Corporate campaigns often rely on mobilizing allies to build collective power systems. The allies that are most critical are determined by the strategy. This chapter provides guidance on how to recruit allies into primary, secondary, and tertiary roles on the various campaign tracks. It also identifies options and their benefits and drawbacks for organizing allies ranging from creating networks to forming alliances or tight coalitions with shared power.
This is a critical track in most corporate campaigns and there is an entire segment of the social and environmental activist community that specializes in this strategy. This chapter provides guidance on the best strategy for shareholder resolutions or actions, the rules they must follow, steps involved, and how properly to integrate this with other tracks of the campaign. It provides examples of some of the most effective shareholder campaigns and why they succeeded.
Different corporations place great reliance on certain skilled employees. This chapter discusses how to educate and activate those employees to build pressure for change from within the company. It provides examples of campaigns where employees played either a primary or a secondary role in changing companies’ behavior and how advocacy groups empowered and complimented employees’ internal efforts with outside pressure.