The seed for this book was sown shortly before Andy and Dirk joined Jeremy at the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR), Nottingham University Business School. Between panels, meetings and socials at the 2002 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Denver, we discovered a shared interest in the uses and abuses of the term ‘corporate citizenship’. We then explored and extended this interest through several papers looking at how corporations and citizenship came together. At some point we recognized that in order to do justice to these ideas, and in order to respond to the numerous objections and refinements that had been suggested by others, a book length treatment was called for. Thus the book both synthesizes and expands upon the different papers we have also published in the area (see below).

Though the book has taken rather longer than intended we feel that it has benefited from the journey. Our papers on corporations and citizenship have been subjected to a variety of commentaries, challenges and criticisms at conferences and workshops, and through journal review and discussion. We are immensely grateful to all those too numerous to name, and some anonymous, who took the trouble to engage with our ideas.

We would also like to thank Ed Freeman, Stuart Hart and David Wheeler, the series editors, the Cambridge University Press staff and our research assistants Judy Muthuri (Nottingham), and Jesse Brodlieb (York) for all their support.