Meaning & use
corporate citizen
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountablebusiness
a company seen as a member of society with duties toward the community and the environment
Grammar: Countable: you can talk about one corporate citizen or several corporate citizens.
Patterns
- act as a corporate citizen
- be a good corporate citizen
- corporate citizenship
The bank tries to act as a responsible corporate citizen by funding local schools.
Critics say the oil company is a poor corporate citizen because it avoids paying tax.
Many firms now publish a yearly report on their role as a corporate citizen.
Word forms
| plural | corporate citizens |
|---|
Common combinations
- good corporate citizen
- The supermarket is a good corporate citizen that donates food to shelters.
- responsible corporate citizen
- Investors increasingly want to back a responsible corporate citizen.
- act as a corporate citizen
- A startup can act as a corporate citizen even before it makes a profit.
- corporate citizenship report
- Their corporate citizenship report lists the charities they support.
Synonyms and how they differ
- good citizen
- Usually refers to a person, so use corporate citizen when the subject is a company.
- socially responsible company
- This is a plain descriptive phrase; corporate citizen is more formal and stresses the company's place in society.
Word family
- corporate citizenship noun
- the idea or practice of a company behaving responsibly toward society
Commonly confused: corporate citizen or corporate culture?
corporate citizen vs corporate culture
Corporate culture means the shared values and habits inside a company, not its duties to society.
Practice
The phrase 'corporate citizen' is most often used to describe ___.
Choose one answer.
The term treats a company as a member of society, so answer B fits. An is tempting because of 'corporate', but the phrase is about the company itself, not its workers.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “corporate citizen”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.