Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T12:46:29.286Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Corporations as Citizens: Political not Metaphorical

A Reply to Critics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Abstract

At the center of our article “Citizenship, Inc.,” is a puzzle about a metaphor. Are corporations really a kind of citizen, or like citizens in some real way, or is talk of “corporate citizenship” all just a misleading metaphorical extension of the age-old concept of individual citizenship? In this reply to four very spirited responses to that article, we will not be defending our particular analysis of that metaphor so much as joining our colleagues in reflecting on the question of what academics are doing, or should be doing, when they take on the vocabulary of politics and business in this way. What can philosophers or social scientists expect to accomplish by telling fellow academics, or fellow citizens, that they should be using concepts like “corporate citizenship” one way rather than another? Is there a respectable methodology for shoring up this kind of advice? Or rather, are we all engaged in some kind of urbane political discourse attempting to push a vocabulary most likely to favor our own preferred ideological positions? We had relatively little to say on these questions in the original article, but we found many of the most interesting critiques or “friendly amendments” in the responses to be essentially about these “meta” and methodological questions (or derived from different answers to them).

Type
Response to Critics
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Connolly, E. William 1983. The Terms of Political Discourse. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Crane, Andrew and Dirk, Matten. 2008. “Incorporating the Corporation in Citizenship: A Response to Néron and Norman,” Business Ethics Quarterly 18(1): 2733.Google Scholar
De George, Richard. 2008. “Reflections on ‘Citizenship, Inc.,’Business Ethics Quarterly 18(1): 4350.Google Scholar
Matten, Dirk and Andrew, Crane. 2005. “Corporate Citizenship: Toward an Extended Theoretical Conceptualization,” Academy of Management Review 30: 166–79.Google Scholar
Miller, David. 1985. “Linguistic Philosophy and Political Theory,” in The Nature of Political Theory, ed. Miller, D. and Siedentop, L.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Van Oosterhout, J. 2008. “Transcending the Confines of Economic and Political Organization? The Misguided Metaphor of Corporate Citizenship,” Business Ethics Quarterly 18(1): 3542.Google Scholar
Vogel, David. 2005. The Marketfor Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. Washington: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Donna J. and Jeanne, M. Logsdon. 2008. “Business Citizenship as Metaphor and Realities,” Business Ethics Quarterly 18(1): 5159.Google Scholar