The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations

To what extent do Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) monitor global value chains? While NGOs regularly denounce the behavior of multinational corporations throughout the world, their motivations for choosing campaign targets remain largely unknown. Using a new dataset on activists’ campaigns towa...

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Main Authors:	Hatte, Sophie, Koenig, Pamina
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2021
Subjects:	MULTINATIONAL FIRMS NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN GRAVITY EQUATION
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36075

id	okr-10986-36075
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-360752021-08-07T05:10:29Z The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations Hatte, Sophie Koenig, Pamina MULTINATIONAL FIRMS NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN GRAVITY EQUATION To what extent do Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) monitor global value chains? While NGOs regularly denounce the behavior of multinational corporations throughout the world, their motivations for choosing campaign targets remain largely unknown. Using a new dataset on activists’ campaigns toward multinational firms, we estimate a triadic gravity equation for campaigns, involving the NGO, firm, and action countries. Our results point to a strong proximity bias in NGO activity: Distance, national borders, and lack of a common language all contribute to impede the intensity of campaigns. We estimate the distance elasticity of campaigns to be −0.2 and further document that NGOs strongly bias their actions toward home firms or foreign firms with home actions. A domestic firm is 3.45 times more likely to be attacked than a foreign one. Foreign firms headquartered in common language countries draw 1.63 times more campaigns. Overall, campaigns seem to be designed so as to include at least one element of proximity drawing the attention of consumers. This pattern questions the role of NGOs in the monitoring of multinational production operated in remote, unfamiliar locations. 2021-08-06T20:31:55Z 2021-08-06T20:31:55Z 2020-02 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36075 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Journal Article
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	MULTINATIONAL FIRMS NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN GRAVITY EQUATION
spellingShingle	MULTINATIONAL FIRMS NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN GRAVITY EQUATION Hatte, Sophie Koenig, Pamina The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations
description	To what extent do Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) monitor global value chains? While NGOs regularly denounce the behavior of multinational corporations throughout the world, their motivations for choosing campaign targets remain largely unknown. Using a new dataset on activists’ campaigns toward multinational firms, we estimate a triadic gravity equation for campaigns, involving the NGO, firm, and action countries. Our results point to a strong proximity bias in NGO activity: Distance, national borders, and lack of a common language all contribute to impede the intensity of campaigns. We estimate the distance elasticity of campaigns to be −0.2 and further document that NGOs strongly bias their actions toward home firms or foreign firms with home actions. A domestic firm is 3.45 times more likely to be attacked than a foreign one. Foreign firms headquartered in common language countries draw 1.63 times more campaigns. Overall, campaigns seem to be designed so as to include at least one element of proximity drawing the attention of consumers. This pattern questions the role of NGOs in the monitoring of multinational production operated in remote, unfamiliar locations.
format	Journal Article
author	Hatte, Sophie Koenig, Pamina
author_facet	Hatte, Sophie Koenig, Pamina
author_sort	Hatte, Sophie
title	The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations
title_short	The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations
title_full	The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations
title_fullStr	The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations
title_full_unstemmed	The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations
title_sort	geography of ngo activism against multinational corporations
publisher	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2021
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36075
_version_	1764484374728802304

The Geography of NGO Activism against Multinational Corporations

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