Traditions of understanding the nature, rights and obligations of citizenship are generally viewed as applying to individuals within a polity. Can they also be used to explain the beliefs and behaviour of corporations? The term ‘Corporate citizenship’ is widely used to describe firm activity that has some sort of public benefit, though what that term means and entails varies widely, especially between Europe and the United States. Leading explanations for this variation in the business management literature have focused on an institutional analysis of socially situated business systems. This paper will examine the variation using an analysis of contrasting political traditions of citizenship. It will explore the distinct characteristics and implications of the civic republican tradition, dominant in the United States, and the social democratic ‘rights’ tradition, dominant in Europe, for understanding CSR aims, priorities and language - as well as more explicitly political activity, such as corporate lobbying.
