Search results

The prime goal of this chapter is to discuss what the notion of rhetorical citizenship as a normative aspiration might entail for corporations.

The chapter draws on a pilot study of the Facebook pages of two banks. A rhetorical criticism of these pages was conducted.

We suggest that while corporations are assuredly entities very different from the individual citizens who hold civil, social, and political rights – which do not directly apply to corporations – rhetorical citizenship is nevertheless a suggestive and constructive metaphor for corporations to communicate by.

Rhetorical citizenship for corporations must, we argue, be(come) rooted in organizational reality, and should involve a continued critical questioning as to what might constitute citizenly communication for corporations under any given circumstances. The chapter is, however, built on limited data from a pilot study and needs to be complemented.

We suggest from our pilot study that the active engagement of corporations in social media may currently be seen as one form of rhetorical citizenship that the public expects corporations to enact. Thus, we argue, corporations in general might as well attempt to do their best to act as rhetorical citizens.

The chapter highlights how communication is a set of practices in which social responsibility must be enacted. We find that this is not a prevalent perspective in the existing literature on CSR and communication.

The purpose of this research is to provide a systematic insight into corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate citizenship (CC) in supply chain development, by analyzing the current literature, contemporary concepts, data and gaps for future discipline research.

This research identifies information from existing academic journals and investigates research designs and methods, data analysis techniques, industry involvement and geographic locations. Information regarding university affiliation, publishers, authors, year of publication is also documented. A collection of online databases from 2001 to 2018 were explored, using the keywords “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate citizenship” and “supply chain” in their title and abstract, to deliver an inclusive listing of journal articles in this discipline area. Based on this approach, a total of 164 articles were found, and information on a chain of variables was collected.

There has been visible growth in published articles over the last 18 years regarding supply chain sustainability, CSR and CC. Analysis of the data collected shows that only five literature reviews have been published in this area. Further, key findings include 41% of publications were narrowly focused on four sectors of industry, leaving gaps in the research. 85% centered on the survey and conceptual model, leaving an additional gap for future research. Finally, developing and developed nation status should be delineated, researched and analyzed based on further segmentation of the industry by region.

This research is limited to reviewing only academic and professional articles available from Emerald, Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, Taylor and Francis, Springer, Scopus, JSTOR and EBSCO containing the words “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate citizenship” and “supply chain” in the title and abstract.

This assessment provides an enhanced appreciation of the current practices of current research and offers further directions within the CSR and CC in supply chain sustainable development.