Ecological Citizenship and the Corporation: Politicizing the New Corporate Environmentalism

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of ecological citizenship to management theory and in particular to ways of understanding the roles and responsibilities of the corporation. It begins by establishing the case for incorporating citizenship thinking into the literature on organizations and the environment and specifically for developing a greater political orientation to new corporate environmentalism. It goes on to identify the nature of the ecological citizenship concept and the three different understandings that are prevalent in the literature. Applying these perspectives to corporations, it then establishes how ecological citizenship can help us to examine corporate responsibilities for exporting liberal citizenship, rethink the stakeholder set, and reconfigure the community of the corporation.

Keywords: Citizenship Studies, Environmental Policy, Business and the Natural Environment, Corporate Environmentalism, Ecological Footprint Analysis, Management Theory, Stakeholder Theory