Abstract
Persistent poverty, in both developed and developing nations, will undermine efforts to achieve global security, peace and sustainability. While poverty reduction is arguably in business's best interests, explicit business involvement in poverty reduction per se has been avoided and/or euphemised by businesses and corporate citizenship advocates, until recently. We inventory actual and potential corporate contributions to poverty reduction, categorise these approaches and analyse consequences for business, for society and for corporate citizenship. We find that corporations are playing an increasingly active role in issues related to poverty, yet their efforts are often circuitous and fragmented. We argue that greater corporate involvement in poverty reduction is necessary and should become more direct, systemic and integrated with government and non-profit sector efforts. At the same time, the corporate citizenship field should address its own responsibility with regard to poverty reduction and asset building.