Abstract:This paper investigates whether, in theoretical terms, corporations can be citizens. The argument is based on the observation that the debate on “corporate citizenship” (CC) has only paid limited attention to the actual notion of citizenship. Where it has been discussed, authors have either largely left the concept of CC unquestioned, or applied rather unidimensional and decontextualized notions of citizenship to the corporate sphere. The paper opens with a critical discussion of a major contribution to the CC literature, the work (...) of Logsdon and Wood (Wood and Logsdon 2001; Logsdon and Wood 2002). It continues with a consideration of the nature and role of metaphors for business and of the contestable nature of the political concept of citizenship. It evaluates corporations as citizens through a four-dimensional framework of democratic citizenship offered by Stokes (2002). The analysis suggests that corporations do not easily fit the “liberal minimalist” model of citizenship. It finds, however some possibilities for fit with the three more participatory models. The paper concludes by cautioning against basing corporate citizenship on legal and administrative status or identity, and mapping out specific criteria by which we might determine whether corporations could be considered as citizens by virtue of their participation in processes of governance. (shrink)

This book reformulates the sociological subdiscipline known as the sociology of knowledge. Knowledge is presented as more than ideology, including as well false consciousness, propaganda, science and art.

Developing countries need to reform legislation to ensure the global supply firms in ready-made garment industry is adequately addressing obligations of social responsibility. Literature typically focuses on strategies for raising responsible standards in global buying firms within the RMG industry, but fails to focus on implementing strategies for suppliers in developing countries. This article addresses this gap by specifically focusing on the RMG industry in Bangladesh, the home of the third largest RMG supplier in the world. It concentrates on analysing (...) how and to what extent the law can assist in developing social responsibility performance of the RMG manufacturing firms in developing countries. It ultimately concludes that a new governance approach in laws can effectively increase the social responsibility practice standards of an industry where global buying firms are profit-driven and governmental agencies are either inadequate or corrupt. (shrink)

Most discussions concerned with advancing the just and ethical treatment of research participants in developing countries have revolved around the moral principle of autonomy and the legal doctrine of informed consent. However, if emerging ethical concerns are to be addressed effectively, the discussion needs to expand into the domain of business ethics where arguments addressing issues such as fair/appropriate compensation, entitlement, and corporate obligations to stakeholders are commonplace. The argument I present in this paper will conclude that emerging ethical considerations (...) regarding the treatment of research participants in developing countries have evolved well beyond the scope of the principle of informed consent and that in order to resolve these concerns more appropriately and effectively, the new default or status quo should be to consider research participants as stakeholders of the sponsoring pharmaceutical company, even after the clinical trial is completed. This conclusion is significant because although it is fair to assume that, at some point in the timeline, most stakeholder theorists already do consider research participants stakeholders of the pharmaceutical company sponsoring the trial, the completion date of the clinical trial usually signifies and marks the termination of their stakeholder status and thus any consideration of what is owed further to the research participant. (shrink)

The article deals with the role of companies in the social market economy. An example of a successful international self-regulatory initiative and its implementation in German chemical industry is discussed.

The number and scale of business associations focused on corporate responsibility and sustainability has grown dramatically in recent decades and they are becoming influential actors in both national and international governance. Yet surprisingly little research exists on such organizations and recognition of the organizational lineage they share with special interest groups is yet to be examined—are industry business associations merely lobbies for their members’ own interests or are they viable self-regulatory institutions capable of addressing contemporary social and sustainability issues? This (...) paper identifies and reviews fragmented insights from literatures that address this question. Drawing on various streams of research within the political science, economics and management disciplines that provide diverse lenses on the phenomenon of business associations, it juxtaposes and groups them into two broad perspectives: business associations as special interest groups that are detrimental to society ; business associations as self-regulatory institutions capable of addressing contemporary challenges. (shrink)

This study investigates corporate social responsibility of sinful firms, which refer to ones that are operating in controversial industries, including the production and distribution of alcohol, tobacco, gambling, adult entertainment, firearm, military, and nuclear power. We attempt to answer two questions in this study: Do these sinful firms actively advertise their CSR engagements compared to non-sinful firms? And do their advertising efforts really yield increased financial performance? Positing that advertising not only can make sinful firms’ good deeds visible, but also (...) can highlight the contradiction between these firms’ stigma and their prosocial activities, we claim that sinful firms are likely to advertise their CSR engagement to overcome their stigmatized firm image, but these advertising activities will make the firms’ performance vulnerable by inducing skepticism from stakeholders. Using KLD database in conjunction with COMPUSTAT and Center for Research in Security Prices from 1991 to 2010, where 337 firms are involved in the controversial sinful industries, namely tobacco, alcohol, gaming, firearms, military, and nuclear power, we examine the effect of advertising spending of sinful firms’ CSR engagement on performance vulnerability, which is instantiated with idiosyncratic risk. The empirical results indicate that sinful firms increase their advertising expenditure when they engage in CSR programs, but these efforts for advertising CSR tend to increase idiosyncratic risk. This finding indicates that even though sinful firms can benefit from engaging in socially responsible initiatives, advertising their CSR efforts may backfire. (shrink)

Banking firms are becoming increasingly aware that their clients’ management of environmental and social risks may in term threaten their own business as lenders and investors. In addition, stakeholders are requiring banks to improve their social performance. As a result, some banks are developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and management systems to reduce potential risks and improve their performance. In the Spanish financial system, half of the banking firms are savings banks, most of which have always used some Corporate (...) Social Responsibility (CSR) criteria in their management. Private Banks have only recently started to integrate social aspects in their performance. However, no formal analysis has been carried out on the impact of CSR strategies. Various initiatives have been launched nationally and internationally to include the social dimension in management systems. The purpose of this research is to analyse the social performance of the main Spanish financial companies through public data such as social or sustainability reports and media sources. In order to do this, we need to determine which CSR criteria most greatly affect banking firms and to choose the most accurate quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure social performance. (shrink)

This paper approaches the much-debated issue of corporate citizenship (CC). Many models depict the development process of CC, and yet attempts to find one extensive definition remain in progress. We argue that more than one type of citizenship may be needed to fully describe the concept. So far, social factors have dominated the definitions of CC, but citizenship functions can also be found in other areas. In fact, for maximum benefit, the type of citizenship should be tied to the sector (...) and business field of the corporation in question. Using data drawn from three internationally operating corporations headquartered in Finland, we introduce three different types of CC that are in line with their core business ideas: cultural citizenship, environmental citizenship and technological citizenship. These new types of citizenships can help in grasping the complexity of business responsibility and ethics, and offer tools for gaining competitive advantage by differentiation. (shrink)

With over 2 billion people lacking medicines for treatable diseases and 14 million people dying annually from infectious disease, there is undeniable need for increased access to medicines. There has been an increasing trend to benchmark the pharmaceutical industry on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in access to medicines. Benchmarking creates a competitive inter-business environment and acts as incentive for improving CSR. This article investigates the corporate feedback discourses pharmaceutical companies make in response to criticisms from benchmarking reports. It (...) determines whether these responses are part of a healthy process in increasing access to medicines or a barrier to improvement. A qualitative analysis on the feedback the industry provided was performed, and the responses seen in these statements were grouped by analysing the language used, the ideas portrayed and atti- tudes of the companies. Increasing transparency through benchmarking is a powerful tool which reveals the industry’s shortfalls to the public, affects the decisions of socially responsible investors, and is a risk to their financial bottom line. This article demonstrates the importance of benchmarking and transparency in creating inter-business competition and the translation of these responses to actual access to medicine practices. (shrink)

There has been limited coverage of the corporate responsibility practices of small and medium-sized enterprises in the mainstream CR literature. Furthermore, there has been no systematic analysis of the responsibilities of the high value jewellery industry and jewellery SMEs in particular. This study explores the potential for harm and value creation by individual stakeholders in fine jewellery production. Using the harm chain and institutional theory to frame our investigation, we seek to understand how small businesses within the fine jewellery industry (...) respond to the economic, social and environmental challenges associated with responsible jewellery production, and to investigate how they perceive and negotiate the tensions between responsibility and the resistance derived from the operational norms of secrecy and autonomy within the industry. Our exploratory research provides illustrative examples of how complex harm networks operate within and across the fine jewellery industry, and demonstrates the inter-relationships that exist across the different stages of the fine jewellery harm chain. Findings suggest that institutional forces are coalescing towards a more responsible agenda for the fine jewellery industry. Moreover, while CR is a tool to disrupt harmful institutional norms and practices within such an industry, it requires the co-creation of new transformative business models and multi-stakeholder involvement including firms, trade associations, non-governmental organisations and consumers. Solutions include national and international legislation, price adjusted certification routes for small firms, harmonisation of industry CR standards to reduce overlap in certification and regulation and gem and precious metal “track and trace” schemes. (shrink)

This study examines corporate stakeholder orientation across industries and over time prior to the introduction of mandatory CSR. We argue that CSO is a legitimacy signal consciously employed by firms to demonstrate their shareholder and specific non-shareholder orientations in the midst of institutional pressures emerging from country and industry contexts. Using a 7-code index of CSO on CEO–shareholder communications from India, we find that in general large firms in India exhibit a pre-dominant, significant and rising trend of pro-shareholder orientation in (...) the six-year period immediately preceding the CSR law. Yet, we uncover significant industry differences in CSO potentially driven by four key factors: the degree of competitive dynamics, nature of products and services, extent of negative externalities and social activism, and exposure to international markets. Our findings support the view that while some minimum threshold of regulatory intervention is required to balance the interests of business with society, legislation raises questions in relation to the usefulness of a uniform one-size-fits-all CSR across all industries. (shrink)

The provision of responsible labor standards along the entire value chain poses considerable challenges for corporations. In particular, management shortcomings and institutional deficits—which are partly related to cultural issues—frequently impede the realization of responsible business practices in emerging and developing countries. It is widely established in theory that industry self-regulation constitutes a particularly promising approach for overcoming these challenges. Nonetheless, it is still an open question as to whether industry initiatives effectively promote responsible standards in practice. This contribution aims to (...) enrich the current discussion about the power of industry self-regulation to ensure responsible labor standards in factories in emerging and developing countries. For this purpose, we analyze the ICTI CARE Process, the self-regulation initiative of the international toy industry, that aims to promote responsible business practices in Chinese toy factories. The assessment of the ICP shows that corporations’ buying behavior is decisive in order for industry self-regulation to become an appropriate means of improving labor standards. Based on the insights from the study and from theoretical reasoning, we develop a framework for effective industry self-regulation that integrates the perspective of factories. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives are increasingly used as a default mechanism to address human rights challenges in a variety of industries. MSI is a designation that covers a broad range of initiatives from best-practice sharing learning platforms to certification bodies and those targeted at addressing governance gaps. Critics contest the legitimacy of the private governance model offered by MSIs. The objective of this paper is to theoretically develop a typology of MSIs, and to empirically analyze the legitimacy of one specific type of (...) MSI, namely industry-specific MSIs. We argue that industry-specific MSIs that set out to govern corporate behavior have great potential to develop legitimacy. We analyze two industry-specific MSIs—the Fair Labor Association and the Global Network Initiative—to get a better understanding of how these MSIs formed, how they define and enforce standards, and how they seek to ensure accountability. Based on these empirical illustrations, we discuss the value of this specific MSI model and draw implications for the democratic legitimacy of private governance mechanisms. (shrink)

In this paper, we reconceptualize CSR in the media industries by combining empirical data with theoretical perspectives emerging from the communication studies and business ethics literature. We develop a new conception of what corporate responsibility in media organizations may mean in real terms by bringing Bardoel and d’Haenens’ discussion of the different dimensions of media accountability into conversation with the empirical results from three international focus group studies, conducted in France, the USA and South Africa. To enable a critical perspective (...) on our findings, we perform a philosophical analysis of its implications for professional, public, market, and political accountability in the media, drawing on the insights of Paul Virilio. We come to the conclusion that though some serious challenges to media accountability exist, the battle for responsible media industries is not lost. In fact, the speed characterizing the contemporary media environment may hold some promise for fostering the kind of relational accountability that could underpin a new understanding of CSR in the media. (shrink)

This paper approaches the much-debated issue of corporate citizenship (CC). Many models depict the development process of CC, and yet attempts to find one extensive definition remain in progress. We argue that more than one type of citizenship may be needed to fully describe the concept. So far, social factors have dominated the definitions of CC, but citizenship functions can also be found in other areas. In fact, for maximum benefit, the type of citizenship should be tied to the sector (...) and business field of the corporation in question. Using data drawn from three internationally operating corporations headquartered in Finland, we introduce three different types of CC that are in line with their core business ideas: cultural citizenship, environmental citizenship and technological citizenship. These new types of citizenships can help in grasping the complexity of business responsibility and ethics, and offer tools for gaining competitive advantage by differentiation. (shrink)

Although Fair Trade has been in existence for more than 40 years, discussion in the business and business ethics literature of this unique trading and campaigning movement between Southern producers and Northern buyers and consumers has been limited. This paper seeks to redress this deficit by providing a description of the characteristics of Fair Trade, including definitional issues, market size and segmentation and the key organizations. It discusses Fair Trade from Southern producer and Northern trader and consumer perspectives and highlights (...) the key issues that currently face the Fair Trade movement. It then identifies an initial research agenda to be followed up in subsequent papers. (shrink)

Developing countries need to reform legislation to ensure the global supply firms in ready-made garment industry is adequately addressing obligations of social responsibility. Literature typically focuses on strategies for raising responsible standards in global buying firms within the RMG industry, but fails to focus on implementing strategies for suppliers in developing countries. This article addresses this gap by specifically focusing on the RMG industry in Bangladesh, the home of the third largest RMG supplier in the world. It concentrates on analysing (...) how and to what extent the law can assist in developing social responsibility performance of the RMG manufacturing firms in developing countries. It ultimately concludes that a new governance approach in laws can effectively increase the social responsibility practice standards of an industry where global buying firms are profit-driven and governmental agencies are either inadequate or corrupt. (shrink)

This paper addresses recent calls to study the role of the state in private regulation. Integrating current scholarship on the state as a catalyst of private regulatory regimes with prior literature on regulatory failure and self-regulation, it identifies and problematizes unsettled assumptions used as a starting point by this growing body of research. The case study traces the evolution of public debates and the interaction of different regulatory initiatives dealing with corporate social responsibility issues in Canada’s mining industry. Findings reveal (...) the conditions under which the state is more likely to encourage firm-level, fragmented initiatives than facilitate and promote industry-wide regulatory strengthening and consolidation. I discuss the need for greater analytical precision regarding the variation in regulatory policy preferences across time and branches of government and the interaction between public and private regulatory initiatives. The conclusion outlines suggested areas for future research as well as the likely outcome of Canada’s current CSR policy framework. (shrink)

Few industries have been pressured to develop corporate social responsibility standards and policies like oil and gas. This has translated into the creation of non-governmental organizations and branches of the oil and gas firms focused on CSR. However, given the intrinsic complex characteristics of this industry, its global reach, and the fact that its operations affect and involve a wide variety of stakeholders, CSR issues cannot be defined and implemented exclusively at the industry or firm levels, but require the participation (...) of other actors affected directly or indirectly by oil and gas activities. In this paper we argue, first, that oil and gas CSR issues are collectively constructed through meta-organizations, and, second, that the complexity and variety of CSR issues require companies to build industry-specific and non-industry-specific collective actions. Based on how oil and gas firms participate in this multi-level co-construction of CSR issues, we created a typology of meta-organizations as infra-sectoral, sectoral, cross-sectoral, and supra-sectoral meta-organizations. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives are increasingly used as a default mechanism to address human rights challenges in a variety of industries. MSI is a designation that covers a broad range of initiatives from best-practice sharing learning platforms to certification bodies and those targeted at addressing governance gaps. Critics contest the legitimacy of the private governance model offered by MSIs. The objective of this paper is to theoretically develop a typology of MSIs, and to empirically analyze the legitimacy of one specific type of (...) MSI, namely industry-specific MSIs. We argue that industry-specific MSIs that set out to govern corporate behavior have great potential to develop legitimacy. We analyze two industry-specific MSIs—the Fair Labor Association and the Global Network Initiative—to get a better understanding of how these MSIs formed, how they define and enforce standards, and how they seek to ensure accountability. Based on these empirical illustrations, we discuss the value of this specific MSI model and draw implications for the democratic legitimacy of private governance mechanisms. (shrink)

Banking firms are becoming increasingly aware that their clients’ management of environmental and social risks may in term threaten their own business as lenders and investors. In addition, stakeholders are requiring banks to improve their social performance. As a result, some banks are developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and management systems to reduce potential risks and improve their performance. In the Spanish financial system, half of the banking firms are savings banks, most of which have always used some Corporate (...) Social Responsibility (CSR) criteria in their management. Private Banks have only recently started to integrate social aspects in their performance. However, no formal analysis has been carried out on the impact of CSR strategies. Various initiatives have been launched nationally and internationally to include the social dimension in management systems. The purpose of this research is to analyse the social performance of the main Spanish financial companies through public data such as social or sustainability reports and media sources. In order to do this, we need to determine which CSR criteria most greatly affect banking firms and to choose the most accurate quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure social performance. (shrink)

'Whether you're looking for economic realities expressed through mathematical formulae, classical history, Immanuel Kant's ethics, or sustainable development, there's something here for you... I suggest that you read it.' - Citizen's Income.