Claiming the Moral High Ground: NGOs as Stakeholders

Abstract

Globalization and NGOs: Transforming Business, Government and Society. Edited by Jonathan P. Doh, Hildy Teegen. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 256 pp., $55.95 (ISBN: 1-56720-499-6). Jonathan Doh and Hildy Teegen—the editors of Globalization and NGOs: Transforming Business, Government and Society —state what many social scientists have argued for the past decade: that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) matter, and that decision makers consider them important. The result of an Academy of Management meeting held in Washington, DC, in 2001, Globalization and NGOs consists of ten distinct empirical and theoretical contributions aimed at understanding how NGOs (defined loosely as nonstate organizations devoted to social change) have emerged as important stakeholders in discussions over the terms and conditions under which business, government, and multilateral institutions manage the processes of globalization. The management scholars who contributed to the volume realize that NGOs are developing more creative and innovative tactics, which are becoming more difficult for businesses to counter. Readers of this book, they insist, will be better able to recognize, leverage, and respond constructively to the power and unique resources that NGOs now contribute to society. Thus, Globalization and NGOs is aimed at predicting the situations in which NGOs are likely to be influential, assessing the different responses of businesses and governments to the growing influence of NGOs, and reevaluating the relevance of existing models, theories, and frameworks of strategic management in light of these factors. The contributors draw variously upon management, corporate political strategy, and public policy approaches, including Edward Freeman's (1984) strategic management paradigm of stakeholder analysis. Doh and Teegen extend Freeman's framework to include two additional characterizations: stakegiver and staketaker. According to this perspective, NGOs can become stakegivers when they provide such resources as prestige, legitimacy, and the aura of neutrality and moral authority. The NGOs can also provide information and serve as mediators of potential conflicts with other constituents. On the other hand, ignoring them as stakeholders, the contributors warn, will expose corporations to the risk …