Moral Business

1. Moral Business Changing Corporate Behaviour by ‘Speaking Their Language’ Kevin Gillan Lecturer in Sociology University of Manchester kevin.gillan@manchester.ac.uk

2. Overview • Case outline: the Reed campaign • Scholarship on impacts of movements • Conceptualising the target: • The 'industry opportunity structure' • Corporations and stakeholders • Two ingredients of success: • Mobilising the stakeholder network • Connecting with corporate culture • Summary hypotheses

3. The Arms Trade Problem • Who are Reed Elsevier? • Global publishing and business information company; £1.3 billion profit in 2008 • Academic publications include The Lancet, Gray’s Anatomy and hundreds of journals in many disciplines • Business information services include trade exhibitions • What’s the problem? • 2001 RE bought a portfolio of arms exhibitions from Spearhead, included DSEi in London • Exhibitions drew protest because of proliferation of weapons of all kinds, willingness of fairs to invite delegates from countries at war, and evidence that exhibitors were breaking international treaties (e.g. on landmines) • Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) identified RE as ‘a good company with an arms trade problem’

4. Reed Elsevier’s Responses ‘The selling of equipment and services for national defence is legal and government supported … Reed Elsevier does not intend to adjust its policy and will continue to run DSEi as part of its portfolio of business exhibitions.’ (Letter from Stephen Cowden, Company Secretary, July 2005) ‘it has become increasingly clear that growing numbers of important customers and authors have very real concerns about our involvement in the defence exhibitions business. We have listened closely to these concerns.’ (RE Press Release announcing exit of defence sector, June 2007.) May 2008: RE completes sale of arms shows to Clarion Events

5. Tactics • Regular protests at arms fairs (ongoing since before RE’s involvement) • Letter writing to RE from CAAT supporters • Attendance at AGMs • Protest at RE organised exhibitions • Publication of letters from high profile professional groups (medics, authors) • Critical editorials in RE journals (including the Lancet) • Online petition by academics and pledge to boycott journals • Threats (and action) by ethical investors to divest from RE

6. Studying Movement Success I • Some difficulties highlighted in the literature: • Success indefinable (multiple goals) • Difficult to prove causal efficacy (alternative explanations through other actors etc) • Need to focus more broadly on impacts (because of unintended consequences) • Need to look for long term consequences • These are eased somewhat by focus on a campaign rather than a movement. Campaign focus valuable here because: • Clear, short-term goals • Inclusion of groups that aren’t involved in broader anti-arms trade movement

7. Studying Movement Success II • Suggestions for determinants of success: • Strategic decisions (limited demands, disruption, ability to respond quickly to circumstances) • Organizational factors (resources, elite allies, professionalization) • Cultural factors (production and communication of resonant frames) • But, contradictory findings on all of these. Giugni's (1998) response is to highlight context as conditioning the causal processes indicated by the above. Context includes: • Public opinion – when activated by movements and mediated through mainstream news media. • Political opportunity structures • But, how applicable to anti-corporate campaigns?

8. Schurman's 'industry opportunity structure' • Environmental variables determining possibilities for impact when targeting corporations are different from those usually indicated in POS • Includes four main elements: • Conditions of competition within industry • Relationships within wider organisational field (c.f. stakeholder network) • Corporate culture (discourses, normative commitments, frames,etc) • Nature of particular business commodity (Schurman, 2004, 'Fighting Frankenfoods' in Social Problems 51(2))

9. Stakeholder theory of the corporation • An alternative to the dominant 'shareholder value' model of corporate responsibility • Business ethicists see stakeholder as 'any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the organization's objectives' (Freeman 1984) • Increasingly popular with corporate management developing ideas of social responsibility and corporate citizenship • Sees corporation at centre of a network of different kinds of relationships with customers, employees, suppliers, local communities etc. • Most literature on this is either purely philosophical in nature or addresses questions of the business case for taking account of stakeholders.

10. Core campaign network Independent academics CAAT reps Lancet employee Medact rep

11. Rowntree Charitable Trust Ethical Investors Authors Lawyers Reed Elsevier Employees Developed campaign network CAAT supporters Personal academic networks Independent academics CAAT reps Lancet employee Medact rep Lancet authors, reviewers, readers Medact supporters

12. Rowntree Charitable Trust Ethical Investors Authors Lawyers Reed Elsevier Employees Claims making in public CAAT supporters Personal academic networks Core campaigners Lancet authors, reviewers, readers Medact supporters

13. Rowntree Charitable Trust Ethical Investors Authors Lawyers Reed Elsevier Employees Claims making in public and private CAAT supporters Personal academic networks Core campaigners Lancet authors, reviewers, readers Medact supporters

14. Money or morality? • 'To be frank, they were relatively small shareholders, but it certainly achieved an effect in terms of being recognised internally' 'ultimately it was just pure ethics to those stakeholders' 'it was incumbent upon us to react in the face of stakeholders' (RE management, interview) • 'We had a lot of worry about how much you can damage their reputation in a moral sense, compared to how much you can damage it in a financial sense... But it was obviously an unfounded worry because actually, they were worried about their moral reputation.' (CAAT campaigner)

15. Speaking their language I • If we can say (tentatively) that moral concerns make an impact, then how does that occur? • Corporate cultures composed of: • Value and vision statements (strategically) created by corporate management • Beliefs and practices developed in interactions for collective activity • Particular reflection of wider normative justifications of capitalistic activity (Boltanski & Chiapello) • These comprise the normative commitments the corporation has made. Constrain the possible decisions of executive boards.

16. Speaking their language II • RE had already made a number of commitments to corporate responsibility: • Signatory to (and active promoter of) UN Global Compact • Statement of values and 'Sir Crispin's Open Door' • Belief that 'I don't think we would want to do anything in private … that we wouldn't want a spotlight shined on … certainly nothing in opposition to our code of ethics' (RE manager) • Campaigners had to address these commitments directly, and took 'a conscious decision to speak to them in their own language … And what I found really amazing was that their press release used our language' (CAAT campaigner)

17. Summary hypotheses • Campaigns representing a wide selection of corporate stakeholder networks are more likely to succeed. • Strategies sensitive to the nature of particular relationships to target corporation are more likely to succeed. • Corporate responses to movements are constrained by the narratives they portray about themselves.