Revisiting Corporate Citizenship Theory and Practice from the Perspective of Local Communities in Africa: Lessons from Nigeria

Abstract

The various efforts to better understand the challenges and opportunities that confront business-society interaction have seen the emergence and proliferation of a multitude of concepts (see Birch, 2001; Wood and Logsdon, 2001; Waddock, 2008; Ludescher et al., 2008). These concepts include but are not limited to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), triple bottom line, sustainable development, and Corporate Citizenship (CC), which are often either portrayed as complementary or competing concepts. However, some have also argued that these concepts especially CSR have engineered more analytical confusion than conceptual clarity and therefore should be abandoned (see Freeman and Liedtka, 1991; Freeman and Velamuri, 2006; Van Oosterhout, 2005, 2008). In response to such criticisms, considerable efforts have recently been directed at rethinking the concept of CC as way of addressing its analytical weakness and making it a useful framework for managerial decision-making (see Idemudia, 2008). This is partly because the concept of CC has in the past few decades emerged as the dominant discourse employed by academics, businesses and consultants to describe the changing sociopolitical role of business in society (Matten and Crane, 2005; Moon et al., 2005; Néron and Norman, 2008).

1. The author acknowledges financial support for his research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research council (SSHRC) of Canada.