ABSTRACT
This article describes and evaluates the different strategies that have been employed by human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in attempting to influence the behavior of multinational corporations (MNCs). Within the NGO world, there is a basic divide on tactics for dealing with corporations: Engagers try to draw corporations into dialogue in order to persuade them by means of ethical and prudential arguments to adopt voluntary codes of conduct, while confronters believe that corporations will act only when their financial interests are threatened, and therefore take a more adversarial stance toward them. The latter approach is more in line with traditional labor union strategies and tactics, and in fact is often motivated by a desire to maintain solidarity with union partners. Confrontational NGOs tend to employ moral stigmatization, or "naming and shaming," as their primary tactic, while NGOs that favor engagement offer dialogue
and limited forms of cooperation with willingMNCs.
