Global Social Movements and the Governance of the Firm

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12472

Call for Papers

Corporate Governance: An International Review

Special Issue on

“Global Social Movements and the Governance of the Firm”

Submission Deadline: October 1, 2022

Guest Editors

Cynthia E. Clark, Bentley University, USA

Tanusree Jain, Trinity Business School, Ireland

Punit Arora, City University of New York, USA

Patricia Gabaldon, IE Business School, Spain

BACKGROUND

This Special Issue of Corporate Governance: An International Review (CGIR) aims to

bring together scholarship on how various global social movements (GSMs) impact the

practice of international corporate governance. McCarthy and Zald (1977) first developed

a firm-focused perspective of social movements defining them as loosely organized, but

sustained, campaigns in support of some social goals toward implementing or preventing

changes in society’s structure or values. Such a perspective called on scholars to focus

on actors and entities that help mobilize change-oriented collective action and resources.

Despite the emergence and far-reaching effects of social movements globally, the

contemporary research on GSMs has developed in a fragmented manner with a

prominent focus on studying bottom-up change and emergent collective action, and its

concomitant contestation with business actors towards bringing about social change (de

Bakker, den Hond, King, & Weber, 2013).

During the last decade, social movements have started exerting stronger influence on

international corporate governance, the democratic quality of institutions, and even

shaping the environmental and social agenda for firms. The exponential spread of various

environmental and social campaigns, the emergence of global voices surrounding

different forms of diversity and inclusion, and the accelerated de-urbanization due to the

COVID-19 pandemic have further provided a critical mass to GSMs in the sense that

these events are simultaneously affecting the entire planet for the first time in human

history. Collectively, it is suggested that GSMs are driving a fundamental change in the

business and society relationship and even how firms themselves are being governed

(Briscoe, Gupta, & Anner, 2015; King & Pearce, 2010; McDonnell & Cobb, 2020). We

suggest that the success of a social movement would be reflected and measured in the

nature, degree and scale of changes it is able to effect (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Tilly,

2017).

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