The Triple Bottom Line: How Today's Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success - and How You Can Too, Revised and Updated

12

Dealing with Special Stakeholder Challenges

We can either dance with you, or dance on you.

—Greenpeace slogan

The Many Faces of NGOs

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are the stakeholder groups that businesspeople most frequently misunderstand and mismanage, often with painful results. They include a wide range of lobbying organizations, citizens' interests groups, environmentalists, labor and human rights activists, and many other organizations that sometimes operate as if making life difficult for your business were their only objective.

But business leaders who assume that NGOs are all fundamentally hostile to business are making a big mistake. These organizations are as varied as companies themselves and just as numerous: according ...