The new social power of stakeholders: The current activist practices that are shaping corporate social conduct

Enfoque

Phenomena like the current and enormous social inequalities and environmental catastrophes, combined with factors such as the spread of globalization, the greater social and economic power of companies and the emergence and expansion of new media, made stakeholders not only more socially aware but also more demanding about the role of companies in improving the sociopolitical problems of today’s world.

Much more empowered than ever, largely due to the use of digital technologies, stakeholders increasingly make their claims heard to companies through activist actions, whose main objective is to affect organizations’ social conducts by threatening its reputation and/or value. Such movements include anti-brand activism, encompassing well-known practices such as boycotts, anti-brand communities and culture-jamming, as well as anti-consumption movements, and the recent so-called “cancel culture”. All these forms of stakeholder activism target corporations and their brands seeking to unmask immoral corporate practices, force companies to adopt more responsible conducts, or warn about the consequences of unbridled consumption.

In this way, the intensification of stakeholder activism over the last decades has managed to change the prospects of power in the market, allowing these groups to interfere with all corporate activities and public positions of brands, and urging companies to improve their social conducts and invest in the defense and improvement of relevant sociopolitical causes. Nevertheless, there are also some concerns related to the democratic nature and effectiveness of these strategies in the field of business, since the non-egalitarian nature of markets may set aside minority interests or unattractive causes, the imposing character of activist movements can impede critical thinking, and the possible ephemerality of these movements may not lead to effective social change.

This theoretical investigation will explore how stakeholders have gained greater power to pressure businesses to improve their internal practices and to adopt public stances in relation to the most varied sociopolitical issues, having as main purposes: investigate the growing power of stakeholders in the social orientation of companies and in the definition of their corporate social responsibility conduct and activist campaigns; explore the current practices through which stakeholders exercise social power over companies, giving concrete examples of how these groups are influencing corporate social conduct; discuss the broader benefits and criticisms of applying social practices, such as activist actions, in the corporate context; and draw conclusions about the way in which the notion of citizenship is currently embedded in the relationship between companies and stakeholders. At a methodological level, this investigation is formed as a narrative literature review, based on prominent articles published in this field of expertise and drawn from scientifically recognized databases, as well as in concrete examples taken from official sources of information, such as newspapers or websites of recognized organizations.