David Birch

Defining corporate citizenship : evidence from Australia

This study reports the results of a survey of the attitudes to corporate citizenship and practices of corporate citizenship of 93 of the largest private and publicly listed corporations in Australia. The results suggest there was considerable hesitation in positioning corporate citizenship as a proactive, long term, internal culture process. Instead, corporate emphasis was generally on short-term community activities. Also, there was little variation in these results when respondents were classified by industry, international involvement and legal structure. Clearly, significant links have yet to be made by corporate Australia to connect the financial, social and environmental bottom lines.

Constructing Asian values: National identities and ‘responsible citizens

The issue of ‘value’ is one that often falls off the cultural studies agenda, but from time to time, events, like the recent debates on Asian values, and the currency crises in Southeast Asia, demand that a cultural studies approach to understanding events in Asia should engage with the articulation of values within cultural, political, social and economic contexts which variously define the ways in which citizenship might be constructed. This paper seeks to do that, with specific reference to Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Transnational Cultural Studies: What Price Globalisation?

One of the most significant aspects of globalisation has been the developing focus upon local resistances, of various types, and the ways in which these resistances seek to carve out specific spaces that both maintain and construct cultural difference. Performing cultural studies in those spaces, particularly those not determined by the philosophical and ideological underpinnings of cultural theories that are traditionally highly resistant to orthodoxies, is both challenging and exciting. Questions of whether a transnational cultural studies is possible in such contexts have been exercising a number of scholars in the past few years. This paper reviews some of those concerns and considers some of the issues involved in the developments of cultural studies within a transnational humanities context, which often operates in ways unfamiliar with the anti-establishment beginnings of Anglo-American/Australian cultural studies.

Ten principles of corporate citizenship

Purpose – This paper aims to reflect briefly on some of the major principles that have emerged from the developing policies, practices and debates about corporate citizenship in the last ten years or so.Design/methodology/approach – Considerable scholarly work has been conducted on corporate citizenship in the past, and will continue to be done in the future. This paper is deliberately written for a non‐scholarly audience.Findings – Ten principles are outlined, all of them focusing on developing a cultural aspect of corporate citizenship as good business.Originality/value – The basic premise of this paper is that significant cultural change, through corporate citizenship will only take place by business implementing policies, and practices based on the sort of sound (but basic) principles presented here. These ten principles, in this format, are original to this paper.

Short notices on some new (and second editions) of cultural criticism

Cultural Difference, Media Memories. Anglo‐American Images of Japan PHIL HAMMOND (ed) London & Washington: Cassell, 1997 Literature, Politics and Culture in Post War Britain ALLEN SINFIELD London & Atlantic Highlands, NJ: The Athlone Press, 1997 Structuralism. A Philosophy for the Human Sciences PETER CAWS New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997 The Language of Metaphors ANDREW GOATLY London & New York: Routledge, 1997