As indicated in the prior chapters, firms are increasingly facing campaigns by NGOs over a broad range of issues such as the environment, labor, human rights, consumer rights and animal rights. These campaigns are not all of a single kind; in fact, the campaigns come in two directly converse flavors. In this chapter we will differentiate between two very different types of campaigns – watchdog campaigns and proxy war campaigns (introduced in Chapter 1) – which need to be understood and responded to in very different ways.

As mentioned in Chapter 4, early neo-institutional theory focused on how organizations, in order to gain and maintain the legitimacy necessary to survive, conform to institutional demands in the form of norms and rules. While institutions are broad and often diffuse, institutional pressure must ultimately be brought to bear on organizations by other organizations that give expression to institutional norms. These “institutionally expressive” organizations might be governmental bodies, professional associations or nongovernmental watchdog or advocacy groups. In its most elementary structural form, a single institutionally expressive organization puts “institutional pressure” on a single organization. For example, a regulatory body may threaten to or actually fine a firm for failing to meet federal environmental guidelines.

In some cases, this pressure is applied blindly or “impersonally,” meaning without regard to differences in institutionally neutral attributes of the organization or characteristics that are deemed irrelevant to the salient institutional issue.