Abstract
This article seeks to model the agenda-setting strategies of stakeholders equipped with online and other media in three cases involving protests against multinational corporations (MNCs). Our theoretical objective is to widen agenda-setting theory to a dynamic and nonlinear networked stakeholder context, in which stakeholder-controlled media assume part of the role previously ascribed to mainstream media (MSM). We suggest system dynamics (SD) methodology as a tool to analyse complex stakeholder interactions and the effects of their agendas on other stakeholders. We find that largely similar dynamics of interactions occur among stakeholders in these cases, and that the costs for managements of maintaining their agendas steadily rises. We conclude that the “web of watchdogs” comprises a powerful reason for managers to engage in responsibility negotiations with their stakeholders.
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Notes
Danone had more biscuit capacity than any other firm in Europe; p. 337.
BP’s CEO Browne wanted to increase BP’s retail sales; p. 16.
In 1970s Nike outsourced almost all its production to Asia (Lim and Phillips 2008).
Danone management’s plans to close factories in France were leaked to the press, and its refusal or inability to confirm or deny reported information led immediately to strikes and other labour action; p. 337.
The announcement that BP was moving “beyond petroleum” generated visible unease among its core business employees, which was acknowledged in a subsequent news report by a firm executive; p. 18. Also, like all the major oil companies, BP was under considerable pressure to improve its margins. This led to the accusation by workers, cited in the press, and true or not, that the firm was economising on safety and staffing in order to control costs; pp. 29–30.
See Firoz and Ammaturo (2002) and Lim and Phillips (2008). As early as the 1980s, Nike was criticised for sourcing its products in factories and countries where low wages, poor working conditions and human rights problems were usual. Then, during the 1990s, a series of public relations nightmares—involving underpaid workers in Indonesia, child labour in Cambodia and Pakistan, and poor working conditions in China and Vietnam—became news. Nike initially denied responsibility for workers at these factories since they were not Nike employees (Locke et al. 2007).
In the sense we are using the term, “indemnities” applies to management efforts to address worker concerns caused or perceived to be caused by change. In that sense, the announcement by BP management that “safety will be our number-one priority” at the Prudhoe Bay field in January 2003 represented such an indemnity; p. 32. In March 2001, Danone proposed a series of “social” measures for restructuring that went far beyond compliance with those demanded by French law; p. 337. Nike’s first “indemnities” included asking Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business to investigate wages paid to contract workers, a prelude to involving NGOs in the firm’s communications strategies (Ziek 2012, p. 76).
Danone workers sought to support their boycott movement by distributing tracts listing all brands owned by Danone, p. 339. BP workers provided information to stakeholder media (such as The Project on Government Oversight, www.pogo.org) concerning the firm’s Prudhoe Bay operations, in concert with a self-defined “workers’ advocate”, Charles Hamel, who was widely quoted by anti-globalist and anti-industry sites, pp. 27–28. Workers from Nike’s suppliers provided information to the activist website Sweatshopwatch.org among others (Firoz and Ammaturo 2002).
The daily newspaper Libération reprinted union tracts providing lists of Danone brands, and the ensemble of French newspapers closely reported the conflict between management and Internet-based adversaries. Likewise, protestor websites cited supportive and hostile news coverage of their actions; pp. 338–340. Articles based on information from Charles Hamel and BP workers appeared in The Financial Times and were subsequently reprinted by numerous environmentalist websites; pp. 28–29. In Nike, news of workers’ strikes were published in the MSM and then were reprinted to labour websites; CBS television reports in 1996 helped to mobilise a transnational anti-Nike network, including Global Exchange (U.S.), Justice. Do It Nike! (U.S.), Press for Change (U.S.), Vietnam Labor Watch (U.S., Vietnam), Nike: Fair Play? (Netherlands), and Let’s Go Fair (Switzerland) (Lim and Phillips 2008).
Not only accidents and worker protests at Prudhoe Bay, but also shareholder protests (pp. 23–25) against BP were widely reported. At Nike, workers in a Jakarta factory told Global Alliance researchers that female employees were asked to trade sexual favours for jobs (Luh 2002).
While Danone did not abandon its plans, it did alter their content in an attempt to appease public opinion, which was massively hostile to the restructuring; p. 337. BP withdrew from the industry trade group Arctic Power and announced that “safety will be our number-one priority” at the Prudhoe Bay field; pp. 30, 32. While Nike did not stop contracting with Asian suppliers, the firm created the position of Vice President for Corporate Social Responsibility in part to monitor them.
The boycott of Danone spread from workers to Left politicians of numerous towns, other unions, and a national consumer boycott movement, supported by a network of Internet sites; pp. 338–340; the boycott of Nike products spread from workers and activists to university students (Firoz and Ammaturo 2002).
Danone pursued its Internet-based critics for libel in a series of civil actions; pp. 340–341. See Klein et al. (2004) for further insight. BP faced widening criticism from shareholders and increasingly hostile attention to its Prudhoe Bay operations as a consequence of employee-generated publicity; pp. 23–24. Nike suffered from damaged brand image and reputation because of subsequent consumer boycott but realising the potentially punishing force of consumer opinion (Brunk and Blümelhuber 2011).
During the most active period of the boycott, Danone’s sales in its home market of France declined by approximately 10%. Labour action also impacted Danone’s logistics across product lines. Danone reported a decline of about 3% in its market share for biscuits in France, the centre of the crisis, in the year following these events; pp. 341–342. See also Danone (2004, p. 26). In 1997, Nike’s sales dropped 8% in the company's third quarter, and footwear sales in the U.S. were down 18% (Saporito 1998).
Danone’s online critics demanded reinstatement of workers even before they were downsized; p. 339. BP shareholder activists explicitly demanded resolution of safety issues at Prudhoe Bay that were widely reported in news and stakeholder media; pp. 23–24. Concerning Nike, on 9 January 2001, workers in Atlixco de Puebla, Mexico went on strike to obtain recognition of their union and rehiring of colleagues who were illegally fired. They were supported by their parents (most of the workers were young women from rural villages) and by unions from the Volkswagen plant in the nearby city of Puebla. January 17 saw a day of protests on campuses across the country. See Global Exchange (2001).
Danone filed lawsuits against online critics, which led to sustained hostile publicity and negative judicial consequences for the firm; pp. 339–340. Following the announcement of “Beyond Petroleum”, Greenpeace activists occupied a BP barge at the Northstar site in the Arctic to dramatise their claim that BP stood for “burning the planet”. The occupiers were arrested and charged in Federal court, generating further publicity hostile to BP; p. 23. Concerning Nike, on 12 January 2001, Puebla police attacked striking workers, thus inciting student demonstrations the following week; see p. 15.
Following the initial leak of Danone’s restructuring plans, the French government, at the time on the Left, threatened legislation to ban firings at profitable firms; p. 337. State and Federal regulators of BP responded to workers’ charges by intensifying inspections and demands for documentation at Prudhoe Bay; p. 31. In April 1998, California attorney Marc Kasky filed a lawsuit (California Business and Professional Code, n.d.) against Nike for “unfair and unsafe practices” prohibited by California statutes based on truth in commercial communication (McHale et al. 2007). The Clinton Administration sought to harvest political capital by convening the Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP), which included Nike and other major companies as well as labour, human rights, religious and consumer organisations (Lim and Phillips 2008).
Danone offered downsized workers compensation beyond legal requirements; p. 337. BP declared, following repeated accidents, that safety would be its “number one priority” in Prudhoe Bay; p. 27. Nike indemnities also included raises in wages (Firoz and Ammaturo 2002).
A powerful example from the Danone case occurred when a Trotskyite elected official had himself named a union representative so that he could legally militate against the firm inside its plant at Evry; p. 337. The expectation of Prudhoe Bay workers and their stakeholder allies that regulatory action would work in their favour was demonstrated by their avid attempts to persuade regulators in Alaska to intervene against the firm; pp. 31–32.
Web searches demonstrate this intensification. Forty-one separate websites published all or part of the legal documents in Danone’s case against its online adversaries. Moreover, nearly 1,800 separate “articles” including the terms “boycott” and “Danone” appeared in Google groups as of July 2009; p. 340. Greenpeace’s initial protests against BP, and subsequent judicial action against the protestors, were widely reported by environmentalist and anti-globalist online media; p. 23. (See, for example, “Help Greenpeace confront oil giant BP in the Arctic” on the site of Cruelty Free Living, http://www.crueltyfree.ork.uk/cfl/200004/art10.htm, accessed July 2009.) For Nike, Kasky’s lawsuit generated significant stakeholder coverage (for example, “Nike v. Kasky: Corporations Are Not Persons”. CorpWatch.org, 4 May 2003).
This dynamic appears with new angles in a crisis. Thus, Danone’s lawsuit against online adversaries was widely covered in the French press: pp. 339–340. The intervention of regulators at Prudhoe Bay against BP was closely covered at the Financial Times; p. 13. (McNulty 2002, 2003). Kasky’s lawsuit also generated copious MSM coverage, including Associated Press (2000).
In January 2003, a leading UK ethical investment fund made news by announcing that it was selling its BP holdings because of safety and environmental incidents in Alaska. It was soon followed by the World Wide Fund for Nature, which likewise announced that it was selling its BP holdings for the same reasons, and likewise became news; p. 31.
The key stakeholder-controlled media in the Danone case, aside from the Internet-based protestors previously mentioned, were financial analysts. In mid-summer 2001, a consensus existed among analysts that Danone management had successfully weathered the boycott. That consensus flagged at summer’s end, when first half results showed discernible effects that management had previously passed over, and the stock began to decline. By early winter, a new consensus among analysts took shape as they warned investors away from the stock; p. 341. A similar dynamic figured explicitly in activist strategies to counter BP. Greenpeace not only reported on investor conflicts with BP management over environmental and safety issues, but actively promoted such conflicts by organising shareholder protests. See pp. 23–24. In the Nike case, as with Danone, key stakeholder-controlled media included financial analysts who initially supported management to investors starting warning investors [See, for example, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (1997)].
At Danone’s General Shareholders Assembly on 29 May 2001, management announced that the boycott had no effect on group sales worldwide, omitting mention of its effects in France, and declared that “the storm is over”; p. 340.
Danone’s provision of successive quarterly results demonstrating the ongoing effects of the boycott and social movement, and countering management reassurances, preceded a sharp and sustained decline in Danone’s share price; pp. 340–342.
In March 2001, the announcement of an exemplary set of compensatory measures for Danone workers, which management had expected would end the crisis, was overshadowed by the sudden closing of a Marks & Spencer store in Paris and the firing of its staff. Public outrage confounded the two cases, and the boycott of Danone began immediately thereafter; p. 338. In the spring of 2005, an explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery killed 15 men and unleashed a firestorm of hostile public, judiciary, regulatory and legislative attention on the firm. A side effect of the disaster was to legitimate critics of the firm’s operations in Prudhoe Bay, where a subsequent oil spill unleashed a similar storm, overwhelming any positive impacts of the firm’s efforts to make safety “our number one priority”; p. 34.
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Besiou, M., Hunter, M.L. & Van Wassenhove, L.N. A Web of Watchdogs: Stakeholder Media Networks and Agenda-Setting in Response to Corporate Initiatives. J Bus Ethics 118, 709–729 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1956-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1956-z