- 01 Dec 2007 17:53
#1391968
rest of article
A great article about the need for corporate citizenship.
"Their economy produces things cheaper than ours, so we need to send them some manufactured viruses to level the playing field." - Freedom and Democracy Inc.
Published on Friday, November 30, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Corporate Citizenship–Oxymoron or Necessity
by Robert C. Hinkley
“America, America
God mend thine every flaw
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.â€â€“ America the Beautiful, Second verse
A little less than ten years ago, I had lunch with a friend and university professor. He was trying to get the CEOs of big companies to promote human rights in the workplace for their Asian subsidiaries. He asked me, “Why is it that when I speak to these guys, they don’t seem interested? It’s not that they are against it. They just don’t think it’s relevant.â€
As a corporate lawyer, the answer to this question was simple. His question, however, made me realize how much damage gets done by big corporations to human rights, the environment and other elements of the public interest without the law ever being violated. As a citizen, this concerned me. As a corporate lawyer, I realized what caused the problem and how to make it stop.
Compliance, corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship are three types of corporate behavior. They can be viewed as occurring on a spectrum. At one end is compliance, doing what is necessary to obey the law. In the middle, is corporate social responsibility (CSR). Here companies engage in various acts that go beyond mere compliance and in some way benefit the public interest. Corporate citizenship goes beyond compliance and CSR. It involves a culture which results in behavior that, while pursuing the creation of shareholder value, always aims to protect the public interest as well. Under this definition, many say that corporate citizenship is today an oxymoron.
...
The ability of the liberal democracy to protect the public interest is based on two assumptions:
First, it is not possible to inflict too much damage on the environment and other elements of the public interest before the behavior that causes the damage will be recognized and a new law prohibiting this behavior will be passed.
Secondly, those who are found to be behaving badly causing harm to the public interest will not continue their behavior once their involvement is exposed. They also will not get in the way of new legislation prohibiting the offending behavior in the future.
These assumptions were probably valid in the late 18th century when the liberal democracy was first conceived. In a society made up of mostly subsistence farmers and shopkeepers, individuals had little ability to do serious harm to the public interest. When they did, their conscience, shame, concern for the their reputation and public spiritedness of the times kept them from continuing their bad behavior and from trying to influence the government to delay or not pass laws that would prohibit them from behaving badly again. In other words, their “citizenship†intervened to safeguard the public interest just as the founders predicted it would. Without this citizenship, liberal democracy does not work because government cannot protect the public interest...
rest of article
A great article about the need for corporate citizenship.
"Their economy produces things cheaper than ours, so we need to send them some manufactured viruses to level the playing field." - Freedom and Democracy Inc.