ABSTRACT
The republican tradition of emphasizing the importance of political participation, leading back to Aristotle’s notion of virtue ethics of citizenship as the capacity for ruling and being ruled is pivotal to the kind of corporate citizenship proposed by Andrew Crane et al. The notion of citizenship traditionally has two aspects. One is republican and concerns civic duties of participation in the political process and of being a good citizen acting out of civic duty. The other aspect is liberal and concerns the rights and entitlements the individual citizen enjoys. Corporations can be seen as similar to ordinary citizens because they too enjoy the right to own property, have freedom of expression, and have a duty to pay taxes. Corporate citizenship has been argued to need further clarification. Corporations acting citizen-like therefore are more morally and politically minded creatures compared to the market liberal view of the corporation that for instance, Friedman suggests.
