Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2015
This paper discusses global corporate citizenship in the twenty-first century. The primary focus is on the responsibility of management educators to foster among students an understanding of the causes and consequences of business activitiy that creates organizational wealth, including the role of stakeholders. The modern corporation is a stakeholder enterprise: stakeholders enable the business to create wealth and require that it distribute wealth appropriately. The stakeholder enterprise model, which has been so economically successful, also implies corporate citizenship responsibilities. The Clarkson Principles are discussed as a means through which educators and managers can better understand and address the challenges of corporate citizenship in the modern world.
This paper is based, in part, on a presentation at the 1999 Academy of Management symposium entitled “Global Corporate Citizenship.” The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance and constructive comments of Sandra Waddock, James Walsh, and Anne T. Lawrence.
1 E. J. Dionne Jr., “America’s Yearning for Values,” Boston Globe, August 2, 1999, A15.
2 Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and The Olive Tree (New York: Anchor Books, 2000).
3 Harry C. Boy te and Nancy N. Kari, Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work (Philadelphia, Penn.: Temple University Press, 1996).
4 Boyte and Kari, 10.
5 Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975) (quotation at p. 244).
6 Cf. Robert H. King, “Citizenship and Self-respect: The Experiences of Politics in the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of American Studies, 22 (1988): 7–24.
7 William E. Rees, “Life in the Lap of Luxury as Ecosystems Collapse,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 30, 1999, B4, B5.
8 Boy te and Kari, 16.
9 James E. Post, “Global Corporate Citizenship in a dot.com World,” Business and Society Review (2000), 105(1): 27–46.
10 Kofi Annan, Address to the World Economic Forum, Davos Switzerland, January 31, 1999. Text reprinted in Vital Speeches, February 15, 1999.