Some of these are adversarial, such as protest rallies, shaming campaigns, boycotts, or even sabotage. These actions might undermine companies’ legitimacy and consequently dissuade consumers from buying, limit access to financial markets or destabilize employees. Other activist tactics are of more collaborative nature: exchanging relevant expertise, monitoring, certification, even joint campaigning. Reacting to activist challenges, corporations have developed a variety of responses, attempting to ignore, incorporate, or co-opt such civic initiatives.

Despite the central importance of the interactions between businesses and activists to the evolution of societies and economies, scholars have struggled to come to terms with them. In business history, a growing body of research is devoted to the emergence of corporate social responsibility and sustainability. Pioneering studies have also explored corporate change and companies’ strategic responses in relation to activists’ actions. Activism targeting corporations, especially since the 1960s, has mostly been studied to analyze the repertoire and objectives of social movements. Some authors have also noted how NGOs behave increasingly like corporations and studied the role of social movements in creating new markets. Recent cases of activism have also been investigated by sociology of organizations, political economy and management scholars. Without a longer-term perspective, however, it is difficult to untangle corporate public relations strategies from the implementation of meaningful change.

This special issue invites scholars from any relevant discipline to explore the complex relationships between business and activists in different periods. In doing so, it responds to the calls for a dynamic, constructivist and contextualized approach to analyze the ongoing and porous relationships between enterprises and social movements. It encourages potential contributors to (1) foreground the interaction between activists and businesses rather than focusing on either side exclusively, (2) develop a longer-term perspective to establish the effects of these interactions beyond the heated rhetoric of success and failure, and (3) explore connections between different cases through relevant transfers, entanglements, or comparisons. The special issue encourages scholars to (4) open the black box of corporations and use archives as well as other relevant empirical material to document business’ perspective, beyond the public statements issued by activists and corporations. Finally, (5) contributions which historicize the business-activists relationships in their broader context, including in their relations to governments and regulatory regimes are welcome.

In particular, the following questions could be addressed:

- How have corporations adjusted their strategies and practices in response to activist interventions? Which kinds of interventions have been particularly impactful? Is it possible to discern patterns in the responses of corporations to different kinds of activist tactics?
- How has the nexus between governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations evolved since the late 19th century? To what extent have business actors and civic organizations been able to shape social and economic regimes of governance?
- What kind of collaborations between activists and corporations have evolved as a result of attempts to address corporate responsibilities? How has the exchange of relevant expertise changed both businesses and non-governmental organizations? What limits to such partnerships can be observed?
- Under what circumstances and to which effects have activists turned their aspirations into distinct business ventures? How did their relations to activist groups and other businesses develop? How did they position themselves in the field of businesses and civic organizations? To what extent did they organize in distinct networks?
- How have actors within corporations acted as activists? How have whistleblowers, CEOs, shareholders, and employees acted to make companies act more socially and environmentally responsible? What was the role of the emerging class of employees tasked with implementing strategies to this effect since the 1980s?
- Which scholarly fields have developed knowledge about the relations between businesses and activism: who has studied it and for what purposes? How has it been institutionalized?

We invite scholars to submit an extended abstract of round about 800 words abstract and a CV by September 15 2023 to Sabine Pitteloud (sabine.pitteloud@unige.ch) and Peter van Dam (p.h.vandam@uva.nl). The authors will be notified early October of the editorial committee’s decisions. In case of preliminary acceptance, a first version of the article is expected by January 15, 2024. The article will be peer reviewed. The special issue will be published late 2024/early 2025.