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

在过去十年中，企业与利益相关者之间的关系发生了重大调整。公司活动的跨国协调与大多数监管机制的国家和地方权威之间似乎存在脱节。然而，人们对跨越传统监管界限的非正式或社会监管新形式的兴起越来越感兴趣。企业活动已经成为这种新的非正式、跨国治理机制的一个例子。企业运动由跨国利益攸关方网络组织，包括消费者、工人、环境和人权活动家以及当地社区，以解决广泛的社会和环境问题。这些运动通过股东决议、抵制、示威和与公司经理的直接谈判直接针对公司。有许多案例研究记录了竞选活动的成功，但尚未对企业竞选活动的动态和结果进行系统分析。这项研究提出了以下具体的研究问题：(1)企业活动能够实现的变化的深度和广度有多大？(2)企业活动的成败取决于哪些因素？(3)构成企业活动结果的主要空间和组织间动力是什么？这项研究将通过对过去十年来针对美国跨国公司的活动进行比较分析来解决这些问题。这项研究将包括对200多个竞选活动的统计分析，以及对利益相关者和公司经理的深入采访，这些人参与了有目的的十个竞选活动样本。调查结果将确定这些运动引发的企业变革的类型，并将探索这些运动通过哪些途径获得对企业决策者的权力。研究者期望证明特定的企业空间和竞争战略比其他战略为利益相关者提供更多参与和影响的机会。这项拟议的研究考察了社会监管在塑造企业形象和企业社会和环境绩效方面的作用。本研究将在有关企业全球化和竞争战略的文献与利益相关者理论和企业外部控制的文献之间架起桥梁。它将分析竞选活动用来吸引和竞争企业决策者的战略和空间。这项研究还将考察公司结构和战略在为利益相关者参与创造机会以及在影响利益相关者关切的感知合法性方面所发挥的作用。最后，本研究将确定竞选成果在不同利益相关者群体和不同地点之间的利益分配情况。这项研究通过确定当前非正式治理进程没有服务的利益相关者、问题和地方，对制定国家和国际监管优先事项具有潜在影响。此外，这项研究将有助于正在进行的关于外部利益攸关方在公司决策中的作用以及全球经济活动的成本和收益分配的辩论。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。

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.