Raising the issue of corporate moral agency in our examination of the morality of corporate speech is important for two fundamentalreasons. Each reason suggests we exercise caution in conflating corporations and individuals as the law often does. First, raising the issue of corporate moral agency is important to the aim of providing a framework for ethically evaluating corporate speech. It is tempting to proceed as if the nature of corporate speech is self-evident. But this is hardly the case. Corporations are (...) not natural persons, and we mustn’t assume corporate speech is indistinguishable from human speech. Before we can ethically evaluate corporate speech, we must first clarify what corporate speech is. This requires an understanding of the fundamental nature of the corporate entity, including its moral status. Second, raising the issue of corporate moral agency is important if we wish to promotemorally responsible corporate speech. Any diminished moral capacity on the corporation’s part would suggest a core role for the strong legal reinforcement of any ethical aspirations here. In promoting morally responsible corporate speech, ethical injunctions uncoupled from an effective legal regime may hold only limited promise. (shrink)

Raising the issue of corporate moral agency in our examination of the morality of corporate speech is important for two fundamentalreasons. Each reason suggests we exercise caution in conflating corporations and individuals as the law often does. First, raising the issue of corporate moral agency is important to the aim of providing a framework for ethically evaluating corporate speech. It is tempting to proceed as if the nature of corporate speech is self-evident. But this is hardly the case. Corporations are (...) not natural persons, and we mustn’t assume corporate speech is indistinguishable from human speech. Before we can ethically evaluate corporate speech, we must first clarify what corporate speech is. This requires an understanding of the fundamental nature of the corporate entity, including its moral status. Second, raising the issue of corporate moral agency is important if we wish to promotemorally responsible corporate speech. Any diminished moral capacity on the corporation’s part would suggest a core role for the strong legal reinforcement of any ethical aspirations here. In promoting morally responsible corporate speech, ethical injunctions uncoupled from an effective legal regime may hold only limited promise. (shrink)

Are there any advantages to thinking and speaking about ethical business in the language of citizenship? We will address this question in part by looking at the possible relevance of a vast literature on individual citizenship that has been produced by political philosophers over the last fifteen years. Some of the central elements of citizenship do not seem to apply straightforwardly to corporations. E.g., “citizenship” typically implies membership in a state and an identity akinto national identity; but this connotation of (...) citizenship is obviously problematic for multinational corporations. However, the language of citizenship does help to focus our attention on various legal and political virtues for corporations—topics that have been largely neglected by discussions under other rubrics, such as CSR or sustainability. We finish with an evaluation of the potential benefits and costs of conceptualizing and talking about ethical business practices in thelanguage of citizenship.“Citizen” and “Citizenship” are powerful words. They speak of respect, of rights, of dignity.... We find no perjorative uses. It is a weighty, monumental, humanist word.—Fraser and Gordon 1994: 90[The rhetorical appeal to citizenship often] seems to have no purpose other than to add normative weight to a policy, institution or practice that could just asaptly be described without reference to citizenship.—Weinstock 2002: 244. (shrink)

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)