How transnational stakeholders impact multinational corporations in the context of globalization

Stakeholder theory faces two closely related challenges in the light of globalization. On the one hand, globalization has not only led many firms to explore and expand into different parts of the world, it has also created possibilities for non-traditional stakeholders to ‘knock on the doors’ of firms and make their concerns heard. On the other hand, the context of the multitude and complexity of novel stakeholder relationships that were not usually considered in stakeholder mappings renders the issue of corporate responsibility even more ‘political’ than stakeholder relationships have always been. However, exactly how such non-traditional stakeholders knock on the firms’ doors has insufficiently been explored in stakeholder theorizing. Stakeholder theory appears to have difficulty in explaining the potential leverage that stakeholder groups without a clear and direct stake in a firm may exert over that particular firm. We propose to speak of ‘boomerang politics’ as a general and overarching term in order to advance stakeholder theory in the light of the challenges from globalization by exploring how non-traditional stakeholders knock on firms’ doors

Activism in the global sports apparel industry

F. den Hond, F.G.A. de Bakker, P. de Haan (2010), The sequential patterning of tactics: Activism in the global sports apparel industry, 1988–2002, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy Vol.30, No.11, pp.648-66

Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

F.G.A. de Bakker, F. den Hond, B.G. King, K. Weber (2013), Social Movements, Civil Society and Corporations: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead, Organization Studies Vol.34, No.3, pp.573-593 The relationships between social movements and civil society on the one hand, and the corporate world on the other hand, are often shaped by conflict over the domination of economic, cultural and social life. How this conflict plays out, in current as well as in historical times and places, is the central question that unites the papers in this special issue. In this essay, we review the differences and points of contact between the study of social movements, civil society and corporations, and offer an agenda for future research at this intersection that also frames the papers in the special issue. We suggest that three research areas are becoming increasingly important: the blurring of the three empirical domains and corresponding opportunities for theoretical integration, the institutional and cultural embeddedness of strategic interaction processes between agents, and the consequences of contestation and collaboration. The papers in this special issue are introduced in how they speak to these questions

IHC Caland in Burma

IHC Caland designed, built and operated material, ships and complete systems for offshore oil and gas, dredging and shipping industries. The relatively strong economic growth in Southeast Asia offered opportunities for IHC Caland and other specialised suppliers. In the summer of 1998, an IHC Caland subsidiary contracted for an offshore project in Burma’s territorial waters. The order was for several hundreds of millions euros, hence of considerable interest to the company. The contract led to public stir because it involved work in a country controversial for its human rights situation. Many human rights, environmental and union organisations expressed their outrage and tried to move IHC Caland to cancel the contract. A controversy was born. It took IHC Caland long resisted the claims made by the NGOs. It maintained that the morality of commercial agents is limited to abiding with all legal laws and regulations. It therefore argued that it had not committed any moral wrong and was allowed to do business with the Burma government

GRIMP: A web- and grid-based tool for high-speed analysis of large-scale genome-wide association using imputed data.

The current fast growth of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) combined with now common computationally expensive imputation requires the online access of large user groups to high-performance computing resources capable of analyzing rapidly and efficiently millions of genetic markers for ten thousands of individuals. Here, we present a web-based interface—called GRIMP—to run publicly available genetic software for extremely large GWAS on scalable super-computing grid infrastructures. This is of major importance for the enlargement of GWAS with the availability of whole-genome sequence data from the 1000 Genomes Project and for future whole-population efforts

Cherenkov radiation emitted by ultrafast laser pulses and the generation of coherent polaritons

We report on the generation of coherent phonon polaritons in ZnTe, GaP and LiTaO$_{3}$ using ultrafast optical pulses. These polaritons are coupled modes consisting of mostly far-infrared radiation and a small phonon component, which are excited through nonlinear optical processes involving the Raman and the second-order susceptibilities (difference frequency generation). We probe their associated hybrid vibrational-electric field, in the THz range, by electro-optic sampling methods. The measured field patterns agree very well with calculations for the field due to a distribution of dipoles that follows the shape and moves with the group velocity of the optical pulses. For a tightly focused pulse, the pattern is identical to that of classical Cherenkov radiation by a moving dipole. Results for other shapes and, in particular, for the planar and transient-grating geometries, are accounted for by a convolution of the Cherenkov field due to a point dipole with the function describing the slowly-varying intensity of the pulse. Hence, polariton fields resulting from pulses of arbitrary shape can be described quantitatively in terms of expressions for the Cherenkov radiation emitted by an extended source. Using the Cherenkov approach, we recover the phase-matching conditions that lead to the selection of specific polariton wavevectors in the planar and transient grating geometry as well as the Cherenkov angle itself. The formalism can be easily extended to media exhibiting dispersion in the THz range. Calculations and experimental data for point-like and planar sources reveal significant differences between the so-called superluminal and subluminal cases where the group velocity of the optical pulses is, respectively, above and below the highest phase velocity in the infrared.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure