Theorising Business Citizenship*

Abstract

This chapter argues that the broad ethics-based norms of social responsibility must be intentionally integrated into corporate citizenship. It suggest that the alternative term 'business citizenship' may better incorporate the broader perspective on business rights and duties, stakeholder relationships, opportunities and challenges that accompany the global socioeconomy of the 21st century. Corporate social responsibility appeared to be threatening to neoclassical economic theories because of its relegation of self-interest to a lesser status. The 'corporate social responsibility' was initially proposed in the 1950s and 1960s as a kind of business self-regulation device, a way of ensuring the social control of business without depending on the uncertainties of individual ethics or the potentially coercive authoritarianism of government. In the 1990s, scholarly attention shifted from the concept of corporate social responsibility to the concept of 'corporate citizenship'. Citizenship thinking in much of the post-World War II period focused primarily on possession of individual rights.