Consumer campaigns in corporate public affairs management: The
case of climate change and the German energy industry
Autori: Inga Schlichting ( Department of Corporate Strategy,
Deutsche Bahn AG, Berlin, Germany)Citation: Inga Schlichting ,
(2014) "Consumer campaigns in corporate public affairs management:
The case of climate change and the German energy industry ",
Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 18 Iss: 4, pp.402 -
421DOIhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JCOM-02-2011-0020Downloads: The
fulltext of this document has been downloaded 43 times since
2014Abstract:Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use expert
interviews with communication managers of the German energy
industry to analyze the strategic aims and challenges of consumer
campaigns as a relatively new phenomenon in German public affairs
management. The analysis is based on structuration theory, which is
used as a theoretical framework. This framework helps to
conceptualize the different logics of action within non-public and
public paths of public affairs management, their stakeholders and
respective instruments.
Design/methodology/approach Expert interviews with German public
affairs managers from multinational and regional energy
corporations as well as industry associations were conducted
regarding their communication in the context of climate regulation.
Based on this data, the study reconstructs managers strategic
considerations about why to engage in consumer campaigns, and
analyses the challenges they see with them, and the strategies they
employ to handle these.
Findings Managers perceive the importance of the public path of
regulative intervention as growing along with a strong media
orientation of political authorities. Against this backdrop they
describe the bypassing of critical journalists and the engaging of
critical individuals and minorities as the strategic aims of
consumer campaigns. They portray a lack of credibility as the main
challenge of such campaigns and relativising the corporations
societal efforts as well as allowing public critique as most
promising strategies to handle this challenge.
Originality/value The contribution of the study is twofold:
first, it adds to the scientific analysis of consumer campaigns as
a rather new phenomenon in German public affairs management.
Second, practitioners may utilize the results as impulses for their
own communicative strategies in the context of public affairs
management.
Keywords: Structuration theory, Climate change, Consumer
campaigns, Expert interviews, German energy industry, Public
affairs managementPublisher: Emerald Group Publishing
LimitedArticle1. IntroductionSection:Climate regulation constrains
the scope of economic actions particularly in energy intensive
industries (Stern, 2006, p. 196). At the same time, regulation also
advances new markets for sustainable technologies (Nelson, 1994;
Jnicke, 2008). As a consequence, corporations have taken strong
public affairs measures to influence climate regulation during
recent decades from direct lobbying to extensive media campaigns
(Cho et al., 2011; McCright and Dunlap, 2003; Levy, 2005; Haufler,
2006; Kolk and Pinkse, 2007; Harris, 2009).Some industry
organizations have also engaged in extensive consumer campaigns
that directly address private individuals in order to promote a
certain viewpoint on an issue or to mobilize socio-political
action, The Swedish energy corporation Vattenfall, for example,
collected signatures in major European cities to urge the United
Nations climate summit to commit to a fair climate treaty
(Vattenfall, 2008). Similarly, the German Industry Association
(BDI), together with the multinational energy corporations RWE,
EON, ENBW and Vattenfall, launched a signature campaign to leverage
the use of climate friendly nuclear power plants as an economically
efficient and affordable clean energy source (BDI, 2010).This
mirrors an analytically interesting development in German public
affairs management: while media relations have constantly gained
relevance as a public affairs strategy (Berg, 2003, pp. 273-275;
Hetzel and Marco, 2007; Priddat and Speth, 2007, pp. 28-29;
Sebaldt, 2007, pp. 289-290; Siedentopp, 2010, pp. 245-250),
addressing and mobilizing private individuals still remains the
domain of NGOs[1] and has thus far hardly been used by industry
organizations (McGrath, 2005, p. 97; Sebaldt, 2007, p. 105; Kppl,
2008, p. 210).Public affairs handbooks, for their part, paint an
ambivalent picture of mobilizing private individuals for corporate
public affairs purposes. On the one hand, it is claimed that such
campaigns can boost public pressure on political authorities and
therefore merit greater attention as a public affairs instrument
(Althaus, 2007; Thomson and John, 2007, pp. 63-65; Kppl, 2008, p.
214). On the other hand, authors stress the risk of losing control
over self-encouraged public debates and of provoking critical
counter-initiatives (Milbraith, 1963, pp. 249-252; Watkins et al.,
2001, pp. 173-175; Merkle, 2003, pp. 140-141).In Germany, the
campaigns mentioned above and other similar initiatives[2] have
indeed triggered a landslide of public criticism. The press and
various NGOs accused the industry of instrumentalizing the public
(Der Klimalgendetektor, 2008; Report Mainz, 2008) for corporate
purposes, and of greenwashing (Mller, 2007; Greenpeace, 2008;
Slavik, 2009) harmful business practices.The aim of this study is
to analyze the strategic aims and challenges of consumer campaigns
as a relatively new phenomenon in German public affairs management.
In this context, consumer campaigns are defined as corporate
campaigns on regulatory issues that directly address private
individuals in their socio-political roles as consumers, voters or
supporters of NGOs. Based on expert interviews with managers from
the energy industry, the study addresses three research
questions:RQ1. What is the relevance of strategic communication in
the public sphere in public affairs management?RQ2. What are the
aims of consumer campaigns in this context?RQ3. What risks are
involved in such campaigns and how do managers handle these
risks?The study proceeds in four steps. First, a structuration
theoretical model of corporate public affairs management is
developed to conceptualize the different logics of action within
the non-public and public paths of public affairs and to identify
the specific role that consumer campaigns can play in the latter
path. Second, the methodology is discussed and the case of the
German energy industry lobbying on climate regulation is
introduced. In the following section, the results are presented.
Finally, the conclusions of the study are discussed, as well as its
limitations and implications for further research.2.
Conceptualizing corporate public affairs managementSection:From a
broad management perspective, public affairs can be conceptualized
as any corporate effort that aims to align organizational and
public policy in order to broaden a corporations scope for economic
action (McGrath et al., 2010, p. 371; van Schendelen, 2010).
However, owing to the range of scientific disciplines that have
contributed to the subject particularly strategic management,
political communication and public relations research (Kppl, 2008,
p. 210; McGrath et al., 2010) there is neither a grand theory of
public affairs (Windsor, 2005, p. 401), nor an integrated framework
for its organizational functions and instruments. In this study,
Giddens (1986, 1990) structuration theory is used as a theoretical
framework. This approach helps to conceptualize the different
logics of action, instruments and stakeholders of corporate public
affairs management and thereby to integrate the multidisciplinary
literature on the topic.Using structuration theory, the regulatory
environment of an organization can be conceptualized as a set of
social structures. According to Giddens (1986, pp. 25-28), social
structures are sets of recursively organized rules and resources
that form the properties of a social system. Structures function as
both the medium and the outcome of social activity: they are
constantly reinforced in the course of social action a process,
which Giddens terms duality of structure. As the agents of social
structuration, individuals have the potential to strategically
intervene in the reinforcement of social structures. This
intervention can follow different logics of action, depending on
which resources are available to the actors and on which rules they
address (Giddens, 1986, pp. 5-14). Following this idea, corporate
public affairs management can be conceptualized as a management
function that aims to intervene in an organizations regulatory
environment by enabling different social resources and addressing
different types of social rules (Zimmer, 2001; Zimmer and Ortmann,
2001). Depending on the focus of action, a public and a non-public
path of public affairs can be distinguished, in which different
instruments are used to address different stakeholders (Figure
1).The following sections outline the different logics of action
within the non-public and the public paths of public affairs
management, discuss triggers for the public path and analyze the
specific role of consumer campaigns in this context.2.1. The
non-public versus public path of public affairs management The
non-public path of public affairs management comprises all measures
often known as direct lobbying. Here, the logic of action is to
enforce authoritative and allocative resources in direct
negotiations with political authorities (Zimmer, 2001, pp. 395-398;
Zimmer and Ortmann, 2001, p. 36). According to Giddens (1986, pp.
31-33), this path addresses the domination dimension of social
structure.Authoritative resources refer to a corporations power to
control the scope of action of political authorities. A particular
source of this power is corporate insider or expert knowledge
relating to specific industries. Politicians depend on this
knowledge to develop policies that help strengthen the national
economy, a situation, which places corporations in a strong
negotiating position. Allocative resources refer to corporate
control over material objects in the course of economic action,
such as running production sites, paying wages or investing
capital. In doing so, corporations command a crucial component of
national economies, which further strengthens their negotiating
position. Additionally, they are able to use their financial assets
to directly sponsor political parties.Management research on
corporate political action has focused considerable analytical
attention on the competitive advantages that a company can gain
through the enforcement of these resources (Obermann, 1993;
Boddewyn and Brewer, 1994; Hillman et al., 1999; Hillman, 2003;
Dahan, 2005; Bonardi, 2008; Obermann, 2008; Siedentopp, 2010). The
studies found that the information approach of offering expert
knowledge and the financial incentive approach of sponsoring
political parties are the most effective public affairs strategies
to influence policy outcomes and to enhance corporate profits
(Hillman et al., 1999, pp. 833-835; Hillman, 2003). As such
activities usually take place outside the view of the public, other
scholars labeled this path as inside (Kollman, 1998), interaction
(Dahan, 2005, p. 51) or the access-strategy (Schuler et al., 2002;
Beyers, 2004) of public policy intervention.The public path of
public affairs management, in contrast, comprises all measures that
address the general public in its role as a political constituency.
Here, the logic of action is to shape the meaning of social rules
through strategic communication. According to Giddens (1986, pp.
21-22), rules are the techniques or generalizable procedures of
social action. Social rules can be informal, like a common
understanding, norm, or value, which according to Giddens refers to
the signification dimension of structure; or they can be formalized
like sanctionable laws or regulations, which refers to the
legitimation dimension of structure.Strategic action within the
public path aims to interpret corporate activities as compliant to
social rules in order to foster corporate social legitimacy
(Zimmer, 2001, pp. 398-403). In communication science, this process
has been described as strategic framing, to select some aspects of
a reality and make them more salient [] to promote a particular
problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or
treatment recommendation (Entman, 1993, p. 51). As this strategy
mostly addresses the broad political constituency, others
considered this path to be the constituency-building (Hillman et
al., 1999, p. 834), bottom-up (Buchholz, 1992; Obermann, 1993),
outside (Kollman, 1998), voice (Beyers, 2004) or pressure strategy
(Dahan, 2005, p. 51) of public affairs.While many studies found
direct lobbying to be the most effective public affairs strategy,
many scholars also argue that the public path of public affairs has
constantly increased in relevance. Potential triggers for the
public path are discussed in the next section. Before continuing,
however, it is important to note that both paths are
interdependent. Strategic communication depends on resources, not
least in terms of funding. Likewise, direct lobbying is an act of
communication in which meaning is assigned to resources. However,
despite this overlap, the focus of action within the paths remains
distinctly different.2.2. Triggers for the public path Stage and
type of issue Early studies suggest that the selection of a public
affairs strategy depends on the stage of the issue life cycle (Ryan
et al., 1987; Buchholz, 1992). Strategic communication in the
public sphere would be most likely in the public opinion formation
stage, during which the constituencys awareness of an issue is
rising. Direct lobbying, in contrast, would be more effective
during the public policy formulation stage, when the issue has
become politicized and is subject to governmental regulation. More
recently, however, scholars suggested that strategy choice should
instead consider the type of issue to be addressed (Bonardi and
Keim, 2005). With respect to widely salient issues that attract
significant public attention, corporations should indeed pursue
strategic communication in the public sphere. However, this should
not be restricted to promoting their particular viewpoint, but also
advocate alternative issue perspectives to prevent critical counter
initiatives.Public criticism Political communication and PR
scholars state that a rising level of public criticism and a lack
of public trust in modern corporations is also likely to trigger
the public path. It is argued that globalization has strengthened
the political power of corporations, while the scope of national
governments has declined. As a consequence, a growing number of
NGOs play the public field strategically to advocate peoples
interests and mobilize them against corporations (Doh and Teegen,
2003; Leif and Speth, 2003; Beyers, 2004, p. 235; Kleinfeld et al.,
2007, p. 14). An enhanced level of corporate communication in the
public sphere, the authors argue, can be seen as a direct response
to this development (Grunig et al., 2002, p. 61; John and Thomson,
2003). By framing their activities as compliant to social
legitimacy standards, corporations would attempt to regain public
trust (Bentele, 1994; Grunig, 2006, p. 166; Hoffjann, 2011),
prevent regulations (Schranz and Vonwil, 2007) and thereby also
foster their access to political decision makers (Wehrmann, 2007,
p. 54; van Schendelen, 2010, p. 306).Empirically, however, the
determining factors for the public path of public affairs
management remain unclear. Corporations are most likely to use
non-public and public instruments at the same time (Zimmer, 2001,
p. 403; Schuler et al., 2002, p. 667). Against this backdrop, the
first research question is:RQ1. What is the relevance of strategic
communication in the public sphere as a path of corporate public
affairs management?RQ1a. What are the triggers for the public
path?RQ1b. How does it relate to the non-public path?2.3. Consumer
campaigns as an instrument within the public path Once a
corporation has decided to choose the public path, different
communication instruments can be employed. Scholars often point to
the key role of press relations in influencing public opinion
(Grunig et al., 2002, p. 337; Jarren and Rttger, 2009, p. 40).
Press relations address journalists as mediators of public
discourse. However, in their dual role as gatekeepers and opinion
leaders, they also function as autonomous political actors (Page,
1996; Schudson, 2002). Hence, the likelihood of a particular issue
perspective being covered by the press depends on the political
focus of the journalist and also of their media
organization.Consumer campaigns, in contrast, directly address the
broad political constituency of private individuals as a means of
influencing public opinion independently from journalistic
reporting. Individuals, in this context, have multiple stakeholder
roles, like citizens, neighbors, consumers or employees. Hence,
individuals influence on the regulatory environment encompasses a
variety of social actions, like discussing issues with other
people, voting for a political party or buying a certain product.
As such, the term consumer-campaign is used in a broad sense in
this study.Like any communication campaign, consumer campaigns in
corporate public affairs focus on a single issue and are limited in
time. To attract the broadest public attention, they integrate a
number of different communicative techniques, which are adopted
from marketing, advertising, PR and social movement campaigns
(Atkin, 2001, pp. 56-57, Paisley, 2001, p. 5; Rttger, 2009, p. 9).
With respect to the scope of mobilization, two main categories can
be distinguished.Issue advertising Issue advertising campaigns are
limited to the promotion of a certain standpoint on an issue or
interpretation of a corporate action (Sinclair and Irani, 2005, p.
59). They were first conceptualized in marketing literature as a
communicative instrument to induce greater public trust in products
and services (Sethi, 1979). Since the 1980s, issue advertising has
also been discussed as a public affairs instrument used to
influence public policy debates and legislative outcomes (Cutler
and Muehling, 1989; Nelson, 1994; Brown et al., 2001; Sinclair and
Irani, 2005; Miller, 2010). Issue advertising campaigns appear to
be a common public affairs instrument in the USA (Brown et al.,
2001; Miller, 2010, p. 87). However, there is little knowledge of
their use in European or German public affairs. Likewise, little is
also known on the effects of issue advertising in public affairs.
Some studies revealed positive impacts on community stakeholders
(Miller and Sinclair, 2009; Miller, 2010). Others found that
recipients evaluate a firms credibility as issue sponsor with
respect to their perceived compliance to overall legitimacy
standards (Sinclair and Irani, 2005).Grassroots mobilization
Grassroots campaigns aim to mobilize private individuals to take a
specific socio-political action. As they are most common in
legislative contexts, such campaigns are often defined as any
effort to organize, coordinate or implore others to contact public
officials for the purpose of affecting public policy (Milyo, 2010,
p. 2). Typical instruments include sending letters to congress
people or collecting signatures for petitions (Merkle, 2003, pp.
146-147; Kppl, 2008, p. 214; Milyo, 2010, p. 2). However, in a
broader sense, grassroots campaigns can mobilize a wide range of
other social activities, particularly consumption decisions. German
corporations, for example, have urged consumers to accept rising
energy prices and cut back their energy consumption in order to
protect the climate (Vattenfall, 2008; RWE, 2011a).As with issue
advertising, scientific knowledge about the implementation and
effects of grassroots mobilization in the context of corporate
public affairs management is scarce. Most studies are descriptive
and limited to the US perspective (Castellblanch, 2003; Nisbet and
Kotcher, 2009; McGrath, 2005, p. 97; Sebaldt, 2007, p. 105; Kppl,
2008, p. 210). Among the few studies that do exist, the consensus
view is that American corporations regularly engage in grassroots
mobilization campaigns, while in Europe and Germany this strategy
remains the domain of NGOs. Against this backdrop, the second set
of research questions reads:RQ2. What is the strategic aim of
consumer campaigns?RQ3. What are the risks connected to consumer
campaigns and how do managers handle these risks?3. Method: expert
interviews with managersSection:Expert interviews with managers
from public affairs and PR departments of German energy
corporations and associations were conducted during fall 2010. As a
qualitative research method, expert interviews aim to reconstruct
social and organizational processes and situations (Glser and
Laudel, 2009, p. 13). Experts, in this sense, possess a technical,
process-related or interpretational insider knowledge relating to
the social context in which they act (Bogner and Menz, 2002, p. 46;
Przyborski and Wohlrab-Sahr, 2008, p. 132; Flick, 2010, p. 215). In
this study, the expertise of interest was the managers assessment
of whether, why, and with what strategic aims an organization
should pursue the public path of public affairs management in
climate regulation.3.1. The case: German energy industry and
climate regulation Energy production in Germany is primarily based
on fossil resources like coal. However, the German government is
committed to achieving reductions in CO2 emissions. In 2000, it
released a green energy act in order to subsidize renewable
energies. When this study was conducted, the parliament was
debating a new energy act that considered extending the use of
nuclear power plants to further foster CO2 emission reductions.
This extension would earn extra profits for the four leading energy
corporations[3] that operate most of the plants. As a consequence,
these corporations intensely lobbyed the government to enact the
extension. The political debate led to strong public criticism,
particularly of the incalculable risks related to nuclear energy
(tagesschau.de, 2011).3.2. Sampling The sampling (Figure 2)[4]
aimed to address two objectives: it should represent the maximum
share of the German energy market and enable controlling for the
potential influence of public criticism. In total, 15 managers of
14 organizations were invited, of which 11 agreed to participate.
The managers represent about 75 percent of the German energy
market. With respect to exposure to public criticism, interviewees
can be located on different sections of a criticism scale regarding
economic and political superiority, CO2 emissions and nuclear risk
(Liedke, 2006; Adamek and Otto, 2008, pp. 51-82). Due to
organizational structures, the interviewees were responsible for
different public affairs instruments.3.3. Interview guideline and
coding An interview guideline was constructed based on theoretical
conceptualization. In consecutive sections, the relevance of the
non-public and public paths of public affairs management, triggers
for the public path, as well as aims and risks of consumer
campaigns were investigated. All interviews were conducted
face-to-face, with the exception of one telephone interview. The
interviews lasted 45 to 75 minutes, were audio recorded and
transcribed for the purposes of analysis. Theoretical coding
(Strauss and Corbin, 1990; Flick, 2010, pp. 387-402) was used to
analyze the data. In a first step, the material was coded according
to major categories that had been deduced from the conceptual
framework. Next, subordinate categories were derived through a
process of open coding to refine the set of categories and clarify
their causal relations.4. ResultsSection:Even though the managers
represent different sectors of the energy market and act in
different areas of public affairs management, they share a similar
understanding of the relationship between the non-public and public
paths of corporate public affairs and of the role that consumer
campaigns play in this context (Figure 3). The following sections
discuss what relevance managers see in the public path of public
affairs management and how they evaluate the strategic aims and
risks of consumer campaigns in this context.4.1. Relevance of the
public path Managers described the public path of public affairs
management as continuously increasing in relevance. In their view,
this increase is mainly due to a growing media orientation of
political authorities who more frequently adjust their political
decisions to daily media coverage and opinion polls a process, that
has also been discussed as mediatisation of politics (Kepplinger,
2002; Schranz and Vonwil, 2007). This process, in turn, weakens
political assets like expert knowledge and economic power.
Accordingly, many interviewees reported lobbying-meetings where
they were unable to achieve their interests even though they had
insider knowledge to offer, could outline the economic
consequences, and were even able to convince their political
counterpart on a personal level:My impression is that public
opinion [] play[s] a very important role. In conversations behind
closed doors, [politicians] admit, It is clear that this [decision]
does not really make sense, but voters want it [] and hence, we
have to do it (IV2, 49; similarly IV6, 26; IV3, 21; IV1,
27)[5].Against this backdrop, the public path was described as an
alternative strategy to intervene in the regulatory environment. By
addressing the mass media, managers aimed to redirect their public
affairs strategy towards those stakeholders that are of growing
relevance to politicians, who seek public feedback on a daily
basis. This alternative route is either taken when primary
resources cannot be enforced or in situations where the
organization is lacking these resources in general.In line with the
structuration theoretical framework, interviewees described the
logic of action within the public path as a process of
strategically altering the meanings of social issues, norms or
values. Most aimed to ascribe a new meaning to existing issues by
offering a new interpretation to it or, in the words of Giddens,
constructing a new signification (Giddens, 1986, p. 29). Managers
from the nuclear sector, for example, aimed to displace the risk
connotation of nuclear power by promoting its interpretation as a
carbon-free climate protection technology. Others aimed to
reinterpret business behaviors as socially legitimate:Our
corporation is confronted with two accusations. The first is: You
are a company that harms the climate! And the second is our huge
size. And this spot addresses both issues (IV7, 28).However, on a
more general level, interviewees still described authoritative and
allocative resources as the most powerful assets of public affairs
management. Most said politicians are particularly open to
authoritative resources, like expert arguments (IV3, 19). Managers
from the smaller renewable energy sector, in contrast, viewed
allocative resources, which they would lack, as the most powerful.
Hence, paraphrasing Giddens, the domination dimension of social
structuration still seems to be most important to intervene in an
organizations regulatory environment. This, in turn, maintains
politicians as the key stakeholders of public affairs management
and direct lobbying its core instrument.Triggers for the public
path Managers perceived the relevance of the public path to be
strongest during the issue stage of public controversy, as
politicians are most sensitive to public opinion in this phase. In
the managers view, the controversy stage was in many cases driven
by environmental and consumer NGOs that often lack other resources
and hence encourage public controversies as their main political
strategy. As a transmitter between the political and the private
sphere [and] an organizer of the public (IV 6, 18) NGOs were said
to easily attract the attention of the mass media and use this to
mobilize the public against the corporate sector. Public
controversy, in turn, encourages counter-initiatives on the
corporate side. Against this backdrop, NGOs ranked highly as both
triggers and stakeholders of the public path of public affairs
management.The perceived increase in relevance of the public path
can also be explained with regard to Giddens concept of the
dialectic of control (1986, p. 16): Giddens states that in modern
society all forms of social dependence offer some capacity for the
dependents to control their superiors as is the case with small
NGOs challenging the corporate sector: corporations do control vast
amounts of social resources. However, being expert systems, they
depend upon the trust of laypeople, who act outside the system
(Giddens, 1990, pp. 26-29). This trust refers to their faith that
the expert system serves overall societal interests. Accordingly,
the withdrawal of trust is laypeoples core source of social
control. According to Giddens, the logic of action of withdrawing
trust is to trigger public critique. With the recent globalization,
corporations have experienced continuous gains in social power and
also an increased risk of provoking critique and losing
legitimacy.Integration of the public and non-public paths Managers
who were the subjects of strong public criticism particularly
representatives of leading corporations and the nuclear industry
portrayed a mixed strategy of direct negotiations with political
authorities and NGOs and of strategic communicative in the public
sphere as the best approach to public affairs. While the former
involved direct lobbying of political authorities and NGOs, the
latter would aim to rebuild trust of the broad public constituency,
which was also seen as an important precondition to fostering
direct access to the political decision makers (IV6, IV7, IV2,
IV3). Managers of small corporations, in contrast, often described
NGOs as their allies and portrayed joint public campaigning as an
important public affairs strategy. This should help to overcome
their lack of political resources and also serve as a backdoor for
engaging in direct lobbying (IV5, IV10). Hence, all managers
portrayed initiatives of the non-public and public paths as
complementary strategies.4.2. Strategic aims of consumer campaigns
With regard to consumer campaigns, the managers described different
strategic aims.Bypassing journalists When it comes to the agents
(Giddens, 1986, p. 5) engaged in the framing of social issues,
journalists were portrayed as the most powerful forces. They were
said to enjoy comparatively strong public trust and therefore wield
considerable power to intervene in public opinion. Most managers,
however, complained that journalists often lack balance and advance
anti-industry clichs which one even termed riot-journalism (IV6,
32). Managers from big corporations and industry associations in
particular believed that they did not receive a fair chance to have
their issue perspectives covered in the media. Against this
backdrop, managers portrayed consumer campaigns as a means of
bypassing a critical press and of defining issues independently of
journalistic reporting:If you look at the present media landscape,
you can see that the messages of [] industrial corporations do not
reach the public anymore. When [Chancellor] Merkel says this
campaign is outstanding, because it puts supporters of nuclear
energy in a position to express their opinion, this really speaks
volumes! And that is what the whole purpose of the campaign was
(IV7, 20).Among the different types of consumer campaigns,
signature campaigns were considered to be an instrument to
aggregate public opinion (IV4, 56) and make a standpoint more valid
and credible (IV8, 37) in order to influence public debate (IV2,
61). However, managers with experience of such campaigns were
unsure whether they were applicable for other industry branches
(IV7, 22). Some were concerned that such campaigns could exploit
consumers for political purposes (IV6, 40; similarly IV10, 44).
Only few considered using issue advertising to bypass the critical
press (IV7, IV8).Instead, the managers were in consensus that
journalists still function as the most important addressees within
the public path of public affairs particularly due to their strong
agency role described above. Accordingly, most of the managers
acknowledged that it was hardly possible to fully bypass critical
press and hence advised focusing on persistent media relations
(IV6, 38; similarly IV3, 55).Responding to critical individuals
Well-organized groups of critical individuals were portrayed as
another powerful agent within the public sphere. The managers
stated that even small minorities were able to influence public
opinion and intervene in the regulatory environment by
strategically mobilizing public controversies an aspect which has
also been discussed as the power of sub-politics by Ulrich Beck
(2007). In this context, many interviewees referred to the example
of the German railway project, Stuttgart 21[6]: We live in a social
environment [] in which [industry] projects cannot be enforced over
and against the opposition of minorities, but only by means of
public participation (IV1, 39). The managers argued that minority
groups could easily block industry projects, even when they had
already passed regulation. With respect to the construction of a
new power plant, one manager reported:A referendum among 3,500
community stakeholders was enough to say: We wont live in a good
neighborhood! Of course, this had dramatic consequences on our
projects, as well as on the lifecycle of our projects (IV7,
16).Against this background, managers reasoned that the logic of
action within the public path could not be limited to persuading
individuals with eye-catching campaigns. Rather, corporations
needed to convince critical individuals in direct dialogues: This
is grassroots, the work we have to do! (IV3, 35). Web-based forums
were discussed as a potential means of reaching a broad audience
with limited dialogue budgets. Yet, most managers advised
face-to-face encounters:Dialogue instruments on a web 2.0 basis []
can document a basic willingness to talk and they do actually
channel this dialogue. But [] you will [] always have to pick some
individuals out of the web dialogues [] and have some kind of a
real direct talk with them (IV1, 43).4.3. Challenges of consumer
campaigns and strategies to handle them Credibility as the main
issue Most managers saw their lack of public trust not only as a
main trigger but also as a main challenge of consumer campaigns.
While journalists enjoyed good public trust and therefore had a
strong impact on public opinion, corporate campaigns would
frequently fail to do so as they were often not perceived as a
trustworthy source. Accordingly, almost all managers, even from the
renewable sector, reported severe credibility issues.The lack of
credibility, however, was partly also seen as self-inflicted. Some
stressed that oversimplification often caused credibility issues:
Communication always needs shortening and simplifying []. But I
cannot simplify it so much that it becomes false in the end. (IV8,
61). Others emphasized: We wont be evaluated by our campaigns, but
by what we actually do! (IV6, 87) and advised backing every claim
with a real corporate commitment: Whatever I say [], without being
able to back it up on the basis of corporate strategy, will lead me
to fall down at some point (IV1, 33). In this respect, authenticity
was seen as an important directive within the public path of public
affairs (IV7, 46; similarly IV8, 55).Relativizing corporations
societal efforts In terms of a more elaborate credibility strategy,
interviewees argued being more self-critical and actively
acknowledging corporate shortcomings with respect to controversial
issues could enhance their perceived credibility particularly as
journalists and NGOs would otherwise focus on these shortcomings
and use them as a hook for negative reporting and
counter-campaigning (IV4, 60; IV7, 28; IV8, 59; IV6, 84; IV3, IV5,
40):The classifying of [good] corporate news with respect to
overall business strategy should be one of our standard duties
(IV8, 55).You can only be credible if you also add those aspects to
your communication that wont earn standing ovations. [] Never
pretend to be only good (IV6, 84)!This strategy resembles Keim and
Bonardis approach of balanced-issue-promotion mentioned above.
Similarly, PR scholars have suggested that the active
acknowledgement of the negative aspects of corporate activities was
essential to regain public trust (Bentele and Seidenglanz, 2008;
Hoffjann, 2011). Studies on marketing and political communication
found that such two-sided messages can indeed enhance perceived
source credibility (Crowley and Hoyer, 1994; OKeefe, 1999; Eisend,
2007, 2010). However, this strategy is yet to be tested for
corporate public affairs or PR campaigns (Eisend, 2008, p.
232).Allowing critique Another credibility strategy outlined by the
managers is to encourage individuals to actively engage in an open
dialogue and criticize corporate viewpoints (IV1; IV3; IV4; IV5;
IV6; IV7; IV8; IV9): This is the big challenge: to develop a more
participatory style of stakeholder communication (IV1, 53). Many
saw online forums as an affordable instrument, but admitted not
knowing how to handle the harsh public criticism that can accompany
such a move. Only one manager reported positive experiences with
online forums, which had been accepted as a sincere dialogue offer
(IV9, 63) by the online community and helped to build a trust-based
dialogue that allowed negotiation of the meaning of controversial
energy issues.5. Conclusions and limitationsSection:This study
employed structuration theory and expert interviews with public
affairs and PR managers of the German energy industry to analyze
the (emerging) role of consumer campaigns in the context of
corporate public affairs management. According to the managers
perceptions, enabling authoritative resources like expert knowledge
and allocative resources like economic power is still the most
powerful and effective strategy for intervening in the regulatory
environment. However, managers report that such direct lobbying
initiatives are being increasingly disrupted by public
controversies, which they believe are often encouraged by NGOs and
critical individuals that lack other resources. As managers see it,
political decision makers are growing increasingly sensitive to
such controversies. Hence, the public path of public affairs
management gains in relevance. Here, corporate actors compete to
frame the meaning of social issues and to interpret business
behaviors as compliant to social legitimacy standards.Giddens
concept of the dialectic of control (Giddens, 1986, p. 16) offers a
plausible explanation for this perceived increase. Giddens assumes
that in modern society withdrawing public trust and encouraging
public controversy is the determining lever used by individual
laypeople to control their superiors like corporations. This
corresponds relatively closely with the perceptions of the German
managers. In their view, NGOs and social minorities increasingly
encourage public controversy to influence public opinion and
thereby intervene in the regulatory environment. At the same time,
managers see political authorities as increasingly sensitive to
media coverage and daily opinion polls, which can lead to political
decisions that differ severely from the consensus established
between governments and corporations in direct lobbying
negotiations.Journalists were still seen as the most powerful
mediators of the public sphere and hence the key stakeholders of
the public path of public affairs management. However, many
interviewees, particularly from big corporations, complained that
journalists are often biased towards anti-industry clichs and
rarely cover the industry perspective on controversial issues with
conflicting viewpoints. In this respect, consumer campaigns were
portrayed as an instrument to intervene in public opinion formation
independently from the critical press. Signature campaigns, for
example, were seen as a means to aggregate alternative viewpoints
and provide leverage to elevate them to the surface of public
discourse.However, according to the managers point of view,
consumer campaigns come at a price: in many cases they would
severely lack credibility. In order to catch the attention of
laypeople and get them involved in an issue, the managers stated
that consumer campaigns require emotional language and the
simplification of complex regulatory issues like green energy as an
approach which would quickly be criticized as dishonest and unfair
by critical observers like journalists or NGOs. On a more general
level, managers warned that mobilizing private individuals to
engage in socio-political action like signing an industry petition
could also be condemned as a manipulative instrumentalization of
the public, particularly when such campaigns pretended to support
public interests in the first place.To address this issue, managers
outlined several credibility strategies, which they have derived
from their own and their competitors campaign experiences.
Practitioners might reflect on these strategies for their own
communicative work: 1. As a basic rule, any argument used in a
public affairs campaign must be backed up by the respective
business practices of the corporation.2. More specifically, and
particularly with respect to environmental campaigns, corporations
should not only promote their environmental achievements, but also
acknowledge what is still missing from meeting their sustainability
objectives.3. And lastly, critics should be encouraged and given
space to communicate their criticism and engage in an open dialogue
with the corporation.However, as the study is based on expert
interviews, its focus is limited to the strategic considerations
and perceived challenges of campaign-practitioners. It remains
unclear what effects managers credibility strategies actually have
on the perceptions of consumer-campaigns. Furthermore, the
applicability of the findings to other industry branches might be
limited as the data stems from a case study on the German energy
industry. Future research should address these limitations and
investigate the relevance of the public path of public affairs
management in other industries. Quantitative research is needed to
analyze the overall use of the relatively new phenomenon of
consumer campaigns in German and European public affairs
management. And lastly, the effects of such campaigns on citizens,
journalists, NGOs and politicians should be examined.
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Further reading1.BMWU (2009), Klimaschutzpolitik in Deutschland,
available at: www.bmu.de/ (accessed July 6, 2011).
2.Jakob, R. and Naumann, J. (2003), Wege aus der
Vertrauenskrise, Redline, Frankfurt.
3.McGrath, C. (2007), Framing lobbying messages: defining and
communicating political issues persuasively, Journal of Public
Affairs, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 269-280. [CrossRef] [Infotrieve]
Notes In this study, the term NGOs refers to civil society
organizations such as environmental or consumer groups and does not
include economic interest groups like industry associations or
trade unions (Brulle, 2010, p. 84; Kaldor, 2003, p. 589). The
German energy corporation RWE launched the campaign Energy Giant in
German TV and cinemas to promote the firms market superiority and
conventional energy as economically necessary (RWE, 2009). The
German nuclear power association Atomforum launched a print and
online campaign to promote nuclear power as climate protection
technology (Atomforum, 2008, 2010). The German energy corporation
ENBW together with the French corporation EDF launched the campaign
Au fil du Rhin (2010), a fake social movement that promotes the
peaceful cooperation of nuclear power and environmental
conservation along the river Rhine. In Germany, four multinational
corporations share 82 percent of the mainly coal-based energy
market (Statista 2009): RWE (31 percent), Eon (21 percent),
Vattenfall (16 percent) and EnBW (14 percent). Numbers on turnover
and energy production are adopted from organizational sources:
Lichtblick: press release (Lichtblick, 2011); EWE: own
correspondence with their press office (EWE, 2011); MVV Energie:
annual report 2010 (MVV Energie, 2010); Stadtwerke Mnchen: own
correspondence with the manager of corporate communications and the
annual report 2010 (Stadtwerke Mnchen, 2011); RWE: annual report
2010 (RWE, 2011b) and the corporate website (RWE, 2011c); EON:
annual report 2010 (EON, 2011a) and the corporate web site (EON,
2011b); Vattenfall: Facts and figures 2010 (Vattenfall, 2011a) and
the annual report 2010 (Vattenfall, 2011b). Read: Interview 2,
Paragraph 49. In order to assure full anonymity of the
interviewees, interview numbers could not be included in the table
of sampling (see Figure 2). Stuttgart 21 is a multibillion Euro
construction project by the German railway corporation Die Bahn,
anchored around a new high-speed railway across southern Germany
and the relocation of the historic train station in the city of
Stuttgart. It has been subject to enormous public opposition and
has been accused of wasting public money, ruining public heritage
buildings and damaging the landscape. Protests were particularly
violent at times, and even the international press reported on the
events (guardian.co.uk, 2010; Spiegel.de, 2010).