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In this article, we build on the stakeholder-politics literature to investigate how corporate scandals transform political contexts and give impetus to the contentious movements of fringe stakeholders against multinational corporations (MNCs). Based on Adut’s scandal theory, we flesh out three scandal-related processes that directly affect political-opportunity structures (POSs) and the generation of social movements against MNCs: convergence of contention toward a single target, publicization of deviant practices, and contagion to other organizations. These processes reduce the obstacles to collective actions by fringe stakeholders by pushing corporate elites to be more sensitive to their claims, by decreasing MNCs’ capability to repress contentious movements, by forcing the targeted MNCs to formalize a policy to monitor and eradicate the controversial practices, and by helping fringe stakeholders find internal and external allies to support their claims. This conceptual model of scandals as catalysts of contentious actions contributes to a better understanding of stakeholder politics by unveiling the role of the political context in the coordination of fringe stakeholders.

This article contributes to research on strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) by detailing the condition-sets governing the emergence of market-led demand for CSR. We build on external effects theory to evaluate the strategic options a company can adopt to manage its negative external effects in a way that creates social and economic value. We draw on the economic concepts of rivalry and excludability to categorize different social issues and detail the conditions needed to foster market-led transactions on negative externalities. We demonstrate how different types of negative externalities present firms with different strategic opportunities in terms of harnessing market-driven CSR demand.

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