Charles Handy article on the idea of a business as a village and community. Handy states that, because the corporate citizen can be a force for good where other agents cannot, the concept of corporate citizenship is very important. He proceeds to state that the relationship between corporation and citizen extends to the market, as consumers want to feel empathy towards the companies they buy from, as well as the products they buy, in order to feel as though they are making a contribution to the better good. Handy then argues that this new paradigm of business as community should be translated formally into a social contract, stating that the soul of a business must be expressed in its constitution. He goes on to provide two examples of this phenomenon in the contemporary corporate world, using Camellia Plc and Bertelsmann AGG to illustrate his theory of community organizations. However, Handy contrasts these two examples of organizations, which started as private firms with constitutions drafted by their founders, from large, publically owned companies, where issues of government structure and how much government is involved in the maintenance and operation of the organization present obstacles to the practice of organizations as communities.
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