I've recently finished reading Daniel Kemmis' Community and the Politics of Place.  He offers a very good discussion of civic virtue and how our society has wandered away from being an engaged public, promoting, defending and being stewards of the places in which we live.  (This whole issue of civic virtue seems to be conspicuously absent from many conversations within the sustainability community - perhaps a topic for another post.)  Kemmis writes shortly but effectively about the role of corporations in communities and how we should expect corporations to be good citizens in their communities. 

Because corporations tend to have a significant loyalty to shareholders and managers, their role as corporate citizens is sometimes compromised by their desire to generously reward those groups at the expense of the communities that they inhabit.  I think the role of corporations as citizens is an important discussion to have for a variety of reasons.  Amidst the green-washing common in corporate public relations, there are a number of corporations that genuinely desire to live sustainably within their communities and seriously consider the triple bottom line of economics, ecology and justice.  Some have been doing it for decades.

Perhaps most importantly, working with corporations and helping them to take sustainability seriously is not optional, it is mandatory.  Large scale sustainability cannot happen without the leadership and participation of the corporate sector.  As Kemmis points out, engaging in stalemates with corporate interests does nothing but wreck our ability to be a public; a people who can sit around a table and find solutions to our most difficult problems.  We should seek to be a community that resolves conflict with the interests of all stakeholders in mind and not allow divisions to obstruct the ability of communities to make needed progress. The higher education community has the responsibility to think carefully and critically about how we support and cooperate with corporations in things like our town-gown relationships and in procurement policies.  We have the ability to learn from and share what we have learned with corporate partners with benefits that can extend to our communities and well beyond. 

I'd like to hear your thoughts on what colleges and universities can do to foster quality relationships that bring out the best in corporations, expanding our ability to act virtuously in our communities.  Feel free to share your success stories and your ideas for this type of cooperation.