NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration - Literature review Example

Review NGOs and Corporations: Conflict and Collaboration. This book fills an important gap in the current scholarship. Texts on Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) abound, but Doh and Yaziji noted that there was, as yet, no full-length work on the relationships between NGOs and commercial corporations, an issue of growing importance given the increasing complexity of these relationships, and the collaborations and conflicts they engender. Michael Yaziji, the leading author of this work, is uniquely well-qualified to undertake this task. Currently Professor of Strategy and Organizations at the prestigious IMD school in Switzerland, he has also recently penned at article on Capitalism for the Harvard Business Review, but his experience of this developing field is by no means purely academic. He negotiated a partnership between the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – one of the world’s largest and most influential NGOs, and the IMD, but he is also heavily involved in the corporation side of his research interests. He acts as a consultant for several Fortune 100 companies, including Microsoft and Shell, and has spoken at various think-tanks. Yaziji and Doh adopt a sensible division of their work into four clear sections: understanding NGOs, NGO advocacy campaigns, corporate-NGO engagements, and the future of the latter. This division offers a logical structure for the book’s chapters, and a straightforward framework for analysis. The authors begin by asserting the importance of NGOs in the contemporary world, and on this issue, their arguments can scarcely be contested. By naming just a few of the more prominent organisations, including Amnesty International and Greenpeace – the nature of NGOs as major actors in politics, economics and society is clear. Yaziji and Doh (2009, p.xiii) also provide some staggering statistics for the growth of NGOs in recent years, suggesting a 400% increase in the number of international NGOs. No reader can seriously doubt whether a comprehensive work on this subject was necessary. I would credit the authors’ statement that ‘A fuller understanding of the role of business in society requires a comprehensive understanding of these engagements’ (2009, p.xv). oweHowe And Doh and Yaziji certainly provide a comprehensive account. They apply a logical division of material, and create a work which is easy for any reader to negotiate. However, having set themselves the important task of filling the current gap in the literature, something more than a survey of the field would have been appropriate. In theoretical terms, they have moved on the debate, but to a great extent the book feels like a synthesis rather than a useful new analytical framework. The introductory chapter provides a valuable overview of the current status of NGOs and their influence in society, and sets out a valid framework for the analysis that will be pursued throughout the text. However, beyond the introductory chapter and the logical headings used to divide the work into four main areas, there are some crucial structural weaknesses. In the introductory chapter, the authors describe the ‘hazard-strewn’ nature of relationships between NGOs and corporations, nicely summarise some of the key factors that make them so (2009, p.xxiv). For example, NGOs might recoil from the data discovered on being given access to a corporation’s internal audit, while the media coverage generated by such a collaboration has the potential to harm the legitimacy and reputation of an NGO, sometimes damaging it irreparably. Perhaps most fundamentally, there is a basic value difference between most corporations, and most NGOs. The former are working with markets and their values; the latter with social and ethical values. There can be some overlap in their operations, but this fundamental conflict compromises all collaborations. Perhaps this theme could have been developed further, given that it crops up throughout the work, in various case studies and theoretical discussion. However, it is not reiterated by the authors in the same way as they repeatedly talk of the increasing variety and complexity of NGO-corporate relationships. The text would have benefited from having a clear-cut and compelling theme running through it, rather than vague statements. The value difference between NGOs and corporations seems, to me, to offer just that, but was not adequately capitalised on by Doh and Yaziji. The conclusions reached at the end of each chapter are suitable concise, but they offer little in the way of real insight, apart from one or two notable exceptions. This becomes immediately clear as the authors begin to repeatedly use facile statements, which are often variations on the same, vague theme, which do nothing to move forward with a strong argument or analytical point. For example, we read, on page 142, that ‘Corporate-NGO exchanges are becoming increasingly complex, variegated and fluid’, and then, on page 175, that ‘Corporate-NGO relations are increasingly complex, variegated and multifaceted’. These statements are remarkably similar, and given their vagueness, it is difficult to imagine any serious scholar taking much of worth from them. After all, this essential point was established in the introductory chapter. Here it was asserted, quite sensibly, that there are increasingly occasions and areas of policy in which governments, businesses, and non-profit organisations find that their interests converge. The authors go on to note that sometimes, this is in an antagonistic way, for example with NGOs launching campaigns against corporations, often for ethical reasons, which can result in the destruction of a firm’s brand. There are also, so we are told, more collaborative relationships, whereby the NGOs might have access to financial or informational resources, and the means to push forward their causes, while the corporation can meet the demands of increasingly diverse groups of stakeholders. This is all very well, but perhaps the repetition then found throughout the book is a sign that considerably more research into this field is required before a compelling and united text of full length can be put together. That is not to say that the book contains little of value for students of NGO-corporation relationships. The book is an extremely useful resource in that it brings together a selection of particularly pertinent case studies, and organises them under very clear themes, thus aiding comparison and evaluation. In the second part of the book, on NGO advocacy campaigns, we are reminded of the Free Burma Coalition – a group of NGOs which successfully forced major international manufacturers including Levi Strauss, Apple, Macy’s and PepsiCo to leave Burma. Even more, the use of the relationship between People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and fast-food chain KFC was compelling as evidence for a model of initial collaboration breaking down into conflict. To summarise, PETA, with its 750,000 members worldwide, made an agreement with KFC to work together for the safeguarding of animal rights. This only lasted from April 2001 until January 2003. At first, KFC demonstrated a willingness to make concessions, but the authors conclude, in my opinion rightly, that the relationship, which ended with PETA launching thousands of protests and a celebrity-endorsed KFC boycott, was doomed by the value difference between the two organisations, and the lack of shared goals. Furthermore, some case studies deal with issues of truly international proportions, reflecting the authors’ valid argument that NGOs now represent a very real power on the global stage. The accounts of the role of NGOs in the campaign against conflict diamonds is especially apt. Where these case studies fall down is their almost total separation from the theoretical aspects of this book. Generally, the authors opt for a theoretical discussion first, complete with useful graphics of the models they propose, and then this is followed by a few case studies related to the preceding discussion. This division is artificial, and the book would have benefited from a more complete integration of the material. The case studies would have been more helpfully analysed if they were placed in the main body of text. The case studies as currently configured do have the advantage of length and fullness – the authors have gone to some trouble to provide a comprehensive account of each case study they use. However, it is, at times, difficult to place the case studies in relation to the theory. Perhaps the basic points of the case studies could have been integrated into the main text to support points and models, and then several appendices with more details on each case studies could have been added to the end of the work. This would have allowed readers who desired more information on specific instances to pursue it. As it is, the current organisation has the effect of preventing one chapter from flowing into the next. For this reason, it is difficult to see a sustained and developing argument throughout the book. The drawing of general rules and conclusions from what the authors concede is a an extremely complex and varied field is always going to be a risk. Nevertheless, in this aspect, the authors had grappled with a difficult challenge and met with success. For example, in the early chapter which seeks to define an NGO, Doh and Yaziji have developed a simple typology based on whom the NGO is designed to benefit and what the NGO does. A useful graphic to illustrate the point can be located on page 5. In the same discussion, they present some unexpected and thought-provoking data. The discussion of definitions of an NGO begins with a quote from Tocqueville, taken from his account of his first visit to the United States. He was apparently struck by the propensity of Americans for forming societies and associations – ‘religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute’ (2009, p. 3). Such quotations might seem like literary window-dressing, but serve the very real and practical purpose of provoking thought on the basics of a subject. In reading this passage, one no longer thinks of an NGO just as a major international organisation like Greenpeace or Save the Children, and realises that, of course, it can just as equally mean a local temperance society. There are points in the book when the authors do offer a truly insightful, and sometimes novel, analysis of the phenomenon observed in NGO-corporate relationships. The discussion of how NGOs gain such power is a good example. Doh and Yaziji conclude that the ‘narrow institutional niche’ (2009, p. 112) provides challenges to corporations with a critical advantage. They suggest that even an organisation with a radical agenda, out of the social mainstream, can punch above its weight due to the homogeneity of its resources. Unlike a sprawling, transnational corporation, such a group only has to respond to the concerns of a narrow interest group, and has considerable strategic flexibility and tactical options as a result. This argument, too complex to fully paraphrase here, is among the more compelling and fresh analyses presented. It is to be regretted that the authors were not successful in linking such analyses back to a central theme. The much too brief concluding section on page 182 – a mere paragraph in length – reflects some of the more general problems with this book. It begins with a typically vague line, reiterated throughout the work – ‘NGOs exist – and will likely persist – as an important and influential organization form within broader civil society’, and ends with the line, ‘We believe that these interactions are important, relevant and vital to a thriving social and business sector, and worthy of study and analysis for years to come’. The conclusion, as well as being short, failed to do what might have been hoped of it. In a book which was in many ways disjointed, with case studies inadequately linked to theoretical discussions, a general tying together of the various threads under discussion would have been invaluable. There is little doubt that Doh and Yaziji have made a valuable contribution to the still embryonic field of relations between NGOs and corporations. The structural limitations of the work are manifold, but, especially in its early chapters, it offers a useful summary of where academic thinking on the subject is at present, and in such a dynamic area, this is invaluable. The authors, in the final chapter, offer several ideas for future research. It is to be hoped that they will conduct it with their usual fine scholarship. In time, as researches in this field develop, a more integrated approach to the subject matter will no doubt evolve. Read More