I saw the titular question on Quora and offered the following answer:
It depends very much what you mean by “better citizens.” Let’s suppose you adopt a view of citizenship that wants American corporations to invest more at home, to create jobs in America rather than outsourcing and offshoring jobs to foreign countries, to be willing to work with the Pentagon on defense contracts, to pay better wages and higher benefits, and generally be more patriotic.
If that’s your goal, I think the answer to your question is “no.” The following is based on my article Corporate Purpose in a Populist Era or Corporate Purpose in a Populist Era.
There have been important social changes in recent years that make it unlikely corporate executives would voluntarily pursue a policy of corporate national patriotism.
In his 1995 classic book The Revolt of the Elites, Christopher Lasch identified the emergent split between what he called the New Elites and the rest of society. Lasch identified several trends that have accelerated in subsequent years. For example, he argued, American elites had become increasingly global, rejecting nationalism and patriotism, and refusing to be tied to places or people.
Today, those differences are even more pronounced. As The Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge has observed, “ordinary folk trust Davos Man no more than they would a lobbyist for the Worldwide Federation of Weasels.” This distrust took on considerable political weight in the 2016 Presidential campaign, as the populists who voted for Trump recognized that a minority comprised of “people from ‘anywhere’” ruled the majority of people who came from “somewhere.” As David Goodhart explained in an Economist essay:
The first group … holds “achieved” identities based on educational and professional success. Anywheres value social and geographical mobility. The second group is characterized by identities rooted in a place, and its members value family, authority and nationality.
Whereas Anywheres, whose portable identities are well-suited to the global economy, have largely benefited from cultural and economic openness in the West, he argues, the Somewheres have been left behind—economically, but mainly in terms of respect for the things they hold dear. The Anywheres look down on them, provoking a backlash.
This disdain in which elites now hold non-elites was another critical emergent trend Lasch identified. As Lasch explained, “the new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension.” Many of Lasch’s new elites dismissed the masses’ values as “mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, and retrograde views of women.”
The divide between the elites who run corporations and the populists who would prefer corporations to be more patriotic citizens also expresses itself in political allegiances. Whether out of personal belief or as a marketing tool, the elites are increasingly embracing a progressive world view. Oligarchs like Salesforce.com: The Customer Success Platform To Grow Your Business CEO Marc Benioff, for example, promote“social activism among American chief executives.”
What sets apart the new activist CEOs is how they use their names and corporate muscle to campaign directly against specific laws governing social issues, often on short notice, sometimes by threatening to withhold business.
In an important contribution to the legal literature on corporate activism, Tom Lin discussesin detail the widespread hostile reaction by major corporations to North Carolina’s so-called “Bathroom Law” and various early Trump administration initiatives. They serve as leading examples of what he calls “unprecedent contemporary corporate social activism.”
What is driving this shift? An important factor doubtless is pressure from major investors. Institutional investors long have offered funds that focus on corporations perceived as socially responsible, which generally has been understood to mean companies pursuing progressive goals. A growing number of major institutional investors, however, have embraced social activism in support of progressive goals with respect to all of the funds they manage. BlackRock, for example, encourages companies to pursue excellence in environmental and social, as well as governance, areas. BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink sent a letter in 2018 to CEOs of the firm’s portfolio companies, in which he posited that companies need to be responsive to stakeholders, including consumers and communities, as well as investors, and pursue environmental, social, and governance goals to achieve “sustainable growth.” But this simply pushes the question further up the corporate finance food chain, since it fails to explain why investment fund managers like Fink are pursuing that agenda.
To some extent, corporate executives may also be responding to perceived consumer and labor demand. In particular, millennials apparently prefer to work for and purchase from companies that are perceived as socially and environmentally responsible. According to the Wall Street Journal, “To attract promising young employees in many parts of America and to woo today’s customers, the argument goes, companies must project a corporate ethos that goes beyond profit.” Even Walmart is embracing socially progressive stances, despite the risk of “alienating its core customers, who often live in more conservative-leaning rural and suburban communities.” Social media clearly has been in a factor in this development, as it has given tech-savvy activists unprecedented ability to mobilize pressure on recalcitrant corporations.
The principal factor, however, has been a change in the outlook of corporate elites themselves. The New Elites—and those who aspire to join them—have increasingly embraced progressive policy preferences, especially on environmental and social issues. No Fortune 100 CEOs contributed to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, for example, but eleven gave to Hillary Clinton. More generally, “liberal groups accounted for eight of the top ten ideological causes of the ultra-rich, and seven of the ten congressional candidates most dependent on money from such people were Democrats.” Even one of the progressive movement’s favorite whipping boys—David Koch—publicly self-identifies as “a social liberal.”
None of this is likely to surprise center-right populists. Their paleoconservative counterparts have long identified “the members of the material elite [who] control the nation’s largest corporations” as being among “the primary purveyors of the assault on America’s national and cultural identity.”