{"id":72,"date":"2026-11-09T23:03:36","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T23:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/humbaba.blog\/?p=72"},"modified":"2026-11-09T23:19:22","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T23:19:22","slug":"corporate-watch-workshop-disruptive-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/2026\/11\/09\/corporate-watch-workshop-disruptive-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Watch workshop: disruptive strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This was the intro to a workshop given at the Corporate Watch 30th<\/sup> anniversary day in London. It\u2019s about how to make campaign strategies by mapping and targeting the relationship networks of corporations (and other powerful actors).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the intro, we put it into practice with a live strategy session. This focused on the fight to stop the new Brick Lane data centre, round the corner from where the workshop was taking place in Bethnal Green.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Struggle: It\u2019s all disruption<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the previous session we heard about successful campaigns which used different kinds of approaches: legal, reputational, disruptive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But my premise now is: actually, it\u2019s all disruption. On the whole, successful campaigns work because they disrupt a company or other actor\u2019s ability to get what it wants. Or they threaten enough disruption that the company backs down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As this is a Corporate Watch workshop, we\u2019ll focus on corporations. But to start very general, what I\u2019m saying is that campaigns usually follow a basic logic of social conflict. As in the Frederick Douglass quote: \u201cIf there is no struggle there is no progress [\u2026] Power concedes nothing without a demand.\u201d You don\u2019t win because you \u201cspeak truth to power\u201d and persuade the powerful to just be nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2<\/strong>.<\/strong> The logic of struggle: e<\/strong>xample of strike<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You win because you find a way to make it so the powerful actor decides its more in their interest to give way, at least for now. Or, in the extreme case, because you cause enough disruption that their collective organisation breaks apart altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with the example of a strike. Very crudely, the logic is this. The company wants to make a profit. Profit equals sales revenue minus costs. If you withdraw labour effectively, you shut down production. Once the company has used up its stocks, it has no more goods to sell, so can\u2019t make a profit. If the strike works, it is losing money: call this the cost of disruption<\/em> (after Joseph Luders). On the other hand, if it meets the workers\u2019 demands, e.g., gives them a pay rise, this also has a cost: call it the cost of settlement<\/em>. In the crudest possible case, a rational company manager should back down if you can make the cost of disruption higher than the cost of settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, in real life, it\u2019s a lot more complex. For one thing, companies aren\u2019t just thinking about short-term profits, they have long-term strategies. Maybe they\u2019re prepared to pay a high cost to break the workers and cut wage costs longer term. Maybe they actually want to shut down your workplace. Or maybe they\u2019re not just rational profit-maximisers after all. Corporate bosses are human too, they can be stubborn, hot-headed, or even have principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you can\u2019t just say: if we cost them \u00a32 million, they\u2019ll concede. It\u2019s more messy than that. But even so, usually the basic strategic logic still holds. If you cause enough disruption to what they care about, they will probably move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was the intro to a workshop given at the Corporate Watch 30th anniversary day in London. It\u2019s about how to make campaign strategies by mapping and targeting the relationship networks of corporations (and other powerful actors).<\/p>\n

After the intro, we put it into practice with a live strategy session. This focused on the fight to stop the new Brick Lane data centre, round the corner from where the workshop was taking place in Bethnal Green.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humbaba.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}