Mark Lee Hunter

The Agenda-setting Power of Stakeholder Media

Media controlled by stakeholder communities and groups, or “stakeholder media,” can exercise powerful influence on the strategic agendas of firms. Stakeholder media can be different and in some ways stronger than the influence of traditional news media. This article identifies strategies through which stakeholder groups use their own media to achieve desired outcomes, as support for or extensions of strategies known from the literature on social movements. These strategies rely on specific characteristics of stakeholder media that differ from mainstream media. These communication tools have altered the dynamics of stakeholder influence: on the one hand, allowing them greater independence from and influential collaboration with mainstream media as well as with other stakeholders; and on the other, augmenting the scope and momentum of their adversarial campaigns. There are important risks and opportunities posed to organizations by stakeholder media.

Internet e-ethics in confrontation with an activists' agenda: Yahoo! on trial

A prolonged confrontation between Yahoo! Inc. and French activists who demand the removal of Nazi items from auction sites as well as restricted access to neo-Nazis sites is described and analyzed. We present the case up to the decision of Yahoo! Inc. to remove the items from yahoo.com following a French courts verdict against the firm. Using a business ethics approach, we distinguish legal, technical, philosophical and managerial issues involved in the case and their management by Yahoo! We conclude on the difficulty of governing relations with society from corporate and legal affairs departments at the headquarters level, and on the clash of two visions over the regulation of social freedom.

Hayleys PLC: corporate responsibility as stakeholder relations

Purpose – This paper aims to answer the following questions: Is corporate responsibility only a cost, or is it also a profitable business strategy? If so, can the strategy work in a B2B context, as well as in the B2C context typically covered by research on corporate responsibility? Finally, how does the geopolitical context of a developing Asian nation affect corporate responsibility, from both a managerial and a stakeholder perspective?Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a case study approach, building from observed data to grounded theory.Findings – In a firm where trust and transparency are both ingrained and enforced among managers, Hayleys PLC used those values as tools to transform relations with key stakeholders from costs to marketing assets. In the process, it created an ethical market network in which membership depends on adherence to the same values. Thus emergent ethical marketplaces are directly related to the spread of CR practices.Research limitations/implications – The effects...

Ethical Crisis on the Internet: the Case of Licra vs. Yahoo!

In the early spring of 2000, a Paris-based anti-hate activist and member of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) launched a media and judicial attack on the business practices of Yahoo! Inc. and its subsidiary, Yahoo! France. The specific issue in question was the right of Yahoo! Inc., a U.S. corporation, to allow visitors to its American auction sites, including the French, to buy and sell Nazi items. In France, unlike the U.S., commerce in such items is illegal; the activist contended that allowing allowing the French access to it, via the Internet, should likewise be considered a violation of French law.