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Global Public Rules and Citizenship Rights: A New Responsibility of Private Business Firms?

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Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance

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Abstract

Economic activities require the existence of rules and their enforcement as preconditions that the market cannot generate itself. Property rights, contractual rights and obligations are minimal conditions that in modern societies are provided and enforced by the state. Without such rules, the market cannot flourish. The state thus determines regulations and delineates the sphere of private freedom, within which individual citizens and private institutions are entitled to conclude contracts amongst each other but are as well forced to abide by the contracted rules. In line of the development of modern nation states, the state has not only been the guarantor of civil rights, e.g. the right to own property, to enter into private contracts, and to engage in market activity. In its role as a democratic constitutional state it has also been the guarantor of political participation rights, the right of the citizen to take part in the processes to determine public rules and issues of public concern. Finally, in its role as a welfare state it has provided social rights for citizens, such as the right to education, to healthcare and welfare (Marshall, 1965). The combination of state-guaranteed civil, political, and social rights provided modern society with welfare, legitimacy and solidarity, thereby contributing to peacefully stabilize the community of anonymous individuals (Habermas, 2001). Following Matten and Crane (2005) we refer to this triad of rights as citizenship rights.

This is an abridged and slightly modified version of a paper originally published under the title „Global Rules and Private Actors. Towards a New Role of the TNC in the Global Governance“ in Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ) Vol. 16 (2006). We thank BEQ Editor-in-chief Gary Weaver and the Philosophy Documentation Center, Charlottesville (VA), for kind permission.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Organization and Administrative Science (IOU), Switzerland

    Andreas G. Scherer (head)

  2. University of Lausanne, Switzerland

    Guido Palazzo (Assistant Professor of business ethics)

  3. University of Zurich, Switzerland

    Dorothée Baumann (doctoral candidate)

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  1. Andreas G. Scherer
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  2. Guido Palazzo
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  3. Dorothée Baumann
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. AutoUni Mobile Life Campus, Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft, Hermann-Münch-Straße 1, 38436, Wolfsburg

    Walther Ch Zimmerli  & Markus Holzinger  & 

  2. Koordination CSR und Nachhaltigkeit, Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft, Postfach 1882, 38436, Wolfsburg

    Klaus Richter

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Scherer, A.G., Palazzo, G., Baumann, D. (2007). Global Public Rules and Citizenship Rights: A New Responsibility of Private Business Firms?. In: Zimmerli, W.C., Holzinger, M., Richter, K. (eds) Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70818-6_21

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