Creating Common Ground: A Communicative Action Model of Dialogue in Shareholder Engagement
研究基于哈贝马斯的沟通行动理论，通过纵向案例探讨股东与公司对话如何从战略行动转向沟通行动，揭示建立对话、框架构建和审议三个互动循环，为理解股东参与中共同基础的形成提供新解释。
Despite growing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of dialogue between activists and corporations in stakeholder engagement, scholars have not fully accounted for the mechanisms that explain its success. We address this gap by leveraging Habermas’s theory of communicative action. In our longitudinal qualitative study, we explore the dialogue on climate change between the Interfaith Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of faith-based investors, Ford, and General Motors. We find that communicative action can emerge from strategic action as a result of three cycles of interaction: establishing dialogue, framing, and deliberation. Our study contributes to the literature on shareholder engagement by integrating communicative and strategic action, thereby offering a new interpretation of how reputational threat and dialogue come together to produce a common ground between activists and companies.