Doctoral Dissertation Research: Breaking the Brand: The Social Regulation of Multinational Corporations

Clark University, Worcester MA

Investigators

Abstract

Corporate-stakeholder relations have been significantly reconfigured over the past decade. There is a seeming disjuncture between the transnational coordination of corporate activities and the national and sub-national authority of most regulatory mechanisms. Interest has increased, however, in the rise of new forms of informal or social regulation that span traditional regulatory boundaries. Corporate campaigns have emerged as one example of this new breed of informal, transnational governance mechanisms. Corporate campaigns are organized by transnational networks of stakeholders, including consumers, workers, environmental and human rights activists, and local communities, to address a wide range of social and environmental issues. These campaigns target corporations directly through shareholder resolutions, boycotts, demonstrations, and direct negotiation with corporate managers. There are numerous case studies documenting campaign successes, yet there has yet to be a systematic analysis of corporate campaign dynamics and outcomes. This study asks the following specific research questions: (1) What is the depth and breadth of change that corporate campaigns are able to effect? (2) What factors contribute to the success or failure of a corporate campaign? (3) What are the principal spatial and inter-organizational dynamics that structure corporate campaign outcomes? This study will address these questions through a comparative analysis of campaigns targeted at U.S. multinational corporations over the past decade. The research will consist of a statistical analysis of more than 200 campaigns and in-depth interviews with stakeholders and corporate managers involved in a purposive sample of ten campaigns. The findings will identify the types of corporate changes elicited by these campaigns and will explore the paths of influence through which these campaigns gain power over corporate decision makers. The investigators expect to demonstrate that certain corporate spatial and competitive strategies provide more opportunities for stakeholder engagement and influence than others. The proposed research examines the role of social regulation in shaping corporate image-making and corporate social and environmental performance. This research will bridge the literature on corporate globalization and competitive strategies with the literature on stakeholder theory and the external control of corporations. It will analyze the strategies and spaces used by campaigns to engage and contest corporate decision makers. This research also will examine the role that corporate structure and strategies play in creating opportunities for stakeholder engagement and in influencing the perceived legitimacy of stakeholder concerns. Finally, this research will identify the distribution of the benefits of campaign outcomes amongst different stakeholder groups and different places. This research has potential implications for the development of national and international regulatory priorities by identifying stakeholders, issues, and places that are not being served by current informal governance processes. Moreover, this research will contribute to on-going debates about the role of external stakeholders in corporate decision making and the distribution of the costs and benefits of global economic activities. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.