balances its stakeholders’ interests or prioritizes (short-term) financial performance, such as profit (Jones et al., 2007; Phillips, 2011; Freeman et al., 2020). Stakeholder interests and financial performance can go together (Jones et al., 2018), which we can denote as synergy (Tantalo and Priem, 2016). In this case, firms can be stakeholder-oriented and focus on balancing stakeholders’ interests, assuming that this strategy leads to long-term profit (Ruiz-Palomino et al., 2011; Jones et al., 2018); or firms can be profit-oriented and focus on maximizing profit, assuming that this strategy requires balancing stakeholders’ interests (Jensen, 2002). In addition, firms may also be faced with trade-offs, especially in the short term (Harrison and Bosse, 2013). In this case, firms can score high on stakeholder elements and low on profit elements, or high on profit elements and low on stakeholder elements (Brickson, 2005). In the absence of trade-offs or synergies, firms can also focus on stakeholder (profit) elements without being explicit about profit (stakeholder) elements. The experiments in this paper describe a firm’s orientation highlighting synergy (experiment 5), highlighting trade-offs (experiments 1 and 3), and without explicit trade-offs or synergy (experiments 2, 4, and 5). In all experiments, when a firm focuses on stakeholder elements, it is called stakeholder-oriented, and when a firm focuses on profit elements, it is called profit-oriented.

Stakeholder-oriented firms consider a broad range of stakeholders’ interests (Freeman et al., 2010). This leads to stakeholder interactions that are motivated by moral concerns (Donaldson, 1999) such as fairness concerns (Phillips, 2003; Bosse and Phillips, 2016). Examples of such interactions are more informal, trust-based contracts, solving problems through collaboration (Bridoux and Stoelhorst, 2014), and long-term cooperative relationships with stakeholders (Bridoux and Stoelhorst, 2014; Jones et al., 2018). In contrast, profit-oriented firms pursue the short-term maximization of their financial performance, such as profit (Friedman, 2007). Profit is argued to be more relevant for shareholders than for non-shareholder stakeholders (Greenley and Foxall, 1997, p. 277), but financial performance is also important for firms that do not have shareholders. A profit purpose leads to instrumental interactions with stakeholders, such as more formal and short-term contracts, hard bargaining, replacing stakeholders, and using legal procedures to solve problems (Brickson, 2005; Jones et al., 2007; Bridoux and Stoelhorst, 2014).

The Effect of a Business Orientation on Firms’ Moral Standing

Stakeholder scholars argue, and find, that there is a positive relationship between a stakeholder orientation, and seeing stakeholders as human beings who have mind and moral standing (Donaldson and Preston, 1995; McVea and Freeman, 2005; Harris and Freeman, 2008; Newkirk and Freeman, 2008; Purnell and Freeman, 2012; Quintelier et al., 2021). For instance, stakeholder scholars develop a stakeholder theory of the firm, which describes business as an activity consisting of human beings, whose interests are morally legitimate (Freeman, 1994; McVea and Freeman, 2005; Newkirk and Freeman, 2008; Freeman et al., 2010). However, building on the psychology of humanization, I argue that there is also a positive relationship between a stakeholder orientation and seeing the firm as a human-like being, with a human-like mind, and having moral standing in the form of rights and protection. More specifically, I argue that a business orientation influences experience attributions to the firm which, in turn, influence moral standing attributions to the firm.

Psychologists speak of mind attributions when individuals attribute human-like mental characteristics to an entity (Epley et al., 2007; Waytz et al., 2010; Gray et al., 2012). Previous work in organizational theory and organizational psychology has focused on mind attributions to organizations (Ashforth et al., 2020), or to their stakeholders (Quintelier et al., 2021). However, mind consists of two dimensions—experience and agency. Individuals attribute more experience to an entity if they perceive the entity to possess a greater ability for having emotions, feelings, or consciousness; and individuals attribute more agency to an entity if they perceive the entity to possess a greater ability to have intentions, free will, or a mind of its own (Gray et al., 2012). For instance, individuals tend to attribute experience but not agency to fetuses, and individuals tend to attribute agency but not experience to robots (Gray et al., 2007). The distinction between agency and experience is important: While previous work in business ethics (French, 1979; Donaldson, 1982; Blair, 2015) and in psychology (Rai and Diermeier, 2015) tends to focus on firm agency, empirical work has shown that experience attributions, compared to agency attributions, are stronger predictors of lay people’s moral standing attributions (Gray et al., 2012). This paper therefore focuses on experience attributions to firms, and their effects on moral standing attributions to firms.

To develop empirical predictions, I build on insights from the psychology of humanization. A first insight is that an entity’s interactions with other entities influence mind attributions to the entity (Epley et al., 2007; Waytz et al., 2010; Gray et al., 2012). In general, individuals attribute more experience to entities that, or who, interact in more prosocial ways with others than to entities that, or who, are less prosocial. For instance, participants who read about an outgroup (a group of people belonging to a different group than oneself) helping people in need attribute more experience (e.g., grief) to this outgroup than individuals who are not presented with information about the helping behavior of this outgroup (Delgado et al., 2012; Davies et al., 2018). Profit cues are also related to perceived prosociality. Specifically, a profit-motivated practice tends to be seen as less helpful to society than the same practice in the absence of profit motives (Bhattacharjee et al., 2017). As a consequence, for-profit practices of an entity may decrease individuals’ experience attributions to that entity.

The above arguments can be applied to firms. Stakeholder-oriented firms tend to interact with their stakeholders in a prosocial manner, while profit-oriented firms tend to incentivize their stakeholders with financial cues (Bridoux and Stoelhorst, 2014). Descriptions of the goals and practices of stakeholder-oriented firms, compared to profit-oriented firms, are therefore likely to increase experience attributions to the organizations. This is in line with empirical findings by Rai and Diermeier (2015, 2019) that experience attributions to firms can vary; but these authors did not investigate which firm-level elements increased experience attributions. The above arguments lead to the more specific hypothesis that individuals attribute more experience to a firm they perceive as stakeholder-oriented than to a firm they perceive as profit-oriented.

H1: Individuals attribute more experience to a firm when they perceive the firm as stakeholder-oriented than when they perceive the firm as profit-oriented.

A second relevant insight from the psychology of humanization is that experience attributions are strongly related to moral cognition (Gray et al., 2012). In the field of moral cognition, the theory of dyadic morality suggests that moral cognition consists of a dyadic template (Gray et al., 2012). This means that individuals’ moral cognition is triggered if they perceive an interaction between two entities who exhibit the capacity for experience and agency. For instance, participants (exhibiting experience and agency themselves) are less willing to harm another entity with more experience than an entity with less experience (Gray and Wegner, 2009).

In particular, experience attributions have been found to positively and consistently relate to moral standing (Gray et al., 2007). For instance, when experimentally increasing participants’ experience attributions to monkeys or aliens, these participants also attribute more moral standing to these monkeys or aliens (Sytsma and Machery, 2012). The effect of experience attributions on moral standing attributions is more consistent than the effect of agency attributions. As an example, Sytsma and Machery (2012) do find that agency attributions influence moral standing, but not in situations where individuals strongly empathize with an entity. Likewise, when comparing individuals’ experience and agency attributions to living and dead people, animals and God, moral standing correlates more with experience attributions than with agency attributions (Gray et al., 2007; Piazza et al., 2014). These findings support that higher experience attributions to an entity lead to higher moral standing attributions to the entity.

How would this play out for firms? Rai and Diermeier (2015, 2019) find that attributions of experience to firms compared to entrepreneurs lead to higher sympathy. Sympathy positively relates to moral consideration (Hoffman, 2008; Decety and Cowell, 2015; Yoder and Decety, 2018). This suggests that the relation between experience attributions and moral standing also extrapolates to firms. These arguments lead to the following prediction:

H2: When individuals attribute more experience to a firm, they will attribute more moral standing to that firm.

Combining the first and second hypothesis leads to the third hypothesis:

H3: Individuals attribute more moral standing to a firm they perceive as stakeholder-oriented than to a firm they perceive as profit-oriented. This is mediated by individuals’ experience attributions to the firm.

Overview of Experiments

The aim is to test theory about the causal relationships between variables. Vignette experiments are well-suited for this, because experiments allow to manipulate the independent variable and test causal relationships, while vignettes add realism to the description (Aguinis and Bradley, 2014). The vignettes described an organization by systematically combining stakeholder or profit elements. The experimental paradigms for experiments 1–4 were used in a previous study (Quintelier et al., 2021). Experiment 5 was designed to increase ecological validity and to expand the effects to a different operationalization of a business orientation.

Experiments 1 and 2 tested the effect of orientation on experience attributions to firms. In experiment 1, the vignettes featured trade-offs between stakeholder and profit elements while in experiment 2 the vignettes did not feature trade-offs. Experiments 3 and 4 tested the effect of orientation on moral standing attributions to firms, mediated by experience attributions. The vignettes again featured trade-offs (exp. 3) or no trade-offs (exp. 4). Experiment 5 increased the ecological validity by making use of a mock website, and it expanded the findings to new operationalizations of a stakeholder and profit orientation featuring synergy.

Experiments 1 and 2

Sample and Design

Based on previous experiments (Rai and Diermeier, 2015; Quintelier et al., 2021), I expected a large effect size, which requires a sample size of 84 for ANOVA according to (conservative) calculations with the help of the power analysis program G*Power (Faul et al., 2007). Participants were randomly assigned to the stakeholder- or profit-oriented vignette, thus using a one-way between subjects design. For experiment 1, 97 participants, recruited in a course setting in a university in the Netherlands, completed the experiment (55 men, M_age = 26.39; SD = 16.28; 48 stakeholder-oriented; Supplementary Data Sheet 1). After removing participants who gave a wrong answer to an attention check, as described below, 82 participants remained (47 men, M_age = 25.09; SD = 5.71; 40 stakeholder-oriented). For experiment 2, participants were recruited on www.clickworker.com—a German website similar to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were compensated with 0.6€, which is in line with policies on clickworker. Ninety-three participants completed the experiment (47 men, M_age = 35.01; SD = 15.34; 47 stakeholder-oriented; Supplementary Data Sheet 2). After removing participants who gave a wrong answer to an attention check, 89 participants remained (45 men, M_age = 34.36; SD = 14.03; 44 stakeholder-oriented).

Procedure and Measures

Participants were introduced to the experiment and asked to confirm that they had read the information and agreed to proceed. They were then asked to read the vignette description that started with “Alpha is a grocery retailer which recently built a new store in your neighborhood. Alpha sells products that you buy on a weekly basis.” This background information was chosen because being a potential customer of a grocery store is a realistic situation for most participants. Alpha was then either described as stakeholder-oriented or profit-oriented. In experiment 1, the stakeholder-oriented (profit-oriented) vignette read:

Alpha is committed to improving its stakeholders’ welfare (financial performance), because Alpha believes this is the morally right thing to do (necessary to be a successful business). This commitment to stakeholder welfare and doing what is morally right (financial performance and being a successful business) translates into practices that improve stakeholder welfare (financial performance), also if these practices result in lower financial performance (stakeholder welfare). Specifically, Alpha invests in relationships with its suppliers, rather than switching to the supplier who asks the lowest price (switches to the supplier who asks the lowest price rather than investing in relationships with its suppliers). In addition, Alpha constantly optimizes its operations to increase customer satisfaction, also if this leads to lower profits (profits, also if this leads to lower customer satisfaction). When new skills are needed, Alpha trains its current employees, instead of replacing them with skilled applicants who ask the same wage (replaces its employees with skilled applicants who ask the same wage, instead of training current employees). Finally, Alpha resolves conflicts with the local community through collaboration rather than via legal procedures (via legal procedures rather than through collaboration).

In experiment 2, the stakeholder-oriented (profit-oriented) vignette only explicitly stated stakeholder (profit) elements. For experiment 2, the stakeholder-oriented (profit-oriented) vignette read:

Alpha is committed to improving its stakeholders’ welfare (financial performance) because Alpha believes this is the morally right thing to do (necessary to be a successful business). This commitment to stakeholder welfare and doing what is morally right (financial performance and being a successful business) translates into practices that improve stakeholder welfare (financial performance). Specifically, Alpha invests in relationships with its suppliers (switches to the supplier who asks the lowest price). In addition, Alpha constantly optimizes its operations to increase customer satisfaction (profits). When new skills are needed, Alpha trains its current employees (replaces its employees with skilled applicants who ask the same wage). Finally, Alpha resolves conflicts with the local community through collaboration (via legal procedures).

The vignette description was immediately followed by two factual attention check questions, whereby participants had to select the statement that was part of the description they had just read. Kane and Barabas (2019) argue that factual attention checks (this is, questions about key elements of the experiment) enable researches to identify individual participants who are inattentive to the experiment, while these factual attention checks have little or no consequences for the treatment effects. For the first question, the participants could choose between: “Alpha is a grocery retailer selling products that you buy on a weekly basis” (correct); “Alpha has job openings consistent with your career goals,” “Alpha is a corporation that you might include in your investment portfolio.” For the second question, participants could choose between “Alpha is committed to improving its financial performance, because Alpha believes this is necessary to be a successful business” (correct for profit-oriented), “Alpha is committed to improving its stakeholders’ welfare, because Alpha believes this is necessary to be a successful business” and “Alpha is committed to improving its stakeholders’ welfare, because Alpha believes this is the morally right thing to do” (correct for stakeholder-oriented). Participants who gave a wrong answer to any of the attention checks were removed from the analysis.

In order to measure experience, I adapted the two experience items from Waytz et al. (2010) Participants answered (on a seven-point Likert scale from “not at all” to “very much”): to what extent does Alpha: “experience emotions” and “have consciousness.” The scale’s reliability varied but could not be improved by dropping items (exp. 1: α = 0.699; exp. 2: α = 0.829). To rule out alternative explanations that participants interpreted these items as aspects of agency, I also measured agency. I adapted the three agency items from Waytz et al. (2010). Participants were asked: to what extent does Alpha “have intentions”; “have free will”; “have a mind of its own.” The scale’s reliability again varied but could not be improved by dropping items (exp. 1: α = 0.652; exp. 2: α = 0.872). Because the reliability of the scales was low in experiment 1, I also conducted the analysis with each item separately.

The survey was followed by manipulation checks. To see if the vignettes manipulated the organization’s orientation as intended, participants were asked to indicate on a slider scale from 0 to 100 to what extent they thought the organization was long-term vs. short-term oriented, and to what extent the firm prioritized stakeholders vs. firm-level performance. These features (time orientation and priorities) are not literally in the vignette description, but are part of a firm’s orientation as described in the “Theory and Hypotheses” section. I also asked if the vignettes were realistic (“The description was realistic”) and imaginable (“I had no difficulty imagining this situation”), on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). This was followed by demographic variables (year of birth, gender, nationality).

Results

A MANOVA on the manipulation checks revealed that the manipulation worked (see Table 1). Only in experiment 2, significantly more U.S. Americans were assigned to the profit-oriented vignette than to the stakeholder-oriented vignette; I therefore controlled for nationality in the analysis. There were no further differences in demographics or control questions between the stakeholder- and profit-oriented vignette, meaning that both vignettes were perceived as equally realistic and imaginable.

TABLE 1

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and significance levels of manipulation checks and control variables in experiments 1–5.

A one-way between subjects ANOVA (controlling for nationality in exp. 2) revealed that participants attributed more experience to Alpha when it was stakeholder-oriented (exp. 1: M = 4.94; SD = 1.37; exp. 2: M = 4.14; SD = 1.82) than when it was profit-oriented [exp. 1: M = 3.05; SD = 0.89; F(1, 81) = 55.23; p < 0.001; η²_p = 0.408; exp. 2: M = 3.06; SD = 1.76; F(1, 88) = 7.84; p = 0.006; η²_p = 0.084]. This supports hypothesis 1. Participants did not attribute more agency to Alpha when it was stakeholder-oriented (exp. 1: M = 4.80; SD = 1.28; exp. 2: M = 4.74; SD = 1.78) than when it was profit-oriented [exp. 1: M = 4.61; SD = 0.98; F(1, 81) = 0.61; p = 0.436; η²_p = 0.008; exp. 2: M = 4.85; SD = 1.73; F(1, 88) = 0.07; p = .793; η²_p = 0.001]. I ran a MANOVA for experiment 1 on each of the experience and agency items separately (see Table 2). The results were the same.

TABLE 2

Table 2. Means, standard deviations, and significance levels of experience and agency items in experiment 1.

Experiments 3 and 4

In experiments 1 and 2, I investigated the effect of a business orientation on experience and agency attributions to the firm. The results show that a firm’s orientation influences experience attributions, but not agency attributions. Experiments 3 and 4 aimed to investigate the effect of a firm’s orientation on moral standing attributions to the firm, mediated by experience attributions to the firm. Importantly, participants may also attribute experience or agency to the human stakeholders who are part of the firm (Ashforth et al., 2020; Quintelier et al., 2021). In order to explore if this influences moral standing attributions to the firm, I also included experience and agency attributions to employees. As described in the Procedures and Measures below, the vignettes were slightly adapted in order to avoid a linguistic association between the vignettes and moral standing items. The experience and agency measures were also improved to increase their reliability.