Working and fighting for progress, for prosperity, for society : brave new business worlds before and beyond corporate citizenship

One of the things that many of us working in corporate citizenship tend to do is to assume that we are actually creating new agendas. Sometimes we do but, more often than not, other thinkers have been there before us. One such man worth revisiting in his extensive writings of over 60 years ago is Aldous Huxley, probably most famous to many for his novel Brave New World. This paper looks briefly at some of the things Huxley had to say that are relevant to our current thinking about the 'soul' of business and its relations to CSR and corporate citizenship.

Towards a conceptual framework for citizenship

This chapter aims to provide a conceptual framework for discussing citizenship. It
offers a brief account of various dimensions of citizenship that may be used as a
guide to understanding the evolution of Western ideas and forms of citizenship, as
well as contemporary problems with them. The chapter considers citizenship as a
legal status, as an administrative category, as a political practice and as an ideal to
be attained. 1 It also considers the sites or domains in which citizenship is or ought
to be practised. Each of these dimensions raises questions that citizens, non-citizens
and governments have asked over the centuries and that still provoke debate.2
Nonetheless, the chapter makes no claim to be comprehensive and, for the sake of
brevity, its generalizations may not be sufficiently sensitive to the many variations
and peculiarities of Western concepts and practices of citizenship.

Gatekeepers : going, going, gone -the challenge of citizenship journalism to traditional practice

Commentators believe that the reporting of the London bombings of July 2005 ushered in a new era of the citizen joumalist. News outlets in Britain were  flooded with emails and mobile phone pictures. But with the sheer quantity of material heading into the editor's inbox, how can we be sure of its veracity? This paper looks at The Herald Sun. The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Adelaide Advertiser to investigate the current systems in place for checking incoming leads and material. The paper raises questions regarding the reliability of current systems and puts forward the possibility that new approaches and systems may be needed to meet the new challenges. The paper further explores if newspapers are still acting as gatekeepers of the traditional system or if they are letting the gate swing ajar in response to  changed circumstances.

Voluntary activity and local government : managing volunteers or facilitating active citizenship?

This article discusses the role of voluntary activity in the local government of Australia. Two approaches to facilitating volunteer participation in local government are presented. The authors encourage administrators to frame voluntary activity in support of local government as an example of active citizenship. This approach to volunteering is framed as part of an effort to develop social capital and foster sustainable communities. The application of this approach in the Australian state of Victoria is described.

Ten principles of corporate citizenship

Purpose – This paper aims to reflect briefly on some of the major principles that have emerged from the developing policies, practices and debates about corporate citizenship in the last ten years or so.
Design/methodology/approach – Considerable scholarly work has been conducted on corporate citizenship in the past, and will continue to be done in the future. This paper is deliberately written for a non-scholarly audience.
Findings – Ten principles are outlined, all of them focusing on developing a cultural aspect of corporate citizenship as good business.
Originality/value – The basic premise of this paper is that significant cultural change, through corporate citizenship will only take place by business implementing policies, and practices based on the sort of sound (but basic) principles presented here. These ten principles, in this format, are original to this paper.

Australian public opinion on citizenship and transnational ties in Asia

At a time of increasing national security, this article explores the ways in which migrant communities from Asia feel a sense of attachment to exclusive and inclusive forms of national citizenship while at the same time maintaining transnational links. Drawing on data from the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (2003), the study utilises a quantitative methodology. The strength of this methodological approach lies in its capacity to describe the importance of different categories in shaping public opinion on citizenship and transnational connections in Asia. This study compares the views of Asian-Australians with the rest of the Australian population.

Exchange as a determinant in corporate citizenship : exploratory action research into the social construction of corporate citizenship

This study attempts to achieve two things. Firstly it contextualizes corporate citizenship drawing on scholarly, government, media, legal and business discourses which when viewed as a whole, reveals the importance of exchange as a central determinant in how all the major themes or subfields of corporate citizenship function and subsequently become valued within public discourse. Secondly, it reports on exploratory action research where I as a researcher occupied a central role in understanding and contributing towards how organizational settings socially construct and evolve corporate citizenship in real time through various exchange behaviour, drawing from four years field research within BP and its interactions with the external world. This research contributes to new knowledge by building a rare contextual understanding into how cultural change evolves over time within an organization, from its public face, through policy, down into employee and stakeholder reactions, including identifying the crucial role played by Cultural bridges’ in shifting entrenched organizational culture towards embracing new, more sustainable ways of doing business, and additionally how practitioners can legitimately act as a researcher in facilitating this process by assisting an organization to move from simple, transactional relationships to more sustainable integrated social, financial and environmental exchange between business and its broader context. Importantly, this research develops entirely new theoretical models for understanding the social application and commercial value of corporate citizenship to both business and society.

Guest editors' introduction: active citizenship and social accountability

By active citizenship, we [Oxfam] mean that combination of rights and obligations that link individuals to the state, including paying taxes, obeying laws, and exercising the full range of political, civil, and social rights. Active citizens use those rights to improve the quality of political or civic life, through involvement in the formal economy or formal politics, or through the sort of collective action that historically has allowed poor and excluded groups to make their voices heard. [… .]

At an individual level, active citizenship means developing self-confidence and overcoming the insidious way in which the condition of being relatively powerless can become internalised. In relation to other people, it means developing the ability to negotiate and influence decisions. And when empowered individuals work together, it means involvement in collective action, be it at the neighbourhood level, or more broadly. Ultimately, active citizenship means engaging with the political system to build an effective state, and assuming some degree of responsibility for the public domain. (Green 2008: 12, 19)