This includes: — the effects of the action on employees, suppliers and customers of the corporation; — the effects of the action on communities in which the corporation operates; and — any other factors that the director or officer considers pertinent.
Mr. O'Neill says that corporations, in effect, pass these taxes on to others.
"There's definitely concern in the US about the ability of corporations to effect the policy especially in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
But its recent history is replete with instances of the state displacing the poor to create vacant lands for wealthy corporations – in effect socialising the costs of pollution while privatising its profits.
Groups that include Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists fret that Africa is being manipulated by multinational corporations, in effect serving as one big potentially dangerous genetic experiment.
The case attracted some three dozen briefs and became the focus of an intense debate, on the Internet, at the court and elsewhere, over the role of multinational corporations, the effects of globalization and the constitutional contours of commercial speech.
Last month James Murdoch, the head of BSkyB, noted the corporation's "chilling" effect on commercial competitors.
Chief ethics officers started appearing in corporate hallways in 1991, when the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for corporations went into effect.
This would allow certain individuals who control the corporations to, in effect, have more influence and sway than others who donate and vote on their own.
Despite winning their cases, Singh and Goldacre said the real concern was the number of journalists who had not written about important issues for fear of being threatened with legal action by big corporations – the "chilling effect" of libel laws.
