Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 18, 2007

Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting

Frank G. A. de Bakker, Frank de Hond
Pages 339-344

Activist Group Tactics to Influence Companies

Private politics (Baron 2003), i.e. attempts by various groups in society to influence corporate behavior without recourse to the state regulation or the law, has been an increasingly significant theme over the past few decades, and is likely to remain prominent in the years ahead. Yet, the occasional success of such attempts remains difficult to understand, because from the firm’s perspective, such groups lack a well-developed basis for negotiation and bargaining. Following this line of reasoning, we discuss how such groups try to influence firms, and whether how they do so today is any different from earlier periods in time.