Globalising Corporate Citizenship: Political and Theoretical Considerations
Peter Newell and Eliza Gaffney
Working Paper CSGP 09/4 Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada www.trentu.ca/globalpolitics
1. Introduction * Competing claims are made about the changing nature of citizenship in a global age (Delanty 2000; Linklater 2002; Logsdon and Wood 2002). The social contracts that underpin the obligations and duties that exist between state, market and civil society are said to be undergoing important transformations as a result of the reconstitution of political and social power through processes that include globalisation most prominently. Amid this reconstitution, the language of corporate citizenship has emerged as a way of articulating what is perceived to be responsible corporate behaviour in an increasingly globalised economy. Its uptake reflects and seeks to address concern about the ability of multinational corporations in particular to exercise power without responsibility in a context of capital mobility and weak structures of global business regulation (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000; Picciotto and Mayne 1999). Clear definitions are rare amid generic claims to be behaving as a good citizen or merely assertions of ‘doing good’, citizenship being synonymous with good neighbourly conduct. Many such claims seem to be a short‐hand for describing corporate philanthropy. Companies such as Shell, Repsol and Syngenta have set up foundations to distribute resources and fund projects to this end‐ as a separate activity from the core of the company’s work. Other firms, such as American Express, encourage individual employees to engage in voluntary work in the community in which they work, embodying a sense of ‘giving back’. It is also the case that many acts of corporate citizenship are undertaken by micro and small enterprises of a routine and mundane but hugely valued nature, fall beneath the radar screen because of the lack of resources to publicise them (Vives/IADB 2008). It is worth recalling then that in the context of a discussion about global corporate citizenship, we are essentially talking about the citizenship claims of multinational companies (MNCs) as the actors with the resources and profile to make such claims, the power to operate in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously and of whom most claims are, in any case, made. Not satisfied with unilateral or discretionary ‘citizenship’ acts, among activists there are increasing demands for extra‐territorial applications of ethics and duty of care principles to corporations wherever they operate. This takes the form of campaigns for a UN Corporate Accountability Convention or for Commissions that could sanction the behaviour of home firms when they operate in other jurisdictions. Such demands encounter numerous legal and political barriers, but provide evidence of deep‐seated concern about the gap between the globalising claims of citizenship made by firms and the lack of available means of realising them. Many firms that lead the CSR field and
*Peter Newell is Professor of International Development at the University of East Anglia (
[email protected]) and Eliza Gaffney is a doctoral student in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick (
[email protected])
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embrace the language of citizenship to describe their social and environmental responsibilities also frequently oppose attempts to clarify and institutionalise legally binding global duties, rights and responsibilities in global accords in ways that would give weight and substance to the notion of global corporate citizenship. Attempts at the Rio conference in 1992 and the World Summit of Sustainable Development in 2002 to introduce the issue of global business regulation and corporate accountability respectively, have been met with strong opposition from business groups such as the International Chambers of Commerce representing broad sections of industry (Chatterjee and Finger 1994; Clapp 2005). Similar lobbying has surrounded the process overseen by John Ruggie to create a legal basis for the human rights obligations of firms that we discuss further below. It forms part of a longer and ongoing history of efforts to resist strengthened forms of global governance of corporations which date back to the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (Muchlinski 1999; Braithwaite and Drahos 2000). The purpose of this paper is to try to bring some clarity to the idea of global corporate citizenship. While it is easy to dismiss corporate citizenship as merely a public relations exercise, we take the ambiguity of and variety in expressions of corporate citizenship to be a partial representation of a wider debate surrounding the question of what constitutes responsible corporate behaviour in an era of globalisation. While the idea of corporate citizenship has emerged predominantly from corporations themselves, politically and theoretically speaking its emergence presents an opportunity to interrogate corporate citizenship ideas from the point of view of the philosophical ideal of citizenship that has existed since Aristotle. Thus, the motivation behind the paper is not to endorse the concept or practice of corporate citizenship per se, and certainly not in its current form in which it is as likely to serve as a vehicle for corporations to acquire new rights as generate new sets of obligations and responsibilities. It is rather to argue that citizenship, politically and theoretically understood, makes much more far‐reaching demands than current corporate citizenship practice allows for. The focus on corporate citizenship in this paper should not be interpreted as privileging corporate citizenship over other ways of describing firms’ responsibilities to society that are frequently used, such as corporate accountability, or responsibility. Indeed, in many ways, corporate citizenship, on a normatively demanding reading, can be seen as in itself a call for accountability or responsibility. The first section of the paper outlines the practical political problems posed by claims of global corporate citizenship. Central to this are the perceptions that corporate citizenship, as practiced, is reducible to corporate philanthropy, as well as the idea that corporate citizenship involves the assertion of corporate rights across territories without concomitant responsibilities. It seems there are two problems here that necessitate a theoretical response, and the second part of the paper attempts to deal with these. Firstly the equation of corporate citizenship with corporate philanthropy represents just one understanding of what it is to be a good corporate citizen, but the philosophy of citizenship indicates that there are many other, more demanding interpretations that 2
could help to articulate the basis of new normative claims it is possible to make of corporations. Secondly, the existence of global corporations, and their use of the idea of citizenship to define themselves and their societal responsibilities, speaks to an essentially political‐spatial dilemma: citizenship traditionally is developed with reference to a particular territory while global corporate citizenship exists across political territories and its origins are not derived from the socio‐cultural understandings of citizenship that rest with a defined political territory. In order to unpack these problems, the paper draws on the ideas of citizenship that exist within both liberalism and cosmopolitanism. The former articulates normative demands that hinge on the relations between co‐citizens, while the latter provides us with the spatial extension necessary to understand claims of citizenship across territorial boundaries. Liberal notions of citizenship are restrictively statist in their origins. However, in corporate citizenship practices, corporations themselves determine the boundaries of their responsibilities; liberal notions of citizenship are to do with the definition of the relation between the governor and the governed, and the consequence of this relation is a demand for equality and reciprocity. The paper attempts to clarify what these sorts of demands would imply for corporate citizenship practices. Cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, makes claims about universal rights and responsibilities, which, while morally attractive, are unlikely to be accepted by corporations themselves. Thus is it suggested that a theoretical understanding of global corporate citizenship might involve the spatiality of cosmopolitanism along with the normative demands of liberalism that focus on equality and reciprocity between co‐ citizens. As such, the paper interrogates the political problems presented by corporate citizenship, and draws on theoretical reasoning in order to push conventional understandings of corporate citizenship beyond current practice. In this, we note the dual irony whereby those firms that trumpet claims of corporate citizenship loudest have been among those most vociferously vetoing attempts to address their obligations and responsibilities in a legal form globally, while corporate campaigners, sceptical about the use and abuse of the term corporate citizenship, may be missing an opportunity to call the bluff of companies by using the popularity of the term to usher in a broader debate about equality, justice, accountability and global ethics. What we find then is an interesting alignment between strands of cosmopolitan citizenship and a critical but progressive political agenda on the global construction of corporate citizenship through renewed attention to balancing global market rights with global ethical commitments consistent with their demands for stronger forms of global business regulation. Recognising the normative worth of such a project does not of course mean that the many historical and contemporary barriers to achieving it will be easily overcome. 3
2. The Politics of Corporate Citizenship ‘Corporate citizenship can become a significant route for overcoming global poverty, inequality and environmental insecurity’ (Zadek 2001:11). Though acts of corporate philanthropy are centuries old and the contemporary debate about CSR should be seen as part of an ongoing struggle to define the nature of the relationship between business and society (Blowfield and Frynas 2005; Newell 2008), the language of corporate citizenship has emerged in the past two decades in particular as a way in which corporations can identify themselves as corporate bodies whose interests, activities and responsibilities extend beyond the goal of profit‐making. Though there is frequent slide between ideas of responsibility and citizenship, the language of citizenship is invoked in order to understand the relationship between rights and obligations. This is reflected in initiatives such as the ‘Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative’ of the World Economic Forum. Firms such as ExxonMobil, General Electric, Microsoft, Panasonic and the drugs giant Pfizer have also produced ‘citizenship’ or ‘global citizenship’ reports (Crane et al 2008: 18) and leading firms such as Barclay’s refer to themselves as a ‘responsible global citizen’. IBM’s home page, meanwhile, poses the question: ‘What kind of citizen is your company?’ and in answering the question as a company invites stakeholders to participate in a ‘values jam’. 1 As the New York Times commented in relation to IBM, this is about ‘reinventing how a company develops the social contract with its workers in a highly mobile global economy’ (Lohr 2007). Microsoft’s 2005 Citizenship report invokes broader notions of serving the public good. It claims; ‘Microsoft’s ongoing work in the area of global citizenship is focussed on mobilising our resources across the company to create opportunities in communities around the world, to foster economic growth and to serve the public good through innovative technologies and partnerships with government, industry and community organisations’.(2005: 6).
GE’s Citizenship report meanwhile suggests corporate citizenship is about ‘high performance with high integrity over a sustained period of time, so as to create benefits for the long‐term health of society and enterprise’ (Blowfield and Murray 2008:22). Understandably perhaps, as Crane et al note, ‘many corporations only allude to global citizenship as a label while deliberately avoiding in‐depth engagement on the implications of citizenship’ (2008: 197). Whether its use allows firm to claim the licence to operate or merely re‐label corporate philanthropic efforts as corporate citizenship, by such efforts ‘Corporations have sought … to gain broader trust and legitimacy through visibly enhancing their non‐financial performance’ (Zadek 2001:1). In a partial reading of what citizenship means, emphasis is placed on ‘taking account’ of social and environmental footprints and constructing ‘shared values with key stakeholders’ or ‘civil 1 Presentation by Celia Moore, IBM, Warwick Business School workshop on ‘The Responsible Corporation
in a Global Economy’, 20‐22nd March 2009.
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partnerships’ (Zadek 2001). Taken together, these sentiments recognise that a corporation has ‘social, cultural and environmental responsibilities to the community in which it seeks a licence to operate’ (CCRU 2001). Critics allege, however, that the citizenship that many firms are practising is a partial one that focuses on the exertion of rights rather than the fulfilment of responsibilities or obligations. Indeed, there are many ways in which corporations seek to assert their economic ‘rights’ to mobility and property rights or political rights of representation and justice before the law. Corporations can claim legal personhood for example. In the US the first amendment, the right to free speech has been extended to corporations to contribute, as individual citizens, to election funds (Crane et al 2008). In an international context, international tribunals also give global corporations access to enforce legal rights; for example, the IBRD of the World Bank, which established the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes or the UN Compensation Commission and the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which allows firms to initiate cases against states. The failed MAI and successful NAFTA, in its chapter 11 on investment, make similar provision for corporations to sue states. As Cutler argues ‘in international law… it is corporate rights and protection of private investment that are emphasised, not corporate duties and responsibilities (2006:203). Corporations also exert a variety of economic rights. The power of firms to move operations between jurisdictions, engage in transfer‐pricing, tax‐evasion and to forum‐ shop between arenas that address issues which affect them, ensuring they are resolved within fora most likely to deliver a business‐friendly outcome is evidence of this. Yet these basic freedoms of capital around rights of mobility, to make profit, to own property rights are protected even where they conflict with the pursuit of other social and environmental objectives (Blowfield and Frynas 2005). As such, the realisation of some of the fundamental ideals of the liberal citizen was seen as necessary to create an environment ‘in which capitalism could flourish’ (Goldman and Palan, 2006:185). However, many of the traditional notions underpinning the social contract of citizenship, in terms of obligation to a particular community, for example, are subverted by the exertion of these rights. While firms have acquired new leverage as a result of the right they have to mobility (and the resultant threat of relocation), there exist few mechanisms by which their responsibilities to the communities in which they invest can be enforced. As Sachs has argued the emergence of the globe as an economic arena where capital, goods and services can move with little consideration for local and national communities has delivered the most serious blow to the idea of a polity which is built on reciprocal rights and duties among citizens… Through transnationalization, capital escapes any links of loyalty to a particular society’ (Sachs 1997:10).
While corporations are obliged to obey the laws of the countries in which they operate, in practice firms can often use their vast resources to find ways to subvert these laws. Taxation is a case in point. For instance, while Barclays calls itself a responsible global 5
citizen and operates a reputation committee as well as a range of CSR initiatives ‘nowhere does its policy mention Barclays’ tax avoidance schemes’ (‘CSR’, The Guardian, February 14th 2009:41). In the absence of binding regulation to determine the basis of the contract between a corporation and wider (global) society, the range and level of obligations corporations are expected to undertake is largely open to their discretion (Newell 2002). As well as the problematic assertion of rights without responsibilities, it is also clear that much corporate citizenship practice amounts to the discretionary performance of charitable acts. Traditionally ‘Citizenship expresses a set of normative expectations specifying the relationship between the nation‐state and its individual members which procedurally establish rights and obligations of members and a set of practices by which these expectations can be realised’ (Waters 1989 cited in Kabeer 2002: 2‐3). What is lacking in many contemporary uses of the term by companies is detail on procedures and practices that can make these rights real. As the human rights group Amnesty note in their survey of corporate codes of conduct, ‘while many companies have written well‐ crafted codes of conduct, few have provided any operational details and … hardly any corporation makes specific mention of protection of human rights in such instruments’ (Tripathi 1999). Instead the focus is on citizenship as civic virtue. This harks back to the origins of corporate responsibility that lay in post‐colonial traditions of corporate philanthropy, donating hospitals and schools to communities in return for their political acquiescence. Amnesty found that companies still refute the idea that they are responsible for human rights in the communities in which they operate, instead emphasising that ‘we build schools and roads … and provide scholarships to the needy’ (Tripathi, 1999). So, while there is a tendency to re‐label what was once known as philanthropy as corporate citizenship, it seems the corporate interpretation of citizenship is at best selective and at worst a derogation of the responsibility to protect certain rights, particularly social, economic and human rights. According to Amnesty, labour standards and human rights incorporated in ILO conventions and the universal declaration of human rights ‘provide the basic framework on which our society, in its broadest form, rests.’ ‘By endorsing it, companies are not doing something great and noble, but something they are obliged to do ..[this] is an example of corporate citizenship and assuming the responsibilities that go with citizenship’ (ibid). As such, citizenship ought to express the relationship between a corporation and wider society, and respect for such rights should be seen to be the very minimum required of corporations. This is a far cry from the current situation in which there is a lack of real accountability mechanisms for global corporations. Apart from refusing to buy a product of a corporation, or buying shares in a company and thereby gaining a say in a company’s behaviour as a stakeholder, there are few channels for making companies answerable for the decisions they make, despite the impact of their investment choices on peoples’ 6
lives. The contract that employees engage in with companies is not a free one because of the economic control the company has over employees’ livelihoods by choosing whether or not to employ them. The community of responsibility is also narrowed by virtue of the private deals that often characterise those social contracts that do exist in the form codes of conduct and the like. Moreover, the power of anticipated reaction works to censor rights claims for fear of driving companies away. The dependence of workers on their employers significantly reduces their negotiating leverage. In so far as rights can be asserted in this context, they have to be fought for and cannot be taken for granted. This is a key brake to moving the corporate citizenship debate beyond ‘claims based on charity, favour or patronage’ (Kabeer 2002:40), to an expression of inalienable rights. Contemporary expressions of corporate citizenship do not extend to the provision of systematic access and equality of treatment, relying instead on charitable acts subject to philanthropic whim. If citizenship is to have traction and value as a way of framing the rights and responsibilities of firms it has, therefore, to move from discretionary private acts to fuller consideration in public arenas of all aspects of company activity. This might include the impact of firm’s activities on the states and other citizen’s ability to realise rights and hence enact citizenship‐ rights to water, health, food as well as nature of spaces for citizen engagement through funding of elections, privatisation, trade rules which lock‐in governments and constrict policy autonomy. This is about the quotidian implications of firms’ activities on the exercise of citizenship‐ day to day operations rather than the one‐off, discretionary CSR elements of their operations. Just as extensions of state power are debated and contested (at least in democratic settings) in terms of their potential to infringe civil and political liberties, so too extensions of corporate power might be assessed in terms of their impact of the ability of others to realise their rights. Henry Ford II identified early evidence of a more profound shift in society’s relationship to business. Speaking at the Harvard Business School in 1969 he said: ‘The terms of the contract between industry and society are changing…Now we are being asked to serve a wider range of human values and to accept an obligation to members of the public with whom we have no commercial transactions’ (Cited in Chewning et. al, 1990: 207). Having analysed the nature of corporate citizenship claims and some of the political issues they raise, the paper now interrogates the demands and interpretations of corporate citizenship from the point of view of political theories of citizenship. While citizenship itself is contested, there are certain key ideas within political theory that might usefully inform debates about the substantive content and appropriate boundaries of corporate citizenship. The next section explores what those insights might be. 7
3. Theorising Corporate Citizenship There are many interpretations of citizenship, but the most common usage of the term involves establishing a link between a citizen and a particular territory. Generally, this territory is a nation‐state, though this assumed link is problematised by the altered nature of the state in contemporary globalisation. While not seeking to uncritically embrace claims about the retreat or demise of the state, it is necessary to point out that shifts in power and authority among state and private actors potentially alter the terrain of citizenship and what states and citizens expect of one another. The state, therefore, plays a contradictory role with regard to the citizenship claims made by corporations. On the one hand, consistent with a neo‐liberal mode of practice, governments have shown themselves keen to pass on social and regulatory functions to firms on the basis that this lightens the regulatory burden of the state and that in any case private actors are often better placed to provide public goods than the state. On the other hand deeper notions of citizenship leave firmly in state hands the power to define the public good, where the limits of markets lie and the articulation of the moral grammar which governs their conduct in society. The state, in this rendition, is the only entity able to recognise, process and adjudicate between competing citizenship claims. The notion of corporate citizenship is theoretically challenging for a variety of reasons. Firstly and most obviously is the idea that a citizen is first and foremost linked to a particular political community; it is not clear what sort of political community corporations are linked to. One answer is that they are linked by the scale of their operations to many political communities. While corporations are always registered in a particular jurisdiction, multinational companies operate in many countries simultaneously and are expected to be compliant with ‘host’ country laws. The normal duties and regulations which apply to firms are also in some cases suspended in export processing zones for example, ‘sovereignty‐free’ spaces used to attract firms wanting to reduce labour and environmental costs (Klein 2001). Secondly, in popular terms corporate citizenship implies ostensibly “good” behaviour on the part of corporations; however, in the context of various concepts of citizenship that exist, the practice of corporate citizenship would seem thin. Depending on which notions of citizenship are employed, many corporate claims would appear at best flimsy and un‐enforceable. Not only do social expectations of appropriate conduct vary widely across the world, but the practice of double‐standards is commonplace. There are numerous cases of companies, in which states have a key stake, that are protected by those governments and use their power to enable and protect investments even in the face of widespread opposition by their own citizens (Frynas 2005, Fig 2005, Newell 2005, Newell and Wheeler 2006). It has to be recognised then, that claims of corporate citizenship are often used to appease global audiences and powerful critics often far removed from the local sites where firms operate rather than as a means of describing duties to those with whom they work. 8
Thirdly, and relatedly, without a clear articulation of what corporate citizenship actually is, its integrity as both a conceptual and practical response to the difficulties of globalisation is undermined. Who has the power to define it? It is clearly imperative to go beyond an understanding of corporate citizenship that is based on the claims firms make about themselves. With voluntary approaches and self‐regulation companies are left with the power to determine the boundaries of the political community to which they are responsible. This power manifests itself in the ability of corporations to decide who is a stakeholder and terms on which they should be engaged: what is up for discussion, and whether or not to act upon the outcomes of a discussion. The overarching difficulty of the above three problems is that, as Delanty has noted, citizenship is the conceptual link between capitalism and democracy. This link is manifested within the institution of the nation state: The problem that conceptions of post‐national citizenship, or more broadly, cosmopolitan citizenship, are faced with is that the institutions and social context on which citizenship rests do not exist in any substantive form in the global arena. The essence of this substantive dimension to citizenship is the existence of the public domain as a civic community, for citizens are reducible neither to private, economic beings nor to purely political agents (Delanty, 2000: 4).
Globalising citizenship claims brings additional challenges, therefore. For scholars of International Relations it would seem far‐fetched to expect a supra‐state body such as the UN to be an appropriate arbiter of competing citizenship claims or to extend international public law to the realm of private actors, even if in the latter regard there may at least be some tentative moves in that direction. Nevertheless, it is worth drawing out some elements of citizenship theory that indicate the normative demands that citizenship claims make on both those who claim citizenship, and those who confer citizenship as a means of identifying silences, gaps and areas that need further attention if this agenda is to progress. We broadly concur with Crane et al’s (2008) contention that citizenship offers us a useful means to think about corporations’ roles and responsibilities; however, we argue that the most useful outcome of this mapping of the role of the corporation through the lens of citizenship would be to explore the full range of potential responsibilities and duties that corporate citizenship could imply. The ambiguity or uncertainty surrounding what corporate citizenship means should not act as a deterrent to making more explicit what the demands of corporate citizenship could or ought to be. Citizenship, properly conceived, provides us with a link between a society’s ideals, and the way in which it might achieve those ideals. As such, it is the acquiescence of citizens to the demands of citizenship that enable a society to function. At the same time, it is also the commitment of an overarching centralised authority (most often the state) that makes the conferring and guaranteeing of rights to citizens possible. As such, in an ideal, theoretical conception of citizenship, it is clear who is and is not a citizen, where the rights and responsibilities of citizenship apply, and what these rights and responsibilities 9
are. It is useful to draw out certain values/concepts/ideals that have emerged within political philosophy literature that have established the who, where and what of citizenship. The first part draws on liberal conceptions of reciprocity and equality within citizenship. The primary idea here is that citizenship requires a base equality of all who are deemed to be citizens and that this in turn requires an ideal of reciprocity, or the ability to treat others as you would expect to be treated. Despite the allusions to equality that some practices of corporate citizenship proclaim, it is argued that the actual achievement of equal status between those who are affected by corporate activities would require a lot more substantive equality than current practices allow for. The second section identifies a primary difficulty with creating a link between a liberal notion such as reciprocity and corporate citizenship, which is that liberal ideas of citizenship are located firmly within a domestic society, and in the public domain of that domestic society. Corporate citizenship is seen in this regard as indicative of a reconstitution of the (global) public domain, in which citizenship is purportedly enacted and protected to some extent both globally and within the private sector, and in this, corporations can be viewed to be taking on the role of cosmopolitan citizens. The third section elaborates more fully the values of cosmopolitan citizenship and while it could be argued that corporations display some cosmopolitan virtues, corporate citizenship in terms of the responsibilities of a cosmopolitan institution to protect universal rights is lacking – again primarily in terms of substantial means of accountability and redress. Citizenship and Reciprocity/Equality. The idea of reciprocity, as expressed primarily in Rawlsian liberal theories of justice, is useful in elaborating on the normative demands the concept of citizenship can make. In articulating one of the key underpinning ideas within his theory of justice, Rawls emphasises the value of reciprocity as something that enables citizens to accept fair terms of cooperation within a society, as long as all other citizens do so, and even if this may come at the cost of some of their own interests in particular situations (Rawls, 2005: 446). Citizenship provides the institutional and cultural link between individuals that enables a notion of reciprocity, or the willingness to treat others within your society as you would expect to be treated. From the Rawlsian perspective “reciprocity is a relation between citizens expressed by principles of justice that regulate a social world in which everyone benefits judged with respect to an appropriate benchmark of equality defined with respect to that world” (Rawls, 2005: 17). Reciprocity mitigates against unrestrained freedoms and enables a contractarian relation between citizens that makes a just society possible. Importantly in regard to this discussion, reciprocal relations between citizens imply equality between citizens – reciprocity is possible when all citizens are viewed to be 10
equal. Cohen’s definition of equality as being entitled to be treated with equal respect, the basis of which lies in a capacity for a sense of justice, or the “capacity to understand requirements of justice that provide the fundamental standards of public life” (Cohen, 2003: 96), explicitly links equality to justice. The implication is that citizens exist on an equal footing, entitled to the same requirements of justice as they themselves expect. A classic problem that emerges in this ideal of equality and its relationship to justice within a liberal society is how to resolve what Rawls calls different comprehensive doctrines in a pluralist society, or the fact of reasonable pluralism. Clearly, in a liberal society, there are a variety of different beliefs about how society should be organised. In ideal circumstances, it should be possible for a society to work within these differences, if it is guided by what is known as public reason. Public reason is political society’s “way of formulating its plans, of putting its ends in an order of priority and of making its decisions accordingly. The way a political society does this is its reason; its ability to do these things is also its reason, though in a different sense: it is an intellectual and moral power, rooted in the capacities of its human members” (Rawls, 2005: 212‐213). In the sense that public reason is public, it is acceptable to all members (citizens) of a given society; it is what epitomizes reciprocity. Reciprocity implies toleration for differing reasonable comprehensive doctrines, and through the use of public reason, it enables a society to get around this classic problem of liberalism – how to meet the liberal requirement for toleration, without compromising the other liberal requirements of autonomy and equality. Public reason enables citizens to determine which issues are a matter of public concern, and is a way in which the resolution of these issues can be made justifiable to all citizens: “it proceeds correctly from premises we accept and think others could reasonably accept to conclusions we think they could also reasonably accept” (Ibid: 465). There are a number of clear problems with this aspect of citizenship in relation to the practice of corporate citizenship. Setting aside the most obvious problem (that a liberal conception of citizenship is made possible by the existence of a territorially‐bounded domestic society), reciprocity in itself (outside of a domestic societal context) creates difficulties that are primarily related to the ideal of equality that reciprocity embodies. Corporate citizenship often involves the definition, by a corporation, of a number of groups (or stakeholders) that are deemed to have a stake in the activities of that corporation. In the establishment of this relationship, it is rarely clear what the nature of the relation between corporation and stakeholders is. Within a liberal democratic society, the idea of reciprocity and the implied equality partly defines the relationship between the governor and the governed, as well as that between those who are governed. Reciprocity within the practice of corporate citizenship would mean establishing an equal base relationship between those involved in the determination of the terms of corporate citizenship. It would presumably mean, that on a theoretical level at least, the voices of employees, local residents, NGOs, government officials (and 11
presumably anyone else who is affected by corporate behaviour) would be equal to that of the corporation. This would give them the right to a say in decisions that affect them, and importantly that view would have equal weight to that of the corporation. This equal status stipulation has echoes of stakeholder theory, which has influenced many conceptions of corporate citizenship; indeed, Freeman views stakeholder theory as applicable to a liberal idea of fairness, in that “it ensures a basic equality among stakeholders in terms of their moral rights as these are realised in the firm” (2002: 46). In practice however, it is interesting to note that equality of treatment is something firms demand for themselves and seek to pursue through non‐discrimination provisions in trade and investment treaties (within the WTO and OECD) where national and foreign firms have to be treated in the same way for the purposes of goods, services, IPRs and taxation. For example, tax concessions granted to firms from one country are granted to firms from all countries. The achievement of real equality between stakeholders is more ambiguous. What is missing is an articulation of how this equality is made possible where there are varying competing demands. It is not enough to state that all stakeholders are equal – we need an idea of what holds the equality together. In practice, the invitation to all stakeholders to participate on an equal footing in decision‐making might well be outweighed by the inherently unequal power relations that exist between stakeholders. As Goldman and Palan suggest in relation to Marshall and Bottomore’s work on Citizenship and Social Class, which placed equality of power at the centre of analysis, ‘the large disparity in resources between individuals and class within a polity renders the practical exercise of rights and responsibilities biased in favour of some and against others’ (Goldman and Palan 2006: 185). Beyond a statement of equality between those affected, corporate citizenship, in order to meet the requirement of reciprocity, would also have to provide a reasonable justification of decisions and procedures amongst those affected. Rawls writes that reciprocity demands that the terms on which citizens agree to cooperate with each other are fair and reasonable, and that “those proposing them must also think it at least reasonable for others to accept them, as free and equal citizens, and not as dominated or manipulated, or under the pressure of an inferior political or social position” (Rawls, 2005: 446). As such, decisions taken ought to be shaped by an idea of reciprocity – even if a decision is at the cost of your own interests in some circumstances; crucially, power relations or self‐interest must not shape decision‐making. It is difficult to argue that this criterion is played out in many (if any) corporate citizenship relations. At a very basic level, the question of who is involved in decisions, when addressed by stakeholder theory, is problematised by the discretionary nature of who is included; as Blowfield and Frynas mention, “Since inclusion in or exclusion from stakeholder status is not based on either legal rights or moral obligations, a stakeholder’s recognition is contingent upon the 12
business case for that recognition” (2005: 508). It is, then, not the case that incorporation of stakeholders into corporate citizenship procedures epitomizes reciprocity and thus equality. Aside from the matter of who is invited to be an equal participant in defining the boundaries of corporate citizenship, there is also the question of what is up for discussion within those procedures. As mentioned above, in a liberal society there is inevitable disagreement about the way in which that society should be organized, and these disagreements ideally can be resolved by an appeal to public reason. Opening up the discussion of corporate citizenship so that terms of cooperation between a corporation and those affected would imply a widening of the boundaries of debate so that difficult issues, such as employment conditions, environmental protection or profit distribution might be discussed. More fundamentally, such discussions might appropriately extend to larger and more controversial questions – such as the basis of the right to capital mobility, the validity of intellectual property rights and the assumed right to exploit natural resources. The key point is that the terms of discussion would not be restricted to those that fit the corporate definition of corporate citizenship practice. A further implication of reciprocity within the domain of corporate citizenship is that the demand for justification that reciprocity brings would mean a demand for forms of accountability. If decisions affecting stakeholders in a corporate citizenship process had to be justified by the decision‐takers, this means not only making information publicly available, but also justifying these decisions to those affected, by appeal to reasons that are acceptable to all involved. Accountability on this understanding would imply an obligatory, systematic and meaningful symbiotic relationship between a corporation and its stakeholders, in which the demands of all, as well as the outcomes of decisions taken by all, could reasonably be expected to be acceptable to all. To summarise, as outlined in this section, reciprocity is at the core of a liberal notion of citizenship, and (through appeal to public reason) is a precursor to the achievement of the ideals of justice, democracy and equality. In order to meet a criterion of reciprocity, corporate citizenship would have to be a lot more demanding than it currently is. Substantive equality between stakeholders would mean that decisions made within the corporate citizenship process would be significantly influenced by all stakeholders, and not shaped by inequities in power relations. This substantive equality would impact upon who is deemed to be a legitimate stakeholder, as well as what matters are seen to be legitimate for discussion and decision‐making. The overarching difficulty with this articulation of citizenship is the question of the purpose of the corporations. If we view corporations as primarily profit‐making bodies, it would seem outlandish to extend the practice of citizenship to them. As such, citizenship describes the relationship between a government and its people. This raises two points. The first is the obvious one that by engaging in the discourse and practice of 13
corporate citizenship corporations themselves invite discussion of what citizenship, politically and theoretically understood, means, and consequently what it means for their relationship with society. The second, more substantial, point is that the above criteria of citizenship exist, notionally at least, within the public domain of the liberal democratic state. The emergence of the phenomenon of corporate citizenship, and hence corporate involvement in questions of human rights, labour rights, and socio‐ economic rights, points to the wider question of what constitutes the public domain in the context of globalization. The practice of corporate citizenship at once reflects and contributes to a blurring of the boundaries of public and private and global and national in terms of authority and the nature of ethical commitments. So while liberal ideals of reciprocity and equality make clear that many aspects of corporate citizenship practice do not equate with a liberal understanding of citizenship, acknowledging that corporate citizenship does not take solely place within the liberal public domain is important. In this sense, how we characterize the domain in which corporate citizenship takes place is important, as is the question of the appropriateness of corporate citizenship as a means to resolving many “public” questions. The next section of the paper develops this idea. Citizenship and the (Global) Public Domain The liberal idea of citizenship relies on a clear separation of the public and private domain, as well as that of the domestic and the international. What this means is that there is a public sphere within which the requirements and rights of citizenship are enacted, and a private sphere in which of course citizens are still viewed to be, and perceive themselves as, citizens, but in which questions of public concern are not dealt with. Corporations, viewed as profit‐making commercial bodies, on this understanding would belong in the private sphere. This idea of citizenship and the public domain is by no means uncontested, and the usefulness of the division between public and private is questionable. Feminist theorists dispute the clear separation of public and private realms of life, while the separation of state (public) and market (private) is disputed by Marxist/historical materialist accounts of society. The contestation of this separation is consolidated in the context of contemporary globalising processes. With respect to corporate citizenship, in which private corporations become involved in what would be deemed to be public matters, we see this blurring of the boundaries of public and private being played out. Ruggie views this contemporary blurring of boundaries as a fundamental reconstitution of the public domain: I define the new global public domain as an institutionalized arena of discourse, contestation, and action organized around the production of global public goods. It is constituted by expression and pursuit of a variety of human interests, not merely those mediated (filtered, interpreted, promoted) by states. It ‘exists’ in trans‐national non‐territorial spatial formations, and is anchored in norms and expectations as well as institutional networks and circuits within, across, and beyond states. (2004: 519).
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Ruggie locates corporate citizenship practices within this reconstituted public domain. As such, corporations are involved in the production of global public goods, and the separation of a clear private and public sphere is thus further contestable. In relation to citizenship, it would seem that an already contested concept is muddied even further by the idea that the public goods associated with citizenship are being produced by (firstly) non‐territorial actors, and (secondly) private commercial actors. In this respect it would seem most useful to draw from theoretical perspectives that do not rely on the existence of a territorially defined nation state for an understanding of citizenship. Whereas the demands of liberal citizenship are shaped around a cohesive yet pluralist citizenry, a cosmopolitan conception is not reliant on the location of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship within a nation‐state. The rest of this section will flesh out an understanding of cosmopolitan citizenship, in order to draw out what citizenship without territory might mean, but also how this relates to “private” actors. The term cosmopolitanism denotes a variety of meanings, from the description of cosmopolitan individuals as being worldly (Smith, 2007), to ambitious projects of reform of global political institutions (see for example Held, 1995). As such cosmopolitanism is at once an outlook, a methodology, a moral paradigm, a political practice, or a legal doctrine. Yet the fundamental starting point is its lack of association with a particular territorially‐bound political community. A cosmopolitan worldview might imply then that everyone, by virtue of his or her existence in the world, is a cosmopolitan citizen. As such, one can be a cosmopolitan citizen, in conjunction with holding other loyalties of citizenship. Yet this is a thin idea and perhaps dilutes the citizenship element of the idea excessively. In an often‐quoted statement, Walzer encapsulated the fragility of this idea: I am not a citizen of the world… I am not even aware that there is a world such that one could be a citizen of it. No one has ever offered me citizenship, or described the naturalisation process, or enlisted me in the world’s institutional structures, or given me an account of its decision procedures… or provided me with a list of the benefits and obligations of citizenship or shown me the world’s calendar and the common celebrations and commemorations of its citizens (Walzer, 1994 cited in Linklater 2002)
On this reading, cosmopolitan citizenship, in the sense that it includes everyone, is so broad as to be meaningless, and it is missing an articulation of the binding ties between individual and state‐nation‐country, as well as concomitantly the normative ideals that can be clearly understood within a notion of territorially bound citizenship. While cosmopolitan citizenship is under‐specified and subject to multiple contestations, the strict linkage Walzer maintains between citizens and a territorial political community ignores the existence of a variety of agencies and institutions, global corporations being one such institution, that are involved in the articulation and development of rights, 15
obligations, decision procedures, celebrations etc that occur at the level of a global political community. On this reading, cosmopolitan citizenship is expressed in this reconstituted public domain, at least in part, through the actions and procedures of corporate citizenship. Corporations are viewed by many cosmopolitan writers to be part of a wider process of the reconfiguration of political responsibilities across and above territorial states (see for instance Beck, 2004; Held, 1995); other actors/institutions involved in this process are international or regional political institutions, like the EU or the UN, global civil society, such as NGOS or global social movements (see for example Kaldor et al, 2001). Global corporations engage in this process by expressing what they perceive to be the values of citizenship across and throughout their sphere of operation. On this basis, it is accurate to say that global corporations perform a function of cosmopolitan citizenship in that they are involved in the process of setting universal standards and codes for behaviour across national boundaries. Where these standards and codes relate to matters of human rights, labour rights and so on, corporations engage in government‐ like functions which directly impinge upon the realisation of rights. Yet in this regard, the above quote by Walzer is apt. If we are to see corporate citizenship as a “new” or “renewed” form of citizenship that responds to and shapes processes of globalization, the problem is that this practice of citizenship is still subject to corporate discretion. While there may increasingly exist a moral obligation on the part of corporations to engage in a process of corporate citizenship, there are few forms of redress if they don’t, or if they don’t abide by their own terms. Whereas if citizenship is linked to a nation‐state, those who are affected by its terms are aware of its benefits and burdens, and importantly can understand those benefits and burdens, in relation to corporate citizenship we can often see the blanket application of codes of conduct across a corporation’s operations. There is no reason to believe that the terms of such codes will express rights and responsibilities that are culturally/politically specific to the community at hand. Thus, in terms of the forgoing section on reciprocity, there is perhaps no identifiable public reason by which the terms of corporate citizenship could be defended. So, while we can see corporate citizenship as a cosmopolitan reconstitution of the domain of citizenship, in the sense that corporations are involved in decisions regarding the protection of human/labour rights etc, there is still no obligation to make these decisions defensible to those affected by them in the way that would happen in a democratic state. However, a caveat applies here. It is necessary to state that by emphasising the dimensions or requirements of citizenship that would be purportedly guaranteed by the state and assessing them both in terms of their applicability to corporations and the extent to which they might be articulated globally, we are not reifying some of the assumptions inherent in understandings of the state, market or civil society. In such debates assumptions are made about state capacity and willingness to provide and protect citizenship, which do not apply to most states most of the time. This is not just 16
about weak and failed states, or about states that have outsourced many key elements of statecraft to private or civil society actors, but about the conflicts between states and citizens which have been a feature of politics since Aristotle. Bringing the state back in to debates about corporate citizenship is not to idealise the state as a neutral arbiter of competing rights claims ‐ or as an actor capable and willing to enforce the public good, therefore, it is rather to locate the public as the appropriate venue for settling such issues, whatever its limitations. In this, we see a link between the above discussion about reciprocity and the present discussion of the reconstitution of the public domain. If the practice of corporate citizenship were to be truly seen as citizenship proper, it would have to provide a venue for the production of public goods that is justifiable and accountable, in a democratic way, to those who are affected by it. In this regard, then, the question of the purpose of the corporation is raised again. Global corporations find themselves, or indeed have positioned themselves, as cosmopolitan actors engaged in the process of the reconstitution of the global public domain, which involves the corporation in processes and decisions that relate to matters of public concern, such as human rights and labour rights. On the basis that these processes generally occur at a global level, we can say that corporations are acting like cosmopolitan citizens. However, concomitantly, corporations are also for‐profit actors, and at the core of their function is a need to be successful commercially in order to survive. It has been argued by many that the practice of corporate citizenship and the generation of profit are linked, in that the former aids the latter. It is also argued by many, most famously by Milton Friedman, that the generation of profit has widespread societal benefits, and that that in itself is all corporations need to do in order to be good citizens. We argue, however, that in the context of the creation of a global public domain, in which new meanings and expressions of citizenship are played out, the practice of corporate citizenship, if it is to be meaningful, needs to be a lot more demanding than it is currently. Hence we are not arguing that the corporation is the ideal venue for the practice of citizenship, nor that citizenship is the ideal way to think through the meaning of responsible corporate behaviour. Rather, the emergence of the discourse and practice of global corporate citizenship requires us to define what could or should be implied by invoking this language and the political commitments that might flow from it. To this end, the next section outlines some aspects of cosmopolitan behaviour that might apply to corporate citizens. (The Practice of) Citizenship and Cosmopolitan Responsibilities. The delinking of the concept of citizenship from a defined political community forces us to address the question of the values associated with cosmopolitan citizenship. When citizenship is linked to a nation state, the terms of such citizenship are closely associated with the culture, self‐understanding, and ethos of that nation‐state. Moreover, citizenship terms are shaped by an element of publicity; they are made known to all who are expected to abide by them. As Linklater states “Some account of the 17
cosmopolitan virtues which are the counterpart of national civic virtues has to be provided, but this may be difficult to achieve because of major disputes about what it means to act in a cosmopolitan manner” (2002: 322). The difficulty identified by Walzer, in the quote above, that the terms of “world citizenship” cannot be made known to everyone (or anyone) is apt here. The terms of cosmopolitan citizenship can most usefully be divided into two categories. Firstly, there is the set of characteristics or virtues a cosmopolitan citizen may display. Secondly, there is the set of rights and obligations a cosmopolitan citizen might be said to possess, or more suitably in the context of this paper, a set of rights and obligations that cosmopolitan political institutions could be said to be obliged to observe and protect. Many corporate citizenship initiatives, as mentioned above, draw on stakeholder theory, and in this engagement with various groups of people affected by their activities, they possibly demonstrate the skills of communication and interaction required of cosmopolitan citizens. In the sense that many corporate citizenship initiatives make commitments in relation to universal human and labour rights, it could potentially be said that this constitutes a discharging of their cosmopolitan obligations. Where we see these commitments being somewhat institutionalized within global governance agencies, as in the case of the UN Global Compact, it could be argued that corporations are responsible for the consolidation of cosmopolitan values at global institutional level. However, these virtues are just one of two categories of cosmopolitan citizenship, the other being the set of rights and responsibilities which are said to be enshrined in the many international legal documents that now exist. There have been attempts to codify the responsibilities of corporations in regard to universal human rights: a voluntary Draft Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations, in 1977; OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in 1976, revised significantly in 2000; The International Labour Organization’s Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy; and UNCTAD’s Set of Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices. These documents set out standards of behaviour for corporations that appeal to cosmopolitan ideals of universal human rights and obligations to do no harm. Reflecting on such instruments UNCTAD suggested: ‘These devices developed into ‘soft law’ instruments, somewhat akin to a defined social contract, whereby governments would endorse and promote the agreed standards as embodying the type of conduct expected of ‘good corporate citizens’’ (Cited in Cutler 2006:218). However, more recently, the practice of corporate citizenship has become focussed on the idea that the terms and operation of corporate citizenship are regulated by corporations themselves, so the codification of cosmopolitan corporate responsibilities within international legal documents has become secondary to newer ideas about the value of “learning networks”, “communications on progress”, and “voluntary participation” (see, for example, the UN Global Compact website). Indeed keeping the 18
practice of corporate citizenship as voluntary and non‐legally binding has become the sine qua non of most initiatives. So, while many of the values expressed within corporate citizenship initiatives express cosmopolitan responsibilities of universal human rights etc, the practice itself is a long way from citizenship in the sense of the availability of meaningful redress when commitments are not meant. Held has outlined a much more substantive cosmopolitan democratic project, which is primarily about the reform of existing international political institutions and the creation of new global political institutions as part of a project of the entrenchment of cosmopolitan democratic law. He views corporations as key actors within a wider system of global institutions that should be run according to cosmopolitan democratic principles such that the internal operations of firms are capable of entrenching cosmopolitan democracy in everyday life. Indeed, he argues that the same principles that apply to institutions of global governance apply to private firms (1995: 252). On this reading, cosmopolitanism stretches into the daily lives of corporations that have specific responsibilities relating to peoples’ life chances and socio‐economic circumstances; it is thus incumbent upon corporations to engage those people in meaningful negotiations and bargaining regarding these circumstances (Ibid: 253). While Held does not address reciprocity with regard to citizenship and corporations, there are links between his account, and the liberal value of reciprocity. In arguing for the meaningful participation of those affected, he argues for the terms of behaviour to be acceptable to all. The practice of corporate citizenship is nowhere near as ambitious as this, but the account provided here indicates a normative basis for corporations to assume obligations and responsibilities that stretch far beyond the current expectations of corporate citizenship. As such, if we view corporations to be cosmopolitan citizens (as we might legitimately do given the implicit cosmopolitan overtone of many corporate activities), we can feasibly argue that corporations have binding responsibilities to realise cosmopolitan ideals within their operations. The theoretical discussion thus yields two primary observations. While the liberal account of citizenship is restricted in the sense that it is confined to a statist understanding of society (in which the public domain is associated with the domestic sphere), cosmopolitan accounts provide room for a way of understanding citizenship without reference to territory. Global corporate citizenship as such is perceived as the partial reconstitution of the global public domain. Secondly, cosmopolitan accounts of citizenship focus on the realisation of universal rights and obligations, and while many corporate citizenship practices allude to cosmopolitan ideals, their full implementation, seems unlikely. Liberal demands of citizenship, in their focus on the relationality between the governor and the governed, offer scope to bring some clarity to what should be demanded of the relationship between a corporation and those affected by its activities (or its stakeholders). Taken together, these observations articulate both an understanding of the scale and impacts of corporate activity (the global public domain), 19
as well as a normative ideal for characterising the requirements of global corporate citizenship (reciprocity and equality). Conclusions The paper has tried to make political and conceptual sense of the idea of citizenship as it might apply to corporations. It is important to continually re‐engage the question of what is to be gained by invoking the language of citizenship as opposed to responsibility, accountability etc, to establish what value it adds to praxis and understanding. A key challenge is to find and maintain a language and a corresponding set of institutional arrangements that deal with complexity of claims about rights and responsibilities in an age of globalisation in which authority, power and lines of accountability are blurred, dispersed, shared and often unclear. As mentioned above, it may be too legalistic to reduce citizenship to demands for a new constitutional arrangement as cosmopolitan accounts might demand. Questions remain about whether the boundaries of responsibility can be meaningfully articulated at the global level and if they can, whether they could go beyond basic ‘do no harm’ obligations. The need to ‘ground cosmopolitan citizens’ rights and duties in a constitution based on territoriality and to create a public sphere for the discursive democratic governance of such a polity’ (Crane et al 2008: 177) may lead to calls to establish basic universal pre‐requisites which should characterise the responsible firm in the form of a global charter. But despite Ruggie’s claims, it is unclear what a global public sphere to address these issues might look like and how deliberative it would be. It would also have to address the issue of the basis on which corporations participate in such deliberations‐ as individual citizens, as interested parties, or representatives of shareholders? It is precisely because corporations can be both citizens and governors (even at the same time) that it is difficult to assign definitive rights and responsibilities to firms (Crane et al 2008:205); and as is further pointed out by Crane et al (2008:179): ‘citizenship, taken to the global stage, becomes a more multi‐faceted, ill‐defined and complex phenomena’. So while the idea of corporate citizenship is prevalent, its (re) articulation as global corporate citizenship creates added complexities for determing the boundaries of responsible business conduct. While it has been argued that by signing up to codes of conduct, to the Global Compact or being covered by OECD or ILO guidelines that ‘companies have committed themselves to what is commonly regarded as a basic set of global values and principles’ (Crane et al 2008:185), it is clear that these are loosely defined and even harder to implement (RAID 2008; WDM 1998). Tensions exist not just in relation to the enforcement of regulation, however. There is also the sensitive issue of countries’ sovereignty to set and enforce their own standards of social and environmental protection and the reluctance that most states demonstrate to cede binding decision‐making power to higher authorities on issues such as how ‘their’ firms 20
should behave. It is perhaps more useful to invoke broader framings of citizenship in which corporations are one among many (unequal) partners in order to capture the sense of the ties that bind different actors in the polity; the social contract. This is the notion of corporations as citizens within society rather than corporate citizenship as a stand alone description of duties divorced from a broader public and political context. ‘Corporate citizenship’, let alone ‘global corporate citizenship’ may not advance our understanding of the unfolding nature of the relationship between business and society in and of themselves. But perhaps it helps to describe a common political project in which firms’ existence is justified by an ability to contribute to the public good. Corporate charter campaigns and emphasis on social enterprise seem to echo this sentiment. Indeed Dahl claimed that ‘every large corporation should be thought of as a social enterprise; that is an entity whose existence and decisions can only be justified insofar as they serve public or social purposes’ (Dahl 1972:17 [cited in Crane et al 2008:30]). Charter revocation laws, often described as a ‘well‐kept secret’, often the means to do this. As Bakan argues: ‘Charter revocation laws … have always been part of corporate law. They suggest a government can destroy a corporation as easily as it can create one, and symbolize the obvious, though easily forgotten, idea that in a democracy corporations exist at the pleasure of the people and under their sovereignty’ (Bakan 2004:157).
Activists have traditionally been wary of accepting claims of corporate citizenship as either evidence of blue or greenwash or a dangerous attempt to acquire new legal rights and entitlements (Karliner 1997, Beder 1997, Cromwell 2001), but the discussion above of liberal ideals of citizenship points to the idea that far‐reaching demands can be made of corporations by using the language of citizenship. The crux of the issue is the terms on which corporations act with those affected by their activities. The language of citizenship implies a social contract based on equality and reciprocity; the practice of global corporate citizenship implies the application of this scheme across territorial boundaries. This resonates with Michael Hopkin’s call for a ‘planetary bargain’ between governments and business. Quoting Rawls, he says ‘Those who engage in social cooperation choose together, in one joint act, the principles which are to assign basic rights and duties and to determine the division of social benefits’ (cited in Hopkins 2003:26). He imagines this will ‘lead to a level playing field brought about by increased global cooperation. And the conflict between government and the governed… will gradually draw out to new social arrangements where the private sector becomes kinder and gentler in its own and society’s interests‐ the acceptable case of capitalism within a new planetary bargain’ (2003:220). This takes us back to Crane et al’s (2008: 4) idea that citizenship provides us with ‘an organising principle for aligning roles and responsibilities among members of political communities and between them and other institutions wielding power and responsibility’. Within this organising principle, the ideas articulated above become relevant. If we are to speak of citizenship in its fullest sense we are obliged to take seriously issues of equality and reciprocity where those 21
affected by a firm’s activites would have an equal say, on terms that are acceptable to all, within a discussion in which even the most difficult issues are up for negotiation. Realising such principles in practice and globally clearly raises a number of issues. But the language of citizenship in general‐ not merely its appropriation by private entities, allows us to consider questions of rights and responsibilities in non‐legal ways. The prevailing lack of clarity on these questions, however, is helpful neither to company directors who are unclear of the boundaries or nature of their responsibilities, to states who alone cannot adequately address all these issues, or international institutions that have the reach and – in theory‐ means of responding to global publics, but are currently left without the means of conferring global citizenship or acting on the consequences of doing so. Raising these questions goes to the very heart of the question about the role and purpose of the firm: as a wealth‐generating unit in and for itself or as means to enhance general public welfare. Even if current practice is far more focussed on the former, more ambitious articulations of the idea of corporate citizenship could help to deliver the latter.
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