Increasingly, corporations receive pressure from activist organizations to alter activities that these individuals find problematic and irresponsible. Despite this escalation, research on activism from a public relations perspective progressed slowly; much of this literature privileges the perspective of corporations and rarely examines the process from the activist perspective. To address this gap, this dissertation examined how activist organizations use issues management and communication strategies to incite corporations to change their practices and policies while simultaneously building relationships with pertinent audiences. This study incorporated data collected from qualitative interviews with activist practitioners representing a variety of activist organizations, along with organizational texts and news articles. These data provided an understanding of how activist organizations campaign against corporations using a variety of strategies and tactics in an effort to pressure corporations into changing their behavior. Because this dissertation focused on how activist organizations generate and promote issues to gain the attention of their targets, issues management served as the theoretical framework. Guided by this theory and existing issues management models, this dissertation demonstrates how activist groups identify and establish legitimacy for their issue(s). As issues management is traditionally studied from a corporate perspective, the findings show that the process differs slightly for activist organizations and introduces the Issue Advancement Model to demonstrate how activists employ issues management. Additionally, this dissertation explored how activist groups develop relationships with their targets, supporters, communities, and other relevant publics, noting the nuances involved in each of these dynamics. Specifically, this dissertation supports claims that the dialogue approach is more appropriate for understanding and analyzing the corporation-activist relationship than other public relations models, but also notes that some activist organizations may not seek resolution. In addition to these theoretical findings, this dissertation also offers practical implications, introducing the Corporate Campaign Model, which depicts how activist organizations challenge firms while also offering suggestions for corporations targeted by these groups.

This study analyzes activist behavior of Supreme Court justices in 132 decisions which struck down congressional statutes as unconstitutional in 1789-1990. Analysis of the justices' activist rates and liberalism scores demonstrate that these votes are ideologically based. Integrated models containing personal attribute and case factor variables are constructed to explore the votes as activist behavior. The same models are also tested with a new dependent variable constructed to measure the nullification votes as liberal votes. The models which explain the votes as ideological responses better explain the votes than the models which explain the votes as activism or restraint. The attribute variables offer better explanation in the late 20th century models and the case factors offer better explanation in the early period models.

Esta dissertação foca práticas contracartográficas realizadas por ativistas e artistas com o uso de mídias locativas. Observar estas práticas, que apontam no sentido inverso das cartografias hegemônicas e dominantes, permite uma visualização crítica de tensionamentos do atual contexto hipermediado. Conjuntamente, este tipo de estudo, permite apontar aspectos de visibilidade e invisibilidade que operam nesses meios informacionais e como são desafiados e tensionados com lentes críticas. Para tanto, alguns tópicos históricos da representação locativa são desenvolvidos, assim como são discutidos alguns elementos do contexto atual de profusão do uso de mapas georreferenciados em aplicativos móveis. A dissertação busca explicitar, a partir dos casos escolhidos, que as tecnologias locativas devem ser vistas e operadas criticamente, num contexto em que vêm sendo naturalizadas e incorporadas massivamente no cotidiano. / This dissertation focuses on countercartographic practices performed by activists and artists with the use of locative media. Observing these practices, which point in the opposite direction of the dominant cartographies, allows a critical visualization of tensions of the current hypermediated context. Together, this type of study allows us to point out aspects of visibility and invisibility that operate in these informational media and how they are challenged and stressed with critical lenses. To do so, some historical topics of locative representation are developed, as are some elements of the current context of profusion of the use of georeferenced maps in mobile applications. The dissertation seeks to explain, from the chosen cases, that locative technologies must be seen and operated critically, in a context in which they have been naturalized and massively incorporated in daily life.

Esta é uma tese-testemunho, na qual um ativista de movimento social relata a longa experiência de construção de sua identidade política etnicorracial. Destaque para sua participação no debate público sobre ações afirmativas, veiculado principalmente no jornal Ìrohìn, de que foi editor. Sua trajetória e formação, suas experiências, realizações e tomadas deposição, assim como seus conflitos, são narrados da perspectiva de quem busca ressaltar a dimensão educacional do Movimento Negro. Nesse caminho, além de defender, como parte essencial da cultura brasileira, as estratégias de sobrevivência e de resistência à opressão e ao racismo desenvolvidas pela população negra, ressalta o impulso igualitário das ações do Movimento Negro e sua contribuição para avanços do conjunto da sociedade e da consolidação do processo democrático. / This is a testimonial thesis, in which a social movement activist recounts the long experience of building his ethnic-racial identity. A highlight on his participation in the public debate over affirmative actions, published mostly in the newspaper Ìrohìn, in which he was the editor. His career and shaping, experiences, achievements and statements, as well as his conflicts are narrated from the perspective of someone seeking to emphasize the educational dimension of the Black Movement. In this way, in addition to advocating - as an essential part of Brazilian culture - the strategies of survival and resistance to oppression and racism developed by black people, highlights the egalitarian impulse of the actions of the Black Movement and its contribution to the progress of the whole society and the consolidation of the democratic process.

Esta dissertação foca práticas contracartográficas realizadas por ativistas e artistas com o uso de mídias locativas. Observar estas práticas, que apontam no sentido inverso das cartografias hegemônicas e dominantes, permite uma visualização crítica de tensionamentos do atual contexto hipermediado. Conjuntamente, este tipo de estudo, permite apontar aspectos de visibilidade e invisibilidade que operam nesses meios informacionais e como são desafiados e tensionados com lentes críticas. Para tanto, alguns tópicos históricos da representação locativa são desenvolvidos, assim como são discutidos alguns elementos do contexto atual de profusão do uso de mapas georreferenciados em aplicativos móveis. A dissertação busca explicitar, a partir dos casos escolhidos, que as tecnologias locativas devem ser vistas e operadas criticamente, num contexto em que vêm sendo naturalizadas e incorporadas massivamente no cotidiano. / This dissertation focuses on countercartographic practices performed by activists and artists with the use of locative media. Observing these practices, which point in the opposite direction of the dominant cartographies, allows a critical visualization of tensions of the current hypermediated context. Together, this type of study allows us to point out aspects of visibility and invisibility that operate in these informational media and how they are challenged and stressed with critical lenses. To do so, some historical topics of locative representation are developed, as are some elements of the current context of profusion of the use of georeferenced maps in mobile applications. The dissertation seeks to explain, from the chosen cases, that locative technologies must be seen and operated critically, in a context in which they have been naturalized and massively incorporated in daily life.

Over the last two decades, US corporate governance has witnessed a significant increase in the incidence and influence of shareholder activism. Shareholder activism, however, has been found to be inconsistent with US corporate governance which is framed within director primacy theory. In this theory, the board is able to carry out a unique combination of managerial and monitoring roles effectively, and shareholders are only capital providers to companies. Shareholder activism is normatively found inimical to effective and efficient decision-making, i.e. the board's authority, and to the long-term interests of public companies. The increasing willingness of institutional shareholders to participate into the decision-making processes of their portfolio companies is at odds with US corporate governance. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to examine whether director primacy theory should be softened to accommodate greater shareholder activism in US corporate governance. This thesis presents an analysis of the legal rules that reflect director primacy theory. In this respect, US shareholders have traditionally had limited participatory power. The way in which the courts perceived the board's authority also stymied shareholder participation. This thesis considers not only legal and regulatory developments in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but also the governance developments through by-law amendments which could potentially make an overall change in the balance of power between shareholders and the board. Shareholders are slowly moving to the centre of corporate governance in the US. History has shown that the board of directors often failed to prevent manager-induced corporate governance failures. This thesis argues that shareholder activism is necessary for improving the web of monitoring mechanisms and for a well-functioning director primacy model. Shareholder activism forces the board to more critical about management, which is a prerequisite for the director primacy model. Therefore, this thesis argues that shareholder activism should therefore be accommodated into US corporate governance. The proposed approach addresses accountability problems more effectively than the current director primacy model while recognising the board authority and enhances decision-making processes of public companies. In this regard, it makes several recommendations to soften the current director primacy model: establishing a level playing for private ordering, adopting the proxy access default regime, the majority voting rule, the universal proxy rules, and enhancing the disclosure requirements of shareholders. The present research also demonstrates that contemporary shareholder activism involves many complexities. It contains different types of shareholder activism, which differ by objectives, tools, and motives. It could be used for purely financial purposes or non-financial purposes or both. Furthermore, the concept of stewardship has been developed to address public interest concerns, namely short-termism in the market and pressures by activist funds through shareholder activism. In this way, this thesis develops a complete positive theory about shareholder activism rather than focussing on a specific type of activism. This complete analytical framework constitutes more reliable basis to draw normative conclusions rather than focussing on a particular type of activism.

Patients with dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease and particularly those in early stages, are susceptible to become victims of predators: Their agnosia (see Case 1) prevents them from detecting and accurately interpreting subtle signals that otherwise would have alerted them that they are about to fall for a scam. Furthermore, their judgment is impaired very early in the disease process, often before other symptoms manifest themselves and usually before a diagnosis is made. Patients with early stages of dementia are therefore prime targets for unscrupulous predators, and it behooves caregivers and health care professionals to ensure the integrity of these patients. In this case study, we discuss how a man with mild Alzheimer’s disease was about to fall for a scam were it not for his vigilant wife. We discuss what went wrong in the patient/caregiver interaction and how the catastrophic ending could have been avoided or averted.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis contributes to debates regarding the future of organised labour, the ability of global civil society networks to influence the practices of powerful institutions, and the value of non-state forms of corporate regulation. It focuses on the anti-sweatshop movement’s campaigns targeting three transnational corporations (TNCs) which design and market sportswear—Nike, Reebok and Adidas. These three TNCs are members of the Fair Labour Association (FLA), a voluntary, non-state regulatory system negotiated between participating companies and a number of civil society organisations. The thesis assesses how the FLA’s processes, the companies’ own labour programs, and interventions by labour activists are combining to influence sportswear workers’ rights to form trade unions and bargain collectively. The thesis is based on decentred, institutionalist characterisations of the firm and its regulation. From this perspective, an effective system for regulating corporate labour practices must powerfully insert discourses promoting workers’ rights into the internal debates, power plays and resulting regularised processes which produce corporate behaviour. Whereas many theoretical approaches portray voluntary regulatory initiatives as antithetical to state regulation, this thesis is influenced by those institutionalist thinkers who argue that effective voluntary initiatives can help build the political will necessary for regulatory reform by states. Research methods employed in this thesis include interviews with Indonesian workers, FLA board members, company representatives and anti-sweatshop activists. This research indicates labour compliance staff within Nike, Reebok and Adidas have made serious, if inconsistent, efforts to persuade suppliers to respect labour rights. These efforts have been undermined by their colleagues in buying departments, who have intensified demands that suppliers produce cheaply and quickly. Partly as a result of this tension, the labour programs of Nike, Reebok and Adidas have only contributed to improved respect for trade union rights in a relatively small number of sportswear factories, and in some cases these improvements have proved fragile. The FLA’s regulatory system relies on participating TNCs threatening to cut orders if their suppliers fail to comply with the FLA’s labour code. This thesis argues that if TNC compliance staff could also offer incentives—such as higher prices or more stable, long-term ordering relationships—then it would enhance their ability to convince suppliers to respect trade union rights. Such a change would require TNCs to give a higher priority to labour rights than to cost-minimisation. Unfortunately, within Nike, Reebok and Adidas, labour rights and other ethical agendas appear to be in the process of being subsumed into a more dominant discourse associated with profit-making and growth, so that labour compliance staff must establish the “business case” for each aspect of their regulatory work. The anti-sweatshop movement has a loose, networked form of organisation which has proved remarkably successful in putting public pressure on sportswear corporations to accept responsibility for labour conditions in their supply networks. If the movement wants to see substantial improvements in respect for sportswear workers’ trade union rights, then it needs to persuade sports companies to go further and make costly improvements to their labour rights programs. Relatively broad agreement across the movement on a system of rating companies’ progress would likely help achieve this ambitious goal, not least by offering opportunities for re-invigorating the movement itself.

21st-century Neo-anticolonial Literature and the Struggle for a New Global Order explores the twenty-first-century fiction of five writers and investigates the ways in which their works engage the legacy and evolution of empire, and, in particular, the expansion of global capitalism to the detriment of already-subjugated communities. Taking up a recent call by Postcolonial scholars seeking to address the contemporary challenges of the postcolonial condition, this project traces out three distinct forms of engagement that function as a resistance in the texts. The dissertation introduces these concepts via a mode of analysis I have called Neo-anticolonialism, a counter-hegemonic approach which, I argue, is unique to the twenty-first century but rooted in the anticolonial work of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. Building on a foundation laid by those activist scholars, this project argues that Neo-anticolonialism necessitates the bridging of discourse and activism; thus, the dissertation delineates the utility of Neo-anticolonialism in both literary scholarship and practical application. Through a close analysis of the fiction of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jamaican Michelle Cliff, Amitav Ghosh, a South Asian writer, African American writer Edward P. Jones, and Black British writer Caryl Phillips, the project offers a Neo-anticolonial reading of several twenty-first-century texts. In doing so, I explain the depiction of these instances of resistance as Neo-anticolonial Refractions, literary devices which function as prisms that cast images thus exposing the perpetuation of inequality in the twenty-first century and its direct link to the past epoch. Moreover, each chapter, through an explication of the refractions, reveals how resistance occurs in the face of the brutal reality of oppression and how this cadre of writers engages with the history of empire as well as with its contemporary permutations.

In the current globalized market, multinational corporations are experiencing heightened external social and environmental pressures to operate more responsibly. Transnational activist groups and advocacy NGOs are successfully framing normative expectations on corporate social responsibility and using tactics to name and shame socially and environmentally controversial corporations to pressure them to change their practices. An international norm of corporate social responsibility is increasingly shared by states, intergovernmental organizations and the private sector itself, and visibly emerging in the market place. Corporations engage with NGOs to demonstrate their conformance to the norm. The study explains why corporations engage with NGOs in different ways. It argues that corporations weigh the material incentives associated with the social and environmental consequences of their activities, and conform to the norm accordingly. They thus use the norm to further their material interests. Given that corporations are exposed to different levels of normative external pressures, there are different engagement strategies. In order to explain the terms under which corporations are likely to choose a particular kind of engagement strategy, a three-level concept of vulnerability is introduced. The more a corporation is vulnerable to the external normative pressures, the deeper it is willing to work with NGO/NGOs to ease that pressure. Hence, in NGO-business engagements, actors collaborate in order to gain the anticipated positive rewards of cooperation. They perceive those advantages greater than if they had pursued their goals separately.