An Empirical Investigation of Corporate Citizenship in Australia and Turkey *
| Author | Fatma Küskü,Anna Zarkada‐Fraser |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2004.t01-1-00400.x |
An Empirical Investigation of Corporate
Citizenship in Australia and Turkey
*
Fatma Ku
¨sku
¨and Anna Zarkada-Fraserw
Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Management, Management Engineering Department, 34367, Macka,
Istanbul, Turkey and wGriffith University, School of International Business and
Asian Studies, Nathan Campus, Brisbane Q4111, Australia
Corresponding author email: kuskufa@itu.edu.tr
This paper describes a study of corporate citizenship practices and its relationship to
dimensions of internal and external corporate culture, customer loyalty and
organizational commitment. Empirical data was collected from a cross-industry sample
in Turkey and Australia using a questionnaire form developed and validated for other
cultures. It was shown that Australian and Turkish firms’ practices differed significantly
on a number of important variables, but also that it is possible to compare corporate
citizenship practices in a way that is not culture-specific.
Introduction
It is an undeniable fact that corporations can do
both harm and good in their physical, social and
moral environment through their products and
policies. Working towards the implementation of
more effective production processes or cost
efficiencies, for example, can be seen as an
attempt to reduce costs and thus increase profits,
as well as being simply an effort to preserve
natural resources. Being seen to be caring for
local communities or engaging in projects ‘ran-
ging from traditional philanthropy to complex
community investment partnerships’ (Hutton,
D’Antonio and Johnson, 1998) can be an
investment towards creating new market oppor-
tunities or an enhanced image or even regulatory
avoidance. At the same time, it does contribute to
the ‘development of a more stable long-term and
healthy community’ (Hutton et al., 1998).
In studying the relationship between corpora-
tions and society, two distinct approaches may be
adopted. A normative one, focusing on the
examination of what the role of businesses should
be (e.g. Danley, 1998; Fieser, 1996) and a descri-
ptive one, investigating the role corporations
actually play and what the motives and perceived
benefits are. Interestingly, the fundamental ques-
tions of the descriptive stream of corporate citi-
zenship studies have been articulated in the most
often quoted normative polemic of the ‘funda-
mentally subversive doctrine’ (Friedman, 1982)
of social responsibility – an early concept (Bowen,
1953; Mason, 1960) that has recently been cove-
red under the term ‘Corporate Citizenship’(Alt-
man, 1998; Epstein, 1989; Laufer, 1996; Lewin et
al., 1995; Maignan Ferrell and Hult, 1999;
Pinkston and Carroll, 1994; Reilly and Kyj, 1994).
1
The main purpose of this study is to show the
meaning of corporate citizenship for Australian
and Turkish companies, which run in two cultu-
rally and economically distinct countries, by using
*
The authors made equal contributions to this paper
and their names were written alphabetically. The
financial assistance of Istanbul Technical University
Overseas Research Grant is gratefully acknowledged.
The helpful comments from the anonymous reviewers
and editor Gerard P. Hodgkinson on an earlier draft of
this article were appreciated.
1
Husted and Allen (2000) implied that the concept of
corporate social responsibility emerged from the socio-
logical literatures, while that of citizenship came from
the political science literature.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 15, 57–72 (2004)
r2004 British Academy of Management
quantitative approaches. In order to reach this
main purpose, three sub-purposes are explored.
First this paper examines what the construct of
corporate citizenship and its individual compo-
nents imply for Australian and Turkish man-
agers, two populations never before examined in
similar studies.
Then the paper explores external and internal
dimensions of corporate culture that have pre-
viously been shown to foster or hinder the
development of good corporate citizenship beha-
viour. Market orientation, the external dimen-
sion of corporate culture, is suggested as one of
the vehicles for receiving and acting upon
messages from the external environment. Simi-
larly, the internal dimensions of corporate
culture, humanistic and competitive orientation,
are used to ascertain aspects of corporate culture
related to corporate citizenship.
As is the case with human behaviour, where
deontological and teleological evaluations are
utilized in moral decision-making (Hunt and
Vitell, 1992), corporate motives may also be a
mixture of altruistic (assuming some responsi-
bility for the betterment of society) and egoistic
(purely directed at serving self-interest) concerns.
For that reason, the possibility of corporations
receiving some perceived benefits from exhibiting
good corporate citizenship is explored. Some
indications are provided from the association
between corporate citizenship and internally and
externally derived rewards in the form of orga-
nizational commitment and customer loyalty.
Finally this paper sheds some light on the
relationship between the nationality of the
organization and its corporate citizenship prac-
tices. No matter what the prescribed extent of
social responsibility ascribed to corporations is
(from making a profit to participating in philan-
thropy and the cultural life of the community),
the corporate citizenship practices of corpora-
tions are logically expected to vary between
countries. Nations, as political units with their
own institutions and legal frameworks, impose
different regulations of the acceptable ways for
making and retaining profit as well as set the
rules of business behaviour. Moreover, societal
acceptability of businesses as members of the
community, as well as ethical norms, tends to
vary between political systems and cultures. It
follows, thus, that dimensions of corporate
citizenship (if not the concept as a whole) are
perceived differently in different countries. It has
also been suggested that variations could be
related to different stages of economic develop-
ment (Donaldson, 1996; Rallapalli, 1999). Some
research has already been carried out into the
differences between England, France, Germany,
Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and the United
States (Pinkston and Carroll, 1994) and between
France and the US (Maignan and Ferrell, 2000).
The empirical comparison of two culturally
distinct countries, Turkey and Australia, which
are also at different stages of economic develop-
ment, adds to this body of knowledge.
This paper first reviews the literature in order
to understand the importance of the corporate
citizenship construct and to conceptualise it. This
is followed by a summary of empirical research
methods, including sample countries chosen and
data collection. Then the results of the study are
presented, some conclusions are drawn and the
limitations of the study are noted.
The relationship between corporations
and societies: the importance of
corporate citizenship
Friedman’s (1970, 1982) assertion that ‘there is
one and only one social responsibility of business
– to use its resources and engage in activities
designed to increase its profits’ is one of the most
quoted ones ever. Nevertheless, Friedman went
on to set further obligations for corporations: to
‘stay within the rules of the game . . . without
deception or fraud’ (Friedman, 1982, p. 133).
This strict approach to corporate citizenship has
been theoretically supported in the business
ethics (e.g. Fieser, 1996) and social policy (e.g.
Danley, 1998) literature. Even though there is no
debate over the assumption that compliance with
the law and respect for regulation (Friedman’s
‘rules of the game’) is the absolutely non-
negotiable minimum of corporate responsibility,
it has been suggested that compliance alone is not
enough (Laczniak, 1983; Smith and Quelch,
1993). Corporate citizenship, like citizenship in
the classical individual sense, is a ‘multi-dimen-
sional construct’ (Hutton et al., 1998). Further to
the two dimensions of profit-making and respect-
ing the law, another two dimensions can be
added: maintaining society’s ethical standards
58 F. Ku
¨sku
¨and A. Zarkada-Fraser
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