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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Do The Right Thing: The Impact Of Ingo Legitimacy Standards On Stakeholder Input, Christopher Pallas, David Gethings, Max Harris
Do The Right Thing: The Impact Of Ingo Legitimacy Standards On Stakeholder Input, Christopher Pallas, David Gethings, Max Harris
Christopher L. Pallas
International nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) are frequently criticized for failing to adequately represent or engage with grassroots stakeholders. Yet most explanations of this shortcoming have focused on factors external to the organizations, e.g., economic pressures that privilege donor interests. What has been largely lacking is an examination of the role of internal INGO characteristics. We address this by examining INGOs’ legitimacy standards: how INGOs understand themselves to be doing the right thing and seek to convey that righteousness to others. Drawing on the literature from business ethics and organizational behavior, we show that organizations’ self-selected standards of legitimacy are key drivers …
Why Do Activists Lobby Institutions That Have Already Reformed? Modelling Target Selection And Learning In Ngo Advocay, Christopher Pallas, Kimberly Fletcher, Bing Han
Why Do Activists Lobby Institutions That Have Already Reformed? Modelling Target Selection And Learning In Ngo Advocay, Christopher Pallas, Kimberly Fletcher, Bing Han
Christopher L. Pallas
In conducting advocacy, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) often repeatedly lobby targets that have already made reforms, while also ignoring some serious, unreformed offenders. Drawing on recent literature on the economic influences on NGO activity, this article proposes a new model of target selection that explains such behaviour. In the model, NGOs select their targets in order to maximise the level of reform achieved with their available resources. Initial target selection is based on limited information. Target response to initial advocacy reveals whether the target is ‘soft’ (low cost to benefit ratio) or ‘hard’ (high cost to benefit ratio). NGOs employ this …