Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility

Bazin Yoann (CNAM Paris, Paris, France)

Society and Business Review

ISSN: 1746-5680

Article publication date: 8 February 2011

540

Keywords

Citation

Yoann, B. (2011), "Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility", Society and Business Review, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 106-109. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465681111105896

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


The fact that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of today's dominant issues should not make us forget wherefrom it originated and in which fighting conditions it has arisen. That we now have scientific journals focused on the importance that business can and should have in society is the outcome of a long‐lasting process that started several decades ago. Sarah Soule reminds us of this history in which citizens have organized themselves in order to influence corporations. This book is outstanding not only because its subject is fascinating, but also because of both the brightness and the depth of the author's work.

Soule (2009) opens on the reminder that the first documented anti‐corporate event happened in 1773 against the East India Company's ships in order to protest against the Tea Act and the taxation it implemented. Being both directed toward what was considered corporate malfeasance and the inability of the state to fairly regulate, this first struggle is remarkably similar to the anti‐corporate events in more recent times. Soule's work focuses on this issue of activism directed at nongovernmental for‐profit corporations. With its many different targets, this activism has grown drastically over the past few decades and Soule (2009) attempts to offer a framework for understanding its mechanisms. This expansion of anti‐corporate events can be explained by the fact that, over the course of the twentieth century, corporations became larger (through aggregation and concentration) and more powerful (through deregulation). Therefore, a few of them has gained a large control over many aspects of individual's lives, especially since several corporations have been eager to influence political life in America (p. 4). Combined with a strong trend of deregulation during the 1970s and a decrease in the power of organized labor, the context has created a perfect storm in which American, far from being unaware of these phenomenon, have organized themselves around activists to target corporations directly rather than through government regulation and unions. Why directly? First, some social movements leaders argued that it was more efficient; second, certain technological changes have facilitated this; and third, because the process of globalization has led to an eclipse of national governments by the power of transnational entities. Soule also notes that these modes of action are associated with a lower likelihood of state repression.

To understand the tactics of anti‐corporate activists, she introduces a dichotomy between “insiders” and “outsiders”. Insiders tend to use shareholder activism (through resolutions for example) and socially responsible investment whereas outsiders will be more oriented toward boycotts, corporate campaigns, protests and collective legal maneuvers (see p. 18 for a synthesis). Since anti‐corporate activists combine different tactics, this book considers both insiders and outsiders although it is more focused on outsider forms of public protest. This central dichotomy could be seen as problematic since very few actions seem to belong to this insider category and they revolve mostly around the ideas of whistle‐blowers or tempered activist. Anyway, the actors of these movements are upset by the fact that companies are not acting in a socially responsible way and, since the institutionalization of CSR in the 1970s, these protests have found a common ground demanding:

[…] the commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large (World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2002).

Therefore:

[…] rather than framing corporate behavior as morally right or wrong, in the more recent era, companies are urged to consider the damage to their reputation or image if they do not behave responsibly” (p. 23).

In the second chapter, Soule reviews some of the theoretical approaches to understanding how social movements matter to the institutions that they target. A few definitions are fundamental in order to fully grasp theses processes. The first two allows to differentiate private politics that are “collective interactions between parties attempting to advance their interests that do not rely on the law, public order, or the state” (p. 30) and contentious politics in which one of the parties is the state or some element thereof. In this book, social movements are considered as “collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional channels for the purpose of seeking or resisting change in some extant system of authority” (p. 33). These movements seek to influence corporations using many different tactics and will, therefore, have many outcomes or consequences. Soule identifies four main categories: state response, cultural outcomes, personal or biographical consequences, and corporate‐level outcomes. However, the purpose of this book is not only to identify these outcomes, but also to explain them both from an external (the seizing of the political opportunity structure) and internal point of view (the role of social movements' organizational structure, tactics and frames). Today, there is a consensus among scholars to recognize that both sides are interrelated and that, in the process, a scale shift emerges – a scale shift being a “change in the number and level of coordinated contentious actions to a different focal point, involving a new range of actors, different objects, and broadened claims” (p. 49).

In Chapter 3, Soule examines 31 years of data on anti‐corporate events in the USA (1960‐1990). Studying all protests reported in the New York Times on this period she realized that 40 per cent targeted business interests. Looking closer to the claims, she identified three main categories: 44 per cent of anti‐products protests (claims about company's products), 41 per cent of anti‐corporate policy protests (grievance on a policy or a practice) and 11 per cent of anti‐negligence protests (accidents, loss of life, destruction of the environment, etc.). In these, the most represented social groups in these protests are African American (21 per cent), worker groups (17.5 per cent) and students (13 per cent). These events, while proximally targeting corporations, also often targeted governmental units, a fact that leads the author to remark that “anticorporate activists strategically change their targets or focal points in response to changes in elements of the opportunity structure” (p. 79). In the fourth chapter, she turns to an examination of how activism impacted colleges and universities divestment decision in the 1980s. During the late 1970s, students in the USA started protestations in order to obtain that their universities disinvest of their South Africa‐related securities. These universities found themselves at the center of a storm in which not only students were involved but also the public opinion (aware of the situation in South Africa) and the US Congress (through antiapartheid legislation). Using multiple tactics, the student movement achieved a great deal of participation in the fall of apartheid. However, as Soule underlines:

[…] it may also have had the unintended consequence of decreasing the number and quality of jobs for black South Africans and decreasing the social services provided by companies for their employees' families and communities (p. 103).

Building on the butterfly metaphor, she reminds us that the long‐lasting effects of social movements are hard to evaluate and can get out of these movements control. In the last chapter, she turns to the post‐1990 era and profiles several different instances of activism directed at corporations. Crossing both the target (private or contentious politics) with issues (anti‐product, anti‐policy and negligence), she examines six cases to illustrate the different situations: Greenpeace anti‐GMO Campaign against Gerber Baby Food (private politics and anti‐product), the United Students against Sweatshops Campaign against Nike (private politics and anti‐policy), the Amnesty International and Students of Bhopal Campaign against Dow Chemical (private politics and negligence), the Earth Island Institute Campaign against StarKist for Dolphin‐Safe Tuna (contentious politics and anti‐product), the Free Burma Coalition's Campaign against Pepsi and other multinational companies (contentious politics and anti‐policy) and the Laborers International Union of North America's Campaign against corporate home builders (contentious politics and negligence). The characteristic of these movements is the importance of unintended consequences. Moreover, one of Soule's main conclusion studying theses cases is that “most do not fit as neatly as (she) had thought at the outset” (p. 143), the typology seems to remain problematic.

The conclusion of the book offers some conclusions for sociologists, political scientists and organizations scholars and proposes some questions for future research. The classical dichotomy between private and contentious politics appears to be unclear when the focal point moves, for scholars as much as for activists. Therefore, Soule develops the concept of shifting scales and moving targets that could provide a better description and understanding of social movements and their tactical repertoires. The message of the book remains a positive one: “citizens can and do matter to corporations”, which, in many cases “are behaving in a far more ethical and responsible fashion than they once did” (p. 28). However, Soule appears not to examine the consequences of such a private shift. Indeed, if corporations develop a CSR commitment or program, would not they be tempted to consider themselves as legitimate actors in the definition of the common good in society? This outcome of the “liberal turn” needs now to be more directly addressed. The legitimization of private movements (both of corporations and non‐governmental organizations) raises the questions of governance and privatization. A question that is central to Pesqueux (2007), reviewed in this issue.

Further Reading

Pesqueux, Y. (2007), Governance and privatization (Gouvernance et Privatisation), Presse Universitaire de France (PUF), Paris.

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