Responsible Corporate Citizenship: It’s the State, Stupid!

This contribution calls for a fundamental rethinking of the foundation of the duty of corporate citizenship. The benefits enjoyed by a legal person, in particular when used as a vehicle to run a listed corporation, come with obligations, not because of some ethical responsibility or a misunderstood noblesse oblige, but because promoting the societal interest is inherent to the purpose of the corporation. Whoever wishes to use the legal person as a vehicle for business activities, with all its associated advantages, thereby also submits to the partly public character of that legal status and thus to the pursuit of public goals. This provides a deeper foundation for corporate social responsibility than the notion of corporate interest, which is strongly related to the actual day-to-day actions of the company and not to the basis for its existence. It is also argued that this should lead to specific binding standards of what corporate citizenship entails. To the extent that such standards cannot be made at the European level, the role of national regulation, and thus of the State, must necessarily increase to protect citizens from the excesses of global capitalism.