Teaching citizenship: work and the economy
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# 3 ‘Acts’ and ‘status’ citizenship

> We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country both nationally and locally: for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life.

> Crick report, 1998

In the DfES document Making Sense of Citizenship: A CPD Handbook a distinction is drawn between acts citizenship and status citizenship (Chapter 1: ‘Spelling it Out’, p. 2).

Acts citizenship involves behaviour. The issue this raises for companies is how to ensure that they conform to their obligations and responsibilities in respect of the international social, environmental and ethical aspects of their business activities.

In part, this is up to companies themselves, who set internal benchmarking standards on these issues and sign up to various initiatives that promote social responsibility norms in this respect. But, in addition, there are a range of organisations of international economic governance which also promote this and, importantly, monitor its compliance to various degrees. Amongst these are the United Nations (UN), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), in all of which the UK is an active member.

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