1 Global corporate citizenship?
Rarely have businesses found such a complex and challenging set of economic pressures, political uncertainties and societal expectations. Regardless of their industry sector, country of origin, or corporate ownership structure, they are under growing pressure to demonstrate outstanding performance not only in terms of competitiveness and market growth, but also in their corporate governance and their corporate citizenship.
World Economic Forum Responding to the Leadership Challenge: Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative, 2003, p. 2.
The World Economic Forum meets every year at Davos in Switzerland and claims to speak for big business and multinational corporations. Here they raise the notion of ‘global corporate citizenship’ (GCC). What does this mean? We explore this further in the following pages.