Digital citizens, Inc. Producing corporate ethics, flexible networks and mobile entrepreneurs in the global marketplace.

摘要

This dissertation analyzes Global Corporate Citizenship as a novel form of corporate social engagement carried out by U.S transnational corporations. Global Corporate Citizenship refers to corporate rationalities and conducts that constitute corporations as sites of governmental power. As such, they foster the formation of 'citizens of the self' inside and outside corporations. These neoliberal subjects govern themselves freely according to the norms of self-actualization, entrepreneurship and market participation.;Global Corporate Citizenship is grounded in historical and legal transformations of corporate charters and personhood in the U.S. Its practices are a result of the technicalization of preceding forms of corporate social engagement, such as Corporate Philanthropy and Corporate Social Responsibility. These have increasingly become codified and systematized, as well as closely tied to corporate objectives and ways of operating.;The dissertation explores three instances of Global Corporate Citizenship. Good Corporate Citizenship encompasses the ways in which traditional Corporate Philanthropy, and more recently Strategic philanthropy, has been able to link the personal ethical concerns of self-governing company employees with the corporate objective to be a good citizen. Ethical Global Citizenship refers to the processes of making ethical corporate conduct visible, through technologies ranging from ethical auditing to branding to reporting. These technologies bring into existence ethical rationalities and practices that respond to current demands for corporate transparency and accountability.;Global Entrepreneurial Citizenship focuses on the implementation of Global Corporate Citizenship programs in specific sites. Here, forms of electronic entrepreneurship among organizations and individuals are supported, and linked to corporate objectives of opening up new markets. This is achieved through the establishment of novel forms of transnational networks, which are contingent, flexible and instrumental, and through the marketization of poverty, which aims to alleviate poverty through the provision of consumer products and services to the world's poor.;This dissertation is based on research at the Hewlett-Packard Corporation, a transnational high-tech company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Fieldwork encompassed the study of the programmatic production of HP's Global Citizenship by employees of the company's Government Affairs group, and the implementation of HP's Global Citizenship programs in Silicon Valley, Costa Rica and India.