It is widely accepted that corporations have economic, legal, and even social roles. Yet the political role of corporations has yet to be fully appreciated. Corporations and Citizenship serves as a corrective by employing the concept of citizenship in order to make sense of the political dimensions of corporations. Citizenship offers a way of thinking about roles and responsibilities among members of polities and between these members and their governing institutions. Crane, Matten and Moon provide a rich and multi-faceted picture that explores three relations of citizenship – corporations as citizens, corporations as governors of citizenship, and corporations as arenas of citizenship for stakeholders – as well as three contemporary reconfigurations of citizenship – cultural (identity-based), ecological, and cosmopolitan citizenship. The book revolutionizes not only our understanding of corporations but also of citizenship as a principle of allocating power and responsibility in a political community.

Visible Hands

by Jette Steen Knudsen and Jeremy Moon

Published 20 October 2017
A growing number of states are regulating the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of domestic multinational corporations relating to overseas subsidiaries and suppliers. In this book, Jette Steen Knudsen and Jeremy Moon offer a new framework for analysing government-CSR relations: direct and indirect policies for CSR. Arguing that existing research on CSR regulation fails to address the growing role of the state in shaping the international practices of multinational corporations, the authors provide insight into the CSR issues that are addressed by government policies. Drawing on case studies, they analyse three key examples of CSR: non-financial reporting, ethical trade and tax transparency in extractive industries. In doing so, they propose a new research agenda of government and CSR that is relevant to scholars and graduate students in CSR, sustainability, political economy and economic sociology, as well as policymakers and consultants in international development and trade.