IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/brk/wpaper/1701.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Optimal NGO Chief: Strategic Delegation in Social Advocacy

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Heyes

    (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa)

  • Marcel Oestreich

    (Department of Economics, Brock University)

Abstract

Firms face social pressure to behave well. We provide the first formal model in which social penalties for wrong-doing emerge endogenously and are jointly produced between a state regulator and an NGO. Armed with the instruments of coercion the regulator plays the primary role in information provision while through attitude-leadership the NGO manipulates the social atmosphere into which information about misbehavior of firms emerges. The strategies of the regulator and the NGO are classified in a taxonomy of regulatory settings that vary in; (a) the weight that the NGO places on environmen- tal versus business outcomes and (b) community alertness to NGO messaging. In the strategic setting that results an NGO funder will typically want to delegate his bidding to an NGO chief who has values di¤erent to his own.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Heyes & Marcel Oestreich, 2017. "The Optimal NGO Chief: Strategic Delegation in Social Advocacy," Working Papers 1701, Brock University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:brk:wpaper:1701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://brocku.ca/repec/pdf/1701.pdf
    File Function: First version, June 2017
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gani Aldashev & Michela Limardi & Thierry Verdier, 2013. "Watchdogs of the Invisible Hand: NGO Monitoring, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Industry Equilibrium," Working Papers 1404, University of Namur, Department of Economics.
    2. Lint Barrage & Eric Chyn & Justine Hastings, 2020. "Advertising and Environmental Stewardship: Evidence from the BP Oil Spill," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 33-61, February.
    3. Danny Miller & Jean-Marie Toulouse, 1986. "Chief Executive Personality and Corporate Strategy and Structure in Small Firms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(11), pages 1389-1409, November.
    4. Heyes, Anthony & Kapur, Sandeep, 2012. "Community pressure for green behavior," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 427-441.
    5. Fudenberg, Drew & Tirole, Jean, 1984. "The Fat-Cat Effect, the Puppy-Dog Ploy, and the Lean and Hungry Look," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 361-366, May.
    6. Badrinath, S G & Bolster, Paul J, 1996. "The Role of Market Forces in EPA Enforcement Activity," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 165-181, September.
    7. David P. Baron, 2001. "Private Politics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Integrated Strategy," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 7-45, March.
    8. Anthony Heyes (ed.), 2001. "The Law and Economics of the Environment," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2037.
    9. Aldashev, Gani & Verdier, Thierry, 2009. "When NGOs go global: Competition on international markets for development donations," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 198-210, November.
    10. Langpap, Christian & Shimshack, Jay P., 2010. "Private citizen suits and public enforcement: Substitutes or complements?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 235-249, May.
    11. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    12. Prno, Jason & Scott Slocombe, D., 2012. "Exploring the origins of ‘social license to operate’ in the mining sector: Perspectives from governance and sustainability theories," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 346-357.
    13. Pargal, Sheoli & Wheeler, David, 1996. "Informal Regulation of Industrial Pollution in Developing Countries: Evidence from Indonesia," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1314-1327, December.
    14. Heyes, Anthony G. & Maxwell, John W., 2004. "Private vs. public regulation: political economy of the international environment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 978-996, September.
    15. Oestreich, Andreas Marcel, 2017. "On optimal audit mechanisms for environmental taxes," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 62-83.
    16. Heyes, Anthony & Martin, Steve, 2015. "NGO mission design," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 197-210.
    17. David P. Baron, 2009. "A Positive Theory of Moral Management, Social Pressure, and Corporate Social Performance," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 7-43, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Espinosa, Romain & Treich, Nicolas, 2020. "Moderate vs. Radical NGOs," TSE Working Papers 20-1159, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    2. Michael Kopel & Marco A. Marini, 2020. "Mandatory Disclosure of Managerial Contracts in Nonprofit Organizations," Working Papers 2020.26, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    3. Romain Espinosa & Nicolas Treich, 2021. "Moderate Versus Radical NGOs†," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(4), pages 1478-1501, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anthony Heyes & Andreas Marcel Oestreich, 2018. "A theory of social license when regulatory pressure is jointly produced by an EPA and an NGO," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 219-243, December.
    2. Luca Lambertini & Arsen Palestini & Alessandro Tampieri, 2016. "CSR in an Asymmetric Duopoly with Environmental Externality," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(1), pages 236-252, July.
    3. Heyes, Anthony & Lyon, Thomas P. & Martin, Steve, 2018. "Salience games: Private politics when public attention is limited," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 396-410.
    4. Luciano Fanti & Domenico Buccella, 2017. "Corporate social responsibility in a game-theoretic context," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 44(3), pages 371-390, September.
    5. Yoshifumi Hino & Yusuke Zennyo, 2017. "Corporate social responsibility and strategic relationships," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 64(3), pages 231-244, September.
    6. Mark Bagnoli & Susan G. Watts, 2017. "Voluntary Assurance of Voluntary CSR Disclosure," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 205-230, February.
    7. Luciano Fanti & Domenico Buccella, 2018. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Managerial Bonus Systems," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 4(2), pages 349-365, July.
    8. Krautheim, Sebastian & Verdier, Thierry, 2016. "Offshoring with endogenous NGO activism," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 22-41.
    9. Poret, Sylvaine, 2019. "Label wars: Competition among NGOs as sustainability standard setters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 1-18.
    10. Lisa Planer-Friedrich & Marco Sahm, 2017. "Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility," CESifo Working Paper Series 6506, CESifo.
    11. Steve Martin, 2019. "Moral management in competitive markets," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 541-560, June.
    12. Yaru Tang & Mengdi Liu & Fan Xia & Bing Zhang, 2024. "Informal regulation by nongovernmental organizations enhances corporate compliance: Evidence from a nationwide randomized controlled trial in China," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(1), pages 234-257, January.
    13. Lambertini, Luca & Tampieri, Alessandro, 2015. "Incentives, performance and desirability of socially responsible firms in a Cournot oligopoly," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 40-48.
    14. Mariana Cunha & Filipa Mota, 2020. "Coordinated Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 617-641, December.
    15. Heyes, Anthony & Kapur, Sandeep, 2012. "Community pressure for green behavior," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 427-441.
    16. Patricia Crifo & Vanina Forget, 2013. "La responsabilité sociale et environnementale des entreprises : mirage ou virage ?," Working Papers hal-00830642, HAL.
    17. Markus Kitzmueller & Jay Shimshack, 2012. "Economic Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 51-84, March.
    18. L. Lambertini & A. Palestini & A. Tampieri, 2014. "CSR in an Asymmetric Duopoly with Environmental Externalities," Working Papers wp959, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    19. Patricia Crifo & Vanina D. Forget, 2015. "The Economics Of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Firm-Level Perspective Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 112-130, February.
    20. Thomas P. Lyon & John W. Maxwell, 2008. "Corporate Social Responsibility and the Environment: A Theoretical Perspective," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 2(2), pages 240-260, Summer.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental regulation; private politics; strategic delegation; NGOs; social license;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • H83 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Public Administration
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:brk:wpaper:1701. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jean-Francois Lamarche (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debroca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.