Social responsibility, activism and boycotting in a firm–stakeholders network of games with players’ conformist preferences

Giacomo Degli Antoni () and Lorenzo Sacconi

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2013, vol. 45, issue C, 216-226

Abstract: This paper focuses on the relationships between firms and stakeholders and provides a theoretical explanation for the emergence of phenomena such as stakeholder activism and socially responsible behaviors by firms. We start by drawing an original distinction between weak and strong stakeholders where, as long as only material payoffs are considered, firms are interested in cooperating only with the latter. Then, arguing that the motivations and preference systems of economic agents are complex and irreducible to mere rational self-interest, we consider agents endowed with conformist preferences: that is, agents that obtain positive ideal utility by conforming with some ideal principles that they are willing to fulfill conditionally on the expected behavior of others. Given conformist preferences, we show that: (a) strong stakeholders may have incentives to punish firms who do not cooperate with the weak ones; (b) both strong stakeholders and firms may have incentives to cooperate in the long term and to ensure that weak stakeholders receive a fair proportion of the surplus generated by the firm's activity.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility; Stakeholder activism; Networks; Social contract; Conformity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 D23 L21 M14 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:45:y:2013:i:c:p:216-226

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2013.05.016

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