CITIZENSHIP, INC. Do We Really Want Businesses to Be Good Corporate Citizens? Pierre-Yves Neron and Wayne Norman Abstract: Are there any advantages to thinking and speaking about ethical business in the language of citizenship? We will address this question in part by looking at the possible relevance of a vast literature on in- dividual citizenship that has been produced by political philosophers over the last fifteen years. Some of the central elements of citizenship do not seem to apply straightforwardly to corporations, E,g,, "citizen- ship" typically implies membership in a state and an identity akin to national identity; but this connotation of citizenship is obviously problematic for multinational corporations. However, the language of citizenship does help to focus our attention on various legal and politi- cal virtues (or vices) for corporations—topics that have been largely neglected by discussions under other rubrics, such as CSR or sustain- ability. We finish with an evaluation of the potential benefits and costs of conceptualizing and talking about ethical business practices in the language of citizenship. "Citizen" and "Citizenship" are powerful words. They speak of respect, of rights, of dignity,,,, Wefindno perjorative uses. It is a weighty, monumental, humanist word,—Fraser and Gordon 1994: 90 [The rhetorical appeal to citizenship often] seems to have no purpose other than to add normative weight to a policy, institution or practice that could just as aptly be described without reference to citizenship,—Weinstock 2002: 244 T he question in the subtitle of this article is deliberately provocative. In fact, in many ways, the most plausible answer could be construed as a rather qualified "No": in most respects it simply does not make sense to think of corporations as citizens, let alone, therefore, as good citizens. Now for those qualifications. Of course, we do not want businesses to be bad corporate "citizens" or "mem- bers of society," We laud businesses that perform the kinds of good deeds typically associated with corporate citizenship, from social investment and philanthropy to proactive community and stakeholder engagements. Our position, in short, is not of the Friedmanite backlash variety, arguing that businesses should stick to the knitting and attend exclusively to the interests of their shareholders. Our concerns are philosophical and political. We wonder (a) whether the language of "citizen- © 2008, Business Ethics Quarterly, Volume 18, Issue 1, ISSN 1052-150X, pp, 1-26