How Strategic Decisions Impact the Success of Local Advocacy Interventions at Greenpeace

Abstract

International advocacy non-governmental organizations (NGOs) represent key actors of global governance. In this paper, we depart from the current paradigm that considers these NGOs as stakeholders to businesses and governments to investigate how they make decisions concerning their advocacy interventions. Our contribution is twofold. First, we develop a framework that explains how the national and regional organizations (NROs) at Greenpeace strategize their interventions. Second, we adopt a set-theoretic approach to investigate how the decision points associated with an intervention impact its success. Our findings show that the success of interventions largely depends on the choice of targets and tactics in relation to the particular context of an intervention. Our study calls for a greater understanding of the strategic management of international advocacy NGOs.