Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility: Faculty Books: Jackson Library: Stanford GSB

Sarah A. Soule

[photo - Sarah A. Soule]

Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior

Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences

Professor Soule's research examines state and organizational-level policy change and diffusion, and the role social movements have on these processes. Current projects include an NSF-funded analysis of advocacy group effects on environmental legislation in the US; an analysis of how protest impacts multi-national firm-level decisions regarding divestment in Burma; a study of how protest affects the outcomes of shareholder resolutions; and an analysis of how protest affects stock prices of targeted firms.
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Faculty Books: Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility

Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility
by Sarah A. Soule
New York: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2009

• Professor Soule Explains Effective Social Movements

This book examines anti-corporate activism in the United States, including analysis of anti-corporate challenges associated with social movements as diverse as the Civil Rights Movement and the Dolphin-Safe Tuna Movement. Using a unique dataset of protest events in the United States, the book shows that anti-corporate activism is primarily about corporate policies, products, and negligence. Although activists have always been distrustful of corporations and sought to change them, until the 1970s and 1980s, this was primarily accomplished via seeking government regulation of corporations or via organized labor. Sarah A. Soule traces the shift brought about by deregulation and the decline in organized labor, which prompted activists to target corporations directly, often in combination with targeting the state. Using the literatures on contentious and private politics, which are both essential for understanding anti-corporate activism, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the changing focal points of activism directed at corporations. (source: Cambridge University Press)