Global Business Citizenship

Global business citizenship (GBC) is used to refer generically to the exercise of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in international business. Specifically, GBC is a theoretical framework that offers both an analytical tool for understanding corporate behaviors and a process that multinational managers can use to implement social responsibility and ethics consistently within and across nations and cultures.

Concept History

The GBC framework was developed to address several problems with related concepts.

GBC’s principal conceptual ancestor is CSR, the obligation of corporations to use their power wisely and to respond constructively to societal needs. Developed in the United States from the 1950s onward, CSR was built on an assumed moral base that was never adequately articulated. The dimensions and processes of CSR were never well defined, so businesses had ...

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