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This thesis develops an in-depth case study of an organisational field to understand how adversarial stakeholders challenge corporations (research question one), and the ways in which corporations respond to stakeholder pressures (research question two). In this chapter I summarise the theoretical contributions, discussing them in relation to the two research questions. I then describe the limitations of the study and future research directions.

7.1.1: How do adversarial stakeholders challenge corporations?

The thesis establishes a new understanding (for organisational studies) of the ways in which adversarial stakeholders challenge corporations (research question one) by exerting indirect institutional pressure through a bearing witness logic of protest. This challenges the established notion of activists targeting firms (den Hond and de Bakker, 2007) because it demonstrates a type of protest strategy that centres on creating new understandings of the resource itself through the identity work of those bearing witness, such as community ‘custodians’ and scientific experts. This can be conducted by relatively few actors but can have far reaching impact on cultural understandings, as demonstrated by oil sands garnering international attention as ‘dirty oil’. Companies were not targeted directly but instead the notion of oil sands was challenged. This thesis also explains the environmental conditions which led to this logic of protest being deployed by these oppositional stakeholders.

Den Hond and de Bakker (2007) considered the bearing witness logic of protest to be inappropriate in the context of activists targeting corporations. However, because the social movement in this case is made up of professional environmentalists (activists) and local community members with environmental concerns about an entire geographical area, i.e. oil sands as a resource and opportunity to extract, rather than a specific company practice, this leads to the logic of bearing witness. Instead of focusing on a particular target firm, the bearers of witness focus on their own accounts, and ways of creating and disseminating knowledge, such as through lectures, reports, or performative acts such as stunts that encapsulate their strength of feeling about the issue. This means that those working for the industry experience the social movement actors’ efforts mediated by the public, and especially the employees’ individual social networks. In addition this thesis makes a contribution to social movement theory by developing a typology of identities used to demonstrate the expertise to bear witness. It also reflects on the environmental mechanisms that led to this logic of protest being deployed.

An interesting dynamic that was revealed in this case was that, rather than targeting a particular company, stakeholders challenged the concept of oil sands by framing it as ‘dirty oil’ or ‘tar sands’ in order to successfully voice their concerns about the speed of expansion and its impacts on the environmental and local communities in the Alberta region. This collective targeting of the industry as a whole rather than the individual corporations that were involved established community as an important stakeholder group, as this group, more so than others, was being directly affected by environmental impacts of the oil sands extraction. The findings show that a small number of community members, environmentalists and ‘experts’ launched an international campaign against “dirty oil” using the bearing witness logic of protest. As well as outlining a typology of witness bearer identities, I also offer some environmental mechanisms that lead to this logic of protest. This bearing witness logic of protest differs markedly from other mechanisms of challenge and, as demonstrated in this case, can be a powerful tactic when deployed against an industry. This study is one of the first to highlight the importance of this protest mechanism and to capture some of its key characteristics.

The public became concerned about the oil sands as a consequence of the negative attention placed on the resource by community members and environmentalists (the social movement actors). Those working for oil sands companies became aware of public scrutiny through their social networks. The industry responded by communicating to the public at the individual and industry level. These communication responses were factual, educational and personal. Field-level responses were particularly important because pressures felt by companies were collective and not necessarily directed at particular companies. Furthermore, the bearing witness logic of protest used by the social movement actors focuses more on the experiences and accounts of people than it does on demanding a particular agenda or change to specific practices. Employees play an important role. They are essential for an expanding industry, and as those who decide on appropriate responses (Pache and Santos, 2010). But, they are also critical as facilitators of positive communications towards the industry. This is either as conduits to their social networks, or as identities that the industry can use to personalise its own corporate identity. The logic of bearing witness also foregrounds community stakeholders; groups of actors who have previously been neglected by institutional theory (Thornton et al., 2012). Marquis and colleagues (2008; 2010) provide a rare exception to this. The existing literature often considers community members to be weak and peripheral. This case study demonstrates that local communities can be highly important to firms when they have a role in the regulatory

process, when they speak out against the industry and because they may have complex social needs and barriers that the industry becomes involved in addressing.

Communities are considered important because local resistance towards the industry from them risks public attention because of their proximity, lifestyles and normative claims to the land as aboriginal people. Furthermore, any resistance to the oil sands that they demonstrate is highly supported by (often international) environmental groups. This stakeholder group (made up of several heterogeneous communities) also has other complex institutional arrangements because of their role in the regulatory process. Furthermore, their lack of capacity to deal with hundreds of consultation processes, as well as social issues and barriers to work, provides a complex set of pressures for companies to respond to. There was a normative belief that providing benefits to the community was critical, but companies increasingly wanted to avoid providing cash payments, preferring employment or education. Companies responded individually and collectively by becoming more involved within communities. Initially contact was minimal, such as through cheque book diplomacy, but this later shifted to relationship building and the embedding of themselves within communities. OSLI’s sustainable community working group was particularly successful at embedding its work to address societal needs. Furthermore, communities are an important stakeholder group because they represent a salient and emotive issue of concern for other stakeholder groups, notably environmentalists and the general public. This is likely to lead to increased institutional pressure or direct stakeholder demands being placed on companies or the field to respond appropriately. Thus, communities are a marginal, heterogeneous but highly emotive stakeholder group and when they voice issues indirectly, through actions as witness bearers, and directly, through participation in the regulatory process, they can be a potent stakeholder group and highly important within the organisational field.

7.1.2: In what ways do corporations respond to stakeholder pressures?

We know surprising little about how corporations respond to their institutional pressures (Greenwood et al., 2011). This is especially the case as stakeholders have different demands, methods and perceived legitimacy. This thesis empirically studies how corporations interact with regional, social and environmental stakeholders. In particular, it looks in depth at an entire organisational field from the perspective of different actors and stakeholders, and explores how companies focus differently on each stakeholder group. To have these dynamics and interactions empirically studied across an entire organisational field is unique and, thus provides deeper insights into corporate responses that previous studies have missed. This thesis also provides a methodological contribution as it uses qualitative data to analyse field and organisational level responses to institutional pluralism.

Answering research question two, the thesis finds that corporations respond to stakeholder pressures in a number of ways. Firstly, I show that corporate responses to stakeholder pressures are deployed at the individual firm and at the collective industry level. Existing texts in this area have been based on a single response (such as Tracey et al., 2000), purely conceptual (Oliver, 1991; Pache and Santos, 2010) or they are literature reviews trying to pull together a whole range of responses, or else they were purely theoretical in nature (Greenwood et al., 2011; Kraatz and Block; Suddaby and Lawrence, 2006).

My research on the other hand shows that multiple and differing corporate responses were used with different actors (public, environmentalists and community members), such as community relations, issue management, environmental management, stakeholder management and then another tier of field level staff members, such as industry funded teachers, trade association staff, consultants and museum staff. My findings reveal a whole range of stakeholder responses and show how these are compartmentalised into individual roles. Previous studies that have considered corporate responses (Oliver, 1991; Pache and Santos, 2010) have not tested this empirically or have focused solely on one type of response in detail, as is the case with much of the community relations literature (Bowen et al., 2010). Corporate responses are more likely to try to influence and shape institutional dynamics and values than was previously considered by those looking at strategic responses (cf. Stern and Barley 1996). This is particularly the case at the field-level. Employees play a vital role not only in deciding how to respond, not to mention keeping the company profitable, but also in terms of providing their own individual reputation on the line to add to the legitimacy of the firm and acting as a micro-communicator with their social networks through social media.

The mechanisms through which corporate responses are enacted involves a wide range of actors working in boundary-spanning roles, such as community relations staff, issue managers, communications managers, stakeholder managers and environmental managers. External consultants also play an important role. How actors, in this case employees, respond is determined by the stakeholder group in question. Those working for the industry respond to the particular stakeholder group by attempting to develop relations and collaborate with them first and foremost. A key finding of the research is that corporate responses are more relational in quality than previously understood. Previous research that has examined corporate responses has focused on the role of the corporations as unitary entities, however, this study shows that corporate responses involve a complex network of relationships that are spread across different stakeholder groups and other actors within the organisational fields.

Companies also try to respond to environmental NGOs and engage with others in their organisational field. Firms were willing to develop cooperative relations with environmentalists even if they had been publically critical of them. Those environmental NGOs who had not been publically part of the social movement action were encouraged to cooperate to find win-win solutions. In contrast, those not willing to meet were dismissed privately by boundary-spanning employees such as issue managers or environmental managers. They justified this by claiming that those not willing to collaborate and enter dialogue were non-representative, or hypocritical - because their lifestyles still depended on oil, or they had ulterior pressures themselves because they needed fame and money.

Several pressures shared by individual companies led to the establishment of a collaborative organisation with progressive companies from the industry in the province. These pressures were both external, such as the public’s ‘soft advocacy’, and internal to the trade association because this collective was unable to satisfy all its member companies because some of the largest companies wanted to work collaboratively to try to improve performance around the major set of environmental and community issues raised by the social movement and in their private work with communities.

Establishing a collaborative organisation addressed a number of institutional pressures felt by the companies. These were to community stakeholders and by responding to key environmental challenges, particularly around land and water use. They developed a broad range of responses: speeding up research and development activities and sharing best practice; establishing their own networks and shared language; creating advocacy networks with key influencer stakeholders and fostering embedded relations with a couple of pilot aboriginal communities. The intention of this was also to drive laggard firms towards proactive responses to stakeholders and environmental issues without the need for regulatory intervention. The establishment of this group also suggests that when conflicting stakeholder groups, such as the radical environmentalists, will not collaborate, this leaves competitors to potentially create their own space in order to ensure they maintain stability and advantage with the organisational field. Their responses were not only directed at stakeholder pressures but also at field-level dynamics which had emerged.

7.2: Limitations of the research

The case study data was conducted over a relatively short period of time from 2010 to 2012. Whilst those in the field were able to discuss how responses and relations had changed over time, and in particular were able to discuss the social movement actors’ emergence and the subsequent corporate responses to it, this is a relatively narrow slice of time for an institutional study. This is the unfortunate downside of attempting to answer the call to conduct ‘coalface institutionalism’ and focus on day to day work in real time (Barley, 2008; Suddaby, 2010). This thesis could be the first phase in developing a longitudinal case study over a much longer time frame, as demonstrated by Zeitsma and Lawrence (2010) in their study of the practice and boundary work carried out in the paper industry. In focusing on the organisational and field level and the breadth of the repertoire, this could give the illusion that all companies are deploying all of these responses. Such a strategy was essential to ensure that a range of responses were uncovered empirically in order to build theory. However future research would benefit from quantifying such a range of responses and determining whether particular companies, based on values or country of origin, for example, utilise different responses.

A further limitation of the study was that in order to gain access to interviewees, especially from industry and communities, I promised anonymity for participants. This meant that I limited the amount of information about personal identities within the thesis and yet this helped generate rich insights into the field level dynamics and the responses that were used. One example is the way in which an environmental manager used his personal lifestyle and identity to promote the oil sands issues by demonstrating that he was deeply concerned about the environment. A further example of the utility of this approach would have been explaining the career trajectories of certain actors, for example the actor whose career moved from government into industry, or another man whose career shifted from the social movement into the First Nations business unit (whose profits come from the oil sands). The role of hybrid identities, such as those working to support the oil sands industry but also concerned about living a carbon-neutral personal life, as well as other hybrid identities and career paths, such as aboriginal campaigner and business person, would make for interesting further study. In the section below I further discuss future research directions stemming from this thesis.

7.3: Future research directions

There are a number of interesting avenues that future research could follow from this thesis. During the field work I was able to get brief glimpses into private responses and relations that were not focused on public-facing stakeholder groups such as social movement actors, community members or the public. It was clear that there were interrelations between those in political power and business for example. Responses such as lobbying, relations building with government members and boards of directors do not make up this thesis (Barley, 2010). The role of extra-institutional actors, for example ex-CEOs, would be particularly interesting. Another area of future research could be the role of social networks for example in terms of distributing and making internal a social movement campaign.

As discussed in the literature review, neo-institutionalists have largely overlooked the role of community as both an institutional arrangement and stakeholder group able to exert complex institutional pressure at corporations and organisational fields. As such, further comparative contexts would clarify constructs and nuances that may have been derived from this single case study. Examples might be the level of politicisation of the community in question, whether the affluence of the community makes a difference to their levels of opposition, attempts to challenge a company, industry or practice, as well as how the governance structures of countries might influence pressures and responses. Social movement actors are clearly strategic in how they select their issues and frames but we know little about how they make such decisions and how these in turn influence corporate responses.

In this study, community members and environmentalists from international non- government organisations had already established relationships and repertoires under the logic of bearing witness when I ‘entered the field’. We know little about how such arrangements come to develop. It would be revealing to study the early generative moments of local resistance and grassroots activism towards a particular development or target company and how or whether international activist attention is sought and gained.

7.4: Conclusion

This thesis set out to develop an in-depth understanding of stakeholder and corporate response relationships. A review of the literature demonstrates that our understanding of how organisations respond to complex and contradictory stakeholder pressure is limited.

Existing organisational theory also lacks key insights into how stakeholders such as environmentalists and community members collaborate together to challenge corporate responses through the bearing witness logic of protest. Furthermore, we know about how environments influence organisations but we know far less about the ways in which corporations respond to stakeholder pressure in order to shape their future demands and alter their lived experience. This thesis has generated important contributions to the study of interrelationships between stakeholders, corporations and organisational fields.

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