Editorial: Journal of Corporate Citizenship (65)

The world of corporate citizenship is diverse and growing in scope and scale. Often still used interchangeably with corporate responsibility, corporate sustainability and other related concepts, the diversity of terminology in this wide field of inquiry and practice continues. For example, the world's largest oil and gas corporation Exxon-Mobil headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA publishes an annual Corporate Citizenship Report which in the words of the company's former Chairman and CEO Rex W. Tillerson “provides a view of how we work to help power the world's progress.” In comparison, the world's largest hotel company by revenue InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) with its headquarters in Denham, Buckinghamshire, UK produces an annual Responsible Business Report, which includes a stated commitment “to ensuring a positive impact on the lives of all people that interact with IHG.” Other leading companies in different industries and cultural contexts publish reports under many different titles, for example Sustainability Review, Report to Society and Sustainable Development Report, broadly covering similar kinds of issues. Differences in terminology aside, as David F. Thomas, Michael Kimball and Diane Suhr of the University of Northern Colorado reminded us in JCC 63, corporate citizenship and related concepts “point in the same direction: throughout the industrialized world and in many developing countries there has been a sharp escalation in the social roles corporations are expected to play” (p. 17).