D IAGRAMAS DE C OMPONENTE

Business theory has borrowed the notion of citizenship from politics, for several reasons. The major one is to highlight the social dimension of busi-ness organizations and, consequently, to analyse the role of power, under its different disguises, in resolving the inevitable conflicts of interests that arise therein. Through the concept of citizenship, politics also lends to busi-ness firms a sense of identity, by way of membership in the community, and a justification for their rights and responsibilities as artificial or legal persons, being a channel for participating in community life. Wood and associates even go as far as affirming that business organizations, in com-parison to individual or physical persons, are ‘secondary citizens’ (Wood et al., 2006: 35–6). Although we normally treat business organizations as independent legal entities carrying out their own activities in pursuit of particular goals, the truth is that they only exist thanks to the objectives and the resources furnished by their human incorporators. In this respect, cor-porations are collective instruments created by individual citizens to achieve ends which, otherwise, they will not be able to attain as effectively.

Given the nature of these individual citizens, those ends are most likely to have a sociopolitical dimension and reflect the values of the community to which they belong.

But the notion of citizenship itself has had a long history and, to dis-cover its full potential in clarifying the status of corporations and the issues concerning how corporations ought to be governed, it would be convenient to have a look into its origins and evolution.

In the Politics, Aristotle delves into the question of citizenship upon observing that the ‘state is composite, [and] like any other whole [is] made up of many parts – these are the citizens, who compose it’ (Pltcs, 1274b).

He then proceeds to identify who is the citizen, and what is the meaning of the term, essentially by determining what the citizen does. Next, Aristotle tries to differentiate citizens from all other classes of people resident in the state, explaining the process by which one acquires citizenship on the side.

Finally, he seeks to distinguish the various kinds of citizens depending on the form of government adopted by the state. Only within this context could the query ‘what makes a citizen a good citizen?’ receive an appropri-ate response.

According to Aristotle, ‘a citizen in the strictest sense, against whom no such exception can be taken’ is he who ‘shares in the administration of justice, and in offices’ (Pltcs, 1275a). The essential task of the citizen is to participate in deciding what is good and just in the state and in putting this into effect. A few lines later he specifies that a citizen is a ‘juryman and member of the assembly’, to whom ‘is reserved the right of deliberating or judging about some things or about all things’ (Pltcs, 1275b). Although many people in a state may actually participate in the process of deliber-ating and deciding on the public good, only citizens have the right to do so. What characterizes a citizen, therefore, is ‘the power to take part in the deliberative or judicial administration of any state’ (Pltcs, 1275b). This does not mean, however, that a citizen always has to hold state office. It would suffice that he at least have the power to occupy such a post, for cit-izenship requires ‘sharing in governing and being governed’ (Pltcs, 1283b).

In other words, one does not lose citizenship when being governed and out of office, as long as one can also govern and hold office in turn at some other time.

Aristotle was aware that the state needed other kinds of people apart from citizens in order to be viable (Pltcs, 1278a). Mere necessity for the state’s survival or even for the state’s flourishing did not automatically qualify one for citizenship. Consider children who, not being grown-up, still cannot exercise sufficient deliberation and judgment in state matters. They may only be called citizens on the basis of certain assumptions. Neither are the members of the artisan class citizens, properly speaking. In ancient times and among many nations, the artisan class was composed by a major-ity of slaves and foreigners: ‘The necessary people are either slaves who minister to the wants of individuals, or mechanics and laborers who are ser-vants of the community’ (Pltcs, 1278a). In the best of states, citizens do not refer to free men as such – in which case foreign workers would be citizens – but only to free men who are the same time freed from providing necessary menial services. Citizenship requires a certain distance from the tyranny of

having to satisfy daily needs; participating in the discussion about the public good and how to put it into practice demands leisure and time to spare. Because of this, citizenship seems to imply having reached relative affluence or an acceptable level of material wealth and comfort; it is not something everyone can afford at the outset.

Elsewhere, Aristotle enumerates the many different classes that consti-tute the state and are needed for its existence: the food-producing class or farmers, artisans, traders, labourers, the military and so forth (Pltcs, 1291a).

Nonetheless, ‘as the soul may be said to be more truly part of an animal than the body, so the higher parts of the states, that is to say, the warrior class, the class engaged in the administration of justice, and that engaged in deliberation, which is the special business of political understanding – these are more essential to the state than the parts which minister to the nec-essaries of life’ (Pltcs, 1291a). To the extent that citizens are involved in deciding the public good and in dispensing justice, they are like the soul, the most important part of the state, although by themselves they do not suffice to constitute the state, in the same way that the soul still needs the body. Just the same, citizens occupy the topmost place in the hierarchy of the many different classes comprising the state.

Not all residents of a state nor even all the necessary ones, therefore, are citizens. Resident aliens and slaves share with citizens the same living space, although not the same rights (Pltcs, 1274a). To be a citizen, it is not enough to have the right to sue or be sued before a state’s tribunals; this could also be obtained by resident aliens through treaties between home and host states. Citizens have more and farther-reaching rights. Insofar as resident aliens are normally obliged to have a citizen–patron, they could only par-ticipate in the community very imperfectly, never in their own name and always under this citizen–patron’s tutelage. In this respect, they are much like children, the very old or the feeble. None of these could rightfully be considered citizens, except in a limited and qualified sense.

How, then, does one become a citizen? Excluding special cases, where one is made or becomes a citizen accidentally, ‘in practice a citizen is defined to be one of whom both the parents are citizens (and not just one, i.e., father or mother)’ (Pltcs, 1275b), Aristotle responds. As we have seen, to become a citizen it is not sufficient for one to reside in a particular state, nor to enjoy just some rights there; one would also have to be an adult pos-sessing more than adequate wealth and, above all, be the offspring of people who themselves are citizens. It was generally believed during Aristotle’s time that these are the conditions for exercising the prerogatives of citizenship, namely, deliberating on the public good and administering justice. In short, citizens are the only ones qualified to rule or govern the state by virtue of the above-mentioned characteristics.

Notice that, for Aristotle, nature matters more than nurture for the purpose of citizenship: ‘For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule’ (Pltcs, 1254a), he maintains. He apparently presumes that, by being the child of citizen-parents, one would be able to perform the tasks of citizenship compe-tently. He may be right in part, because parents usually guarantee children a favourable position, in terms of wealth and education, to start with in life. So requiring that both parents be citizens for oneself to become a citizen is some form of shorthand for all the other prerequisites. Yet the absoluteness of this condition is appropriately tempered when he acknowledges the difficulty of determining how far back in generations one should go, to establish a pedigree worthy of citizenship. Moreover, Aristotle admits that “born of a father or mother who is a citizen”, cannot possibly apply to thefirst inhabitants or founders of a state’ (Pltcs, 1275b). In citizenship, as in most other human things, nature may matter more than nurture, but it could only account for as much, never for everything.

Having defined citizenship and established the process by which it is acquired, Aristotle insists that there are as many kinds of citizenship as states or forms of government, such that ‘he who is a citizen in democracy will often not be a citizen in an oligarchy’ (Pltcs 1275a). Given that citizens differ according to forms of government, he cautions that his definition is best suited to a democracy, but not to other states. It does not apply, for example, to states where people (the demes) are not acknowledged, do not hold regular assemblies, or decide on lawsuits (Pltcs, 1275b). Neither does it apply to aristocracies, where citizenship is granted on the basis of excel-lence and merit, nor in oligarchies, where it is given on the basis of wealth (Pltcs, 1278a). It could happen, however, that a state begins to lack popu-lation and starts admitting aliens, illegitimate children, children of a single citizen-parent (father or mother) and even children of slaves as citizens; but that process would most likely be reversed as soon as the dearth was reme-died (Pltcs, 1278a).

Even allowing for the variances in citizenship in accordance with the different kinds of states, Aristotle nonetheless affirms that the excellence of the good citizen may, in some instance, coincide with the excellence of the good man. That would occur in the best of states, so long as the good man and citizen takes part in the conduct of public affairs (Pltcs, 1278b).

Twenty-four centuries later, several models and typologies of citizenship, still based on differences in the kinds of states, have been offered (Stokes, 2002; Crane and Matten, 2004; Wood et al., 2006). Closer scrutiny reveals that these categories could ultimately be collapsed into two, with their

respective variants: liberal–minimalist citizenship, on the one hand, and civic republican or communitarian citizenship, on the other.

The liberal–minimalist ideal conceives citizenship fundamentally as freedom from oppression and protection against the arbitrary rule of an absolutist government or state (Crane, Matten and Moon, 2003: 7–9). For this reason, citizens are vested with political rights which enable them to choose their rulers, to vote and to be voted into public office. The duty of government is to secure these individual political rights together with a few others which form the core or minimum of citizenship. For some, this minimum is composed of the rights to life, to liberty and to property (Locke); for others, the right to a just share of the social product or utility (Smith, Bentham); while, for still others, it consists in the universal rights to equality before the law and to free rational agency or autonomy (Kant).

What is important is that this minimum of rights and freedoms be guaran-teed. With a certain amount of latitude we can include in this group the lib-ertarians (Wood et al., 2006: 41–2, 44), who support a very limited state, and those who uphold a deliberative democracy (Crane, Matten and Moon, 2003: 15–16), who may want a more robust form of government to safeguard conditions of equality in political discourse. Both persuasions are particularly concerned with rights.

For its part, civic republican or communitarian citizenship emphasizes participation in the public good through the fostering of community ties and the practice of civic virtues (Crane, Matten and Moon, 2003: 9; Wood et al., 2006: 42–3). While liberal–minimalist citizenship is marked off by

‘negative freedoms’ or ‘freedoms from’ state oppression and interference, for example, civic republican or communitarian citizenship is set apart by

‘positive freedoms’ or ‘freedoms to’ actively seek and work together with others for the common good. Liberal–minimalist citizenship stresses indi-vidual rights or state-guaranteed powers against all collectives including itself; civic republican or communitarian citizenship underscores belonging to the group as the factor consitutive of identity and the element that lends meaning to action. It is the group or collective with its hierarchically ordered set of goods, rules and practices that makes virtue or human excel-lence possible.

Within the civic republican or communitarian mind-set, the role of gov-ernment or the state is to strengthen already existing institutions such as families, neighbourhoods, schools, churches and so forth, such that the good is rewarded, rules upheld and practices allowed to flourish. Only when these institutions are lacking should government intervene to help set them up, without losing sight of its subsidiary function, however. By the same token, state coercive power should be used so that evil is mini-mized, sanctioned and punished. Thus there is greater insistence on

fulfilling obligations – to protect the family, obey the law, pay taxes and comply with jury or military service, and so forth – than on demand-ing rights, which somehow separate the individual from the group.

Developmental democracy (J.S. Mill) may be said to favour civic republi-can or communitarian citizenship in the understanding that ties and oblig-ations link one more to civil society than to the state or government (Crane, Matten and Moon, 2003: 14–15).

Liberal–minimalist citizenship guarantees one the right to stand up to the group; civic republican or communitarian citizenship admonishes one to participate in social affairs and contribute to the common good well beyond the periodic exercise of political rights or voting. Liberal–mini-malist citizenship is very limited with regard to rights; civic republican or communitarian citizenship, maximalist in terms of duties, obligations and virtues. Insofar as Aristotle accentuates the embeddedness of citizenship in a particular sociocultural and historical context, as well as the mutual dependence between the human excellence of the citizen and the excellence of polis or the state, he unequivocally sides himself with the civic republi-can or communitarian model.

How do these different views of citizenship measure up with the notion of the corporation as a citizen, as a ‘corporate citizen’? As a citizen in the liberal–minimalist mould, a corporation would be expected,first and fore-most, to protect its ‘right to exist’ zealously, based on the freedom of asso-ciation of its incorporators, and its ‘licence to operate’, resting on the freedom of enterprise. A corporation would very much prefer ‘to stick to its own business’ and embark on philanthropic activities only with utmost reluctance, in response to urgent or pressing social demands. In such instances, necessarily few and far between, corporations could justify their behaviour in the name of ‘enlightened self-interest’; that is, corporate phil-anthropy is all right because it ultimately benefits the economic bottom line; it is just an additional ‘cost of doing business’. In all the other social and political issues, the corporation as liberal–minimalist citizen would be quite content to remain passive. This description of liberal–minimalist cor-porate citizenship would correspond to a mix of what other authors call limited and equivalent views of CC (Crane and Matten, 2004: 63–7).

Similarly, it would have great affinity with a shareholder view of the firm focused almost exclusively on increasing share price.

On the other hand, if a corporation were to follow the civic republican or communitarian type of citizenship, apart from exercising political, civil and social rights to the degree possible, it would also strive to fulfil what it understands to be political, civil and social obligations. Such a company would not hesitate to step in, harnessing resources and expertise, when it considers government or the state to be remiss in its duties. In particular, it

could provide social rights (e.g. healthcare or housing), enable civil rights (e.g. be an ‘equal opportunity employer’) and serve as a channel for the exercise of political rights (e.g. hosting a forum for political debate on certain issues). This sort of company would not be troubled in justifying sociopolitical action, because it thinks that its mission transcends purely economic goals, to begin with. Active involvement in community affairs and uninhibited political activism characterizes the civic republican or communitarian corporate citizen. For the civic republican or communitar-ian corporate citizen, responsibility is not only of an economic nature, but sociopolitical as well; and it is owed not only to shareholders, but to other stakeholder groups also. A company of this type falls within the extended view of CC (Crane and Matten, 2004: 67–70).