Case studies (downloadable)

Since the beginning of the 1990s, particularly large (multinational) enterprises have been confronted with disciplining demands from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to give concrete content to corporate responsibilities. In the confrontation four main issue clusters have emerged: (1) health (food safety, GM, medicine); (2) labour/human rights and conditions (such as forced labour, child labour); (3) environment (waste dumping, global warming); (4) dictatorship and wars (Burma/Myanmar, Nigeria, blood diamonds). Some cases show how issues can evolve over time (for instance the treatment of dictatorship in Burma), other cases show the evolving strategies of NGOs over time (e.g. Greenpeace and the Clean Clothes Campaign). As for the multinationals that were the target of NGO campaigns, the cases were selected to be as representative as possible. Shell is represented two times in the basic case set, because of the enormous impact of the two cases in 1995 and 1996 (Brent Spar and Nigeria) it was involved in. Figure 1 depicts the different actors and the dates of the eighteen confrontations that were selected for further analysis in the book.

Figure 1 Cases of societal interface confrontation

Each case study discusses the following aspects of the conflict:

• the characteristics of the social interface challenges: public/private; profit/non-profit; efficiency/ethics;
• the characteristics of the company (or the subsidiary in question) and the most important stakeholders in the conflict at hand;
• a description of the conflict;
• indications of correction signals related to reputation damage - in the (1) consumer market (2) capital market and (3) labour market;
• indications of disciplining that was initiated by the company through quality labelling, reporting, drawing up codes of conduct or otherwise;
• an assessment of the outcome of the conflict and the contribution the conflict has made to resolving the issue.