Abstract
There is widespread consensus that localcommunities are increasingly characterized by complexity, ideological isolation and fragmentation, mostly lacking constitutive forums to discover and create the public good. This paper expands the conventional individual-focused solution to this problem by arguing that organizations play a central role in community building. Drawing from an inductive theory-building study of public, private, and nonprofit agencies, this paper presents an empirically-based framework for categorizing organizations as high or low citizens. Organizations with high citizenship bind their authority, memberships, obligations and legitimacy to a larger community venture. The paper concludes by arguing that we can more easily develop community health and community good by taking systematic advantage of high organizational citizenship.