Abstract

The concept of corporate citizenship has been growing progressively in the business field for decades. Our research has developed a structural equation model to examine the primary factors and their interactions that influence economically motivated administrators to observe legal citizenship as an essential element to exhibit an excellent social responsibility position in front of their stakeholders. The four-factor model of Corporate Citizenship (CC) proposed by Maignan, Ferrell and Hult, (1999) has been validated, supporting that profit-oriented managers should obey the country’s legal system to create social acceptance. This study scrutinizes the influence of economic citizenship on legal citizenship utilizing ethical and discretionary citizenship as a mediator. The results demonstrate the direct and indirect positive effect of economic citizenship on legal citizenship. Structural model and regression-based approach by SPSS and PROCESS were used to analyze the mediation effect. Empirical testing using a survey of 319 college students in the area of International Business confirms the effects of the included hypotheses. This study discusses theoretical and managerial implications of its findings.