Abstract
Stakeholder literature tends to presume that effective stakeholder dialogue, occurring directly or indirectly, among a focal firm, local communities, governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) is desirable for successful firm–stakeholder relationships. Even if theoretically desirable, effective dialogue does not always occur. There are two key theory-informing lessons in Botnia’s Fray Bentos successful green field pulp mill investment and start-up in Western Uruguay. First, critics could not halt the project politically supported by Uruguay in an expanding multi-party international dispute. Second, the Botnia corporate communications process did not succeed in building consensus relationships, and attention was not paid to discourse creating shared meanings among all stakeholders. Participatory relationships were few, and successful dialogue was at best limited to supporters. This article uses discursive analysis to examine how newspaper and press release texts and language used therein both shaped and reflected the dynamically changing nature of firm–stakeholder relations in the Fray Bentos dispute. Despite the focal firm’s professed good intentions to create participatory relationships with its stakeholders during the building project, various stakeholders opposed the project and Botnia was caught in the crossfire of heated debate between Uruguay and Argentina. Three different frames changing over time are identified: (a) the investment frame, (b) the conflict frame, and (c) the political frame. The analysis shows that the relationships between the focal firm and stakeholders involved many meanings only partly shared, due in part to a lack of corporate appreciation for the role of language in managing firm–stakeholder relationships.
Keywords
Dialogue is a two-way communication interaction in oral or written forms, whether occurring directly (as in talks) or indirectly (as in media coverage read by both parties). Such interaction was quite limited (or not discoverable by scholars) in the Fray Bentos dispute. What is available for analysis are media coverage and Botnia press release texts. This study examines how texts and language used therein both shaped and reflected the dynamically changing nature of firm–stakeholder relations in a multi-party international dispute adding stakeholders over time. Theoretically, the authors argue that language and the structure of meaning are fundamental to understanding the dynamics of stakeholder relationships and stakeholder dialogue. Empirically, the authors investigate the complex dispute related to the green field investment project of a Finnish pulp and paper corporation Botnia in Western Uruguay at Fray Bentos.
There are two approaches to study discourse. First, discourse can be studied as a form of communication (oral or written) directed at another party. Communication can occur directly as in face-to-face talks or indirectly as through various documents. In such approach, discourse is about how actors communicate and how they present their viewpoints and perceptions related to the object of communication. Stakeholder research assumes that the more communication there is, the better common understanding can be achieved. Reaching a consensus is often difficult even between two parties and is a far more complicated process in a multi-party international dispute. In the Fray Bentos dispute, Botnia issued press releases providing information supporting the project, and there was media coverage of events and arguments; other discourse was limited or at least not subject to scholarly discovery.
Second, discourse can be studied as a structure of meanings, which creates the object of communication. This structure of meanings is both subjective and socially constructed (Foucault, 1969). In this approach, adopted in this study, a discourse is conceived of as a set of ideas, which forms a coherent system of meanings and conditions ways of relating to, and acting upon, a particular phenomenon or topic (Boje, Oswick, & Ford, 2004; Knights & Morgan, 1991). Through the use of language, texts provide meaning to the object of communication. This approach to study discourse allows for surfacing the social and political interests inherent in the use of language (Vaara, 2010). Neither supporters nor critics of the project changed position much; and the dispute outcome resulted from political processes.
The authors argue that stakeholder dialogue, to be other than a shouting match, requires not so much arranging for opportunities for more communication between the parties, but rather attention to the ways by which the meaning of the content of dialogue is being ascribed in communication. By adopting the discursive approach focused on structure of meaning, the authors’ interest is in linguistic processes at work and the focus is on understanding how language operates in stakeholder dialogue. The study shows that due to the lack of attention to language in stakeholder dialogue, Botnia was not able to create participatory relationships with opposing stakeholders, and instead, became a subject of political discourse between Uruguay and Argentina. For completing and operating the plant, however, it was not necessary to convince the critics; only support from Uruguay ultimately was needed to go forward.
The authors restrict the study to written communication and examine language in press releases of a Finnish company and in news articles in a leading Finnish newspaper reporting the dispute. The basic reason for choosing texts as research data is that oral and written communications by stakeholders involved in the project are not readily obtained but stakeholder communication tends to be covered in newspaper articles, including interviews with reporters, in a summary form. The authors use frame analysis as an empirical method to depict the ways by which discourse operates in a dispute. Frame analysis is a method to analyze how language promotes particular information or interpretation and to examine how particular interpretations become more salient than others (Entman, 1993; Goffman, 1974). Through frame analysis, the authors show how texts and language used therein construct stakeholder positions and the dynamics of the stakeholder relationships. This study brings contribution to previous literature by adopting a relationship viewpoint and implementing frame analysis to examining the dynamically changing firm–stakeholder relationships.
Most stakeholder literature has been dominated by what the present authors term realist investigations, which take for granted that meanings in language are commonly accepted and treat the stakeholder relations as existing “out there” independent of language (cf. Boje et al., 2004). In a realist investigation, the examination of stakeholder relationships is disconnected from the language practices that constitute them (cf. Phillips, Lawrence, & Hardy, 2004). By adopting a discursive approach, this study answers to the call for being critical of language when studying stakeholder relationships (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, Parmar, & de Colle, 2010; Onkila, 2011).
Examining stakeholder relationships through texts and language connects this study with the linguistic turn in management studies. In this line of research, organizational activity is seen as a phenomenon in and of language, and language is examined not as a tool used to describe or report on reality but as a context and a way to re-contextualize content (Boje et al., 2004). In stakeholder theory, this approach allows the authors to examine the ways by which we “know” the stakeholder relationship reality and gain insight on how companies orient their actions according to this “known reality.”
The empirical analysis examines firm–stakeholder relationships as they are represented in the press releases of the company and the newspaper articles covering the green field investment during the years 2003-2007. The focus in the analysis is on the ways by which the company press releases and newspaper articles join in constituting stakeholder relationship reality (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992). This approach has its constraints. Both press releases and newspaper articles are produced by a handful of people, all of whom have interests: corporate communications personnel have an interest to voice the corporate view and gain acceptance to it, and journalists have an interest to communicate with public, sell the journal, and follow the guidelines of good journalism. While acknowledging the constraints arising from the fact that there are only a few people with interests writing the texts, the focus is on studying the discourse that these people operate in and that produces social rules and norms for writing. From this perspective, texts form a scene of continuous struggle for the “correct” and “acceptable” concepts, meanings, and definitions and are a part of the construction of meaning with consequences to those involved in the situation (Brummans et al., 2008; Fairclough, 1992; Foucault, 1969; Gamson & Lasch, 1983).
Three frames are identified: (a) the investment frame, (b) the conflict frame, and (c) the political frame. Each way of framing focuses on the specific interests of different stakeholders, and thus, endorses certain ways of stakeholder dialogue as natural and self-evident. The investment frame places Botnia in a leader position among the key stakeholders and makes it natural for Botnia to uphold a close relationship with Uruguay and a more reserved relationship with Argentina. The conflict frame presents Botnia as a victim of the local struggle between Uruguay and Argentina. This frame highlights the contrasting opinions and views by different stakeholders, reflecting the disagreement of stakeholders over the project. The political frame sets the dispute in a context of political power games, involves governments and international entities, and leaves Botnia out from the discussions. The emergence of the frames during the dispute is sequential as the investment frame was the first to arise followed by the conflict frame and then by the political frame. However, the frames are also partly overlapping in the sense that the investment frame continued to coexist with both the conflict and the political frame and the conflict frame continued to coexist when the political frame emerged. As a value adding contribution of this study, frame analysis of the dispute allows for highlighting how stakeholder relationships are constructed through language and how meaning making contributes to the dynamic of stakeholder relationships.
The remainder of the article is structured as follows. The authors will first turn to the stakeholder literature to explain the main theoretical starting point and review the previous research on the dispute. Next, the authors will explicate the methodological choices related to data collection and analysis and discuss the limitations of the research. In the research case findings, first, the course of events is illustrated, and second, the results of the frame analysis are presented. The article concludes by discussing the theoretical contributions and managerial implications of the research.
Researching Firm–Stakeholder Relationships
Stakeholder Relations as Discourse
The concept of a stakeholder has a long history including substantial Swedish and Finnish scholarship (Näsi, 1995; Rhenman, 1964, 1968; Rhenman & Stymne, 1965; Strand & Freeman, 2013). The stakeholder approach is about groups and individuals that can affect the organization, and about managerial behavior undertaken in response to those groups and individuals (Freeman, 1984). Stakeholder research argues that companies do not exist just to satisfy the needs of their owners; companies have a much wider range of important stakeholders who ought to be taken into account by owners and managers when making decisions (Argandoña, 1998; Wheeler & Sillanpää, 1997).
Stakeholder research has concentrated on defining the concept of a stakeholder and identifying different kinds of stakes (Clarkson, 1995; Cummings & Doh, 2000; Freeman, 1984; Freeman & Liedtka, 1991; Kujala, 2001; Wheeler & Sillanpää, 1997), and analyzing and understanding the relationships with diverse stakeholders, in general (Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997), and issues of corporate social responsibility, in particular (Knox, Maklan, & French, 2005). Recently, the focus has moved toward understanding interaction between stakeholders (Neville & Menguc, 2006), stakeholders’ strategies for influencing companies (Hendry, 2005), and stakeholder legitimacy (Derry, 2012). A lot of effort has been placed on understanding stakeholder dialogue. There are studies on learning process effects on stakeholder dialogue (Burchell & Cook, 2008; Payne & Calton, 2004), the nature of organizational learning through stakeholder dialogue (Burchell & Cook, 2006), the methods and practices of stakeholder dialogue (Pedersen, 2006; van de Kerkhof, 2006), the linkage between stakeholder dialogue and business self-regulation (Kaptein & Van Tulder, 2003), and the connection between corporate social responsibility and stakeholder dialogue (O’Riordan & Fairbrass, 2008). Research on stakeholder dialogue has also been connected with disputes between multinational global corporations and local companies and communities (Calvano, 2008; Stammler & Wilson, 2006). There are studies on how non-participative stakeholders challenge the dialogue process (Laasonen, 2010) and studies on how to solve stakeholder disagreements through stakeholder management (Lamberg, Pajunen, Parvinen, & Savage, 2008; Lampe, 2001). In general, literature on stakeholder dialogue promotes the idea of integrating stakeholders’ concerns into the corporate decision-making processes and gives advice on how to translate stakeholder dialogue theory into actual practice (Pedersen, 2006; van Huijstee & Glasbergen, 2008).
To advance theorizing on firm–stakeholder relationships, the authors examine how texts and language used therein both shape and reflect the dynamically changing nature of firm–stakeholder relations. Foucault (1969) first introduced discourse study to show how language operates, so that whenever an object of communication is being defined, and thus given meaning to, it is never neutral of interests, but rather, a subject to a use of power by the party making the definition. The authors draw on the Foucauldian discursive approach in management research (Ezzamel & Willmott, 2004; Knights & Morgan, 1991; Knights & Mueller, 2004; Phillips et al., 2004) and frame analysis (Goffman, 1974; Manning, 2008; Pan & Kosicki, 1993). The Foucauldian discursive approach is interested in the social context where the content of ideas and practices are constructed and seeks to make visible the power–knowledge relations (Knights & Morgan, 1991). The power in the discursive approach lies in the potential to show how the structure of meaning makes certain ways of thinking and acting possible and others impossible or costly (Phillips et al., 2004). The authors examine the reality of stakeholder relationships as constituted in discourse. Frame analysis is used as a method of analysis to empirically examine how discourse constructs meaning to stakeholder positions and stakeholder relations. Frame analysis is a qualitative method to scrutinize the ways by which people actively classify, organize, and interpret life experiences to make sense of them (Pan & Kosicki, 1993).
Previous Research on the Dispute
The particular investment project in the focus of this study has gained considerable attention in recent research. To explicate the value-added contribution of this study, the authors reviewed seven previous studies, four of which have examined the case using a realist investigation (Aaltonen, Kujala, & Oijala, 2008; Kujala, Toikka, & Heikkinen, 2009; Pakkasvirta, 2008; Skippari & Pajunen, 2010) and three using a discursive approach (Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2009; Laasonen, 2010; Lehtimäki, Kujala, & Heikkinen, 2011). The review covered the purpose, data, method, results, and main contribution of each study as presented in Table 1.
Previous Scholarly Articles on the Fray Bentos Dispute.
Note. NGO = nongovernmental organization; FDI = foreign direct investment; HS = Helsingin Sanomat.
Previous research has covered stakeholder salience and influence strategies in project management (Aaltonen et al., 2008), legitimacy in corporate social responsibility (Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2009), corporate responsibility communication (Kujala et al., 2009; Lehtimäki et al., 2011), the argumentation of NGOs regarding the process of dialogue (Laasonen, 2010), the role of media in cultural conflict resolution (Pakkasvirta, 2008), and relationships among multinational firms, host governments, and NGOs (Skippari & Pajunen, 2010).
The investment project officially started in the beginning of 2003 when Botnia decided to purchase a 60% share in one of the largest forestry companies in Uruguay to start pulp production there. After 4 years of planning and construction, the pulp mill started up at the end of 2007. All studies on the Fray Bentos dispute used publicly available media data. Based on the analysis of 100 articles published in two main Finnish financial periodicals (Kauppalehti and Talouselämä) between 2005 and 2007, Aaltonen et al. (2008) identified different strategies stakeholders use to increase their salience. Kujala et al. (2009) carried out a qualitative content analysis on 38 Botnia press releases and 147 newspaper articles over the time period 2003-2007 and showed that the company provided more information about corporate responsibility, while the newspaper articles contained more information about stakeholder issues. The present article uses this database with the addition of one press release in 2003 and one more press release in 2006. The resulting 40 press releases date between October 24, 2003, and December 10, 2007; the 147 articles date between March 8, 2005, and December 20, 2007.
Based on a rhetorical analysis of 150 newspaper articles and stories as well as 64 newscasts and three larger documentaries in the national television in Finland over the time period 2005-2007, Pakkasvirta (2008) showed that traditional stereotypes survive at the core of national media in Finland. Skippari and Pajunen (2010) took the Fray Bentos case as an example of foreign direct investment (FDI) conflict. With a case study on 300 articles in three Finnish and one Argentinean newspaper as well as related websites, press releases, and annual reports over the time period 2003-2007, they analyzed the conflict from the viewpoint of relationships among MNEs, host governments, and NGOs.
To position this research among the previous studies, the authors summarize earlier research in Table 2. Distinction is made according to two dimensions: the research viewpoint (focal company, stakeholder, or relationship) and the research approach (realist or discursive). Three previous studies took a discursive approach to the case. First, Joutsenvirta and Vaara (2009) studied the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions around establishing legitimacy and defining the proper social role of corporations based on a discourse analysis on 27 newspaper articles over the time period 2005-2007. Second, Laasonen (2010) examined stakeholder dialogue process with discourse analysis on 35 campaign documents published by two NGOs during 2002-2008. Third, Lehtimäki et al. (2011) examined the information disclosed by the firm based on textual analysis of 55 Botnia press releases during 2003-2009. Compared to Lehtimäki et.al. (2011), the present article focuses on 2003-2007, and therefore, the number of press releases in that study is larger than used in the present article. The data set selected for the current study is considered sufficient as it covers the essential time period from the initial investment to the start-up of the pulp mill. As such, the data set allows for depicting the dynamically changing firm–stakeholder communication process and its outcomes through frame analysis.
Summary of Earlier Academic Research on the Fray Bentos Dispute.
This research adds to earlier studies on this case by combining the relationship viewpoint with the discursive approach to understand the determinants of successful stakeholder communication. Adding to the realist approach to the firm–stakeholder relationships, the authors analyze the ways by which stakeholder relationships are discursively constituted through framing. Although Skippari and Pajunen (2010) concentrated on the complexity of the MNE–NGO–host government relationships in the dispute, they were not able to understand fully the processes through which the dynamics of firm–stakeholder relationships are (re)shaped. The discursive approach adopted in this study allows for showing how the framing of the dispute is dynamic and how the frames move over time.
Adding to the discursive studies on the dispute, the present study focuses on the communication process and its outcomes to stakeholder relationships. The frame analysis allows for depicting key stakeholder positions in the different phases of the dispute and showing how the focal company and the stakeholders act in relation to each other. None of the discursive studies have implemented the relationship viewpoint, but instead, they have concentrated on the focal company viewpoint (Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2009; Lehtimäki et al., 2011) or the stakeholder viewpoint (Laasonen, 2010). Consequently, the present study brings forth why the non-supporting stakeholders were not successfully brought into stakeholder dialogue.
Method
Data Collection
Data for the study comprise company press releases (n = 40) between October 24, 2003, and December 10, 2007, and newspaper articles (n = 147) in the leading daily in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat (HS), between March 8, 2005, and December 20, 2007. The research period comprehensively covers the main events related to the pulp mill project (between fourth quarter of 2003 when the Fray Bentos location was announced and fourth quarter of 2007 when Uruguay finalized its permission). The press releases communicate issues of various events during the project and serve as a voice of the focal company, describing the investment from Botnia’s point of view. Together with the press releases, the newspaper articles chosen for the study capture the context, the process, and the multiple perspectives and rationalities related to the dispute. In addition, other publicly available material in the company website was reviewed to familiarize the authors with the company and the dispute. The same data set was used in Kujala et al. (2009), and the press release material between 2003 and 2007 was used in Lehtimäki et al. (2011) who added press releases between 2008 and 2009 to their analysis. As a result, the data set in Lehtimäki et al. (2011) comprised 55 press releases. The data collection procedure has been explained in detail in Kujala et al. (2009). The data collection was revisited for the purposes of present study and one press release from 2003 and one from 2006 were found to be added to the data set. Therefore, the data set in the present study comprise 40 press releases instead of 38 as in Kujala et al. (2009).
Similar to Lehtimäki et al. (2011), the present study covers the time period starting from 2003 when the plans for building a new pulp mill were first released. While Lehtimäki et al. (2011) took 2009, when the Botnia made a decision to sell the plant, as the ending point for the study, the present study ends in 2007 when the pulp mill started up. The authors argue that the addressed time period is appropriate for studying the dynamically changing firm–stakeholder communication process and its outcomes in the investment project.
The use of newspaper articles as data has two rationales. First, although the articles covering a particular topic are typically written by only a few journalists who make interpretations and deductions of activities in the society, the journal articles can be treated as accounts shaping and reflecting the social realities (Gamson et al., 1992). Journalists are sensitive in making interpretations and presenting events in ways that make observations comprehensible to the audience. The media seeks to communicate the facts surrounding the focal events (Skippari & Pajunen, 2010), and the journalists have to take into account multiple and contrasting perspectives and rationalities. Thus, media texts are likely to include contradicting arguments from different actors (Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2009; Vaara, Tienari, & Laurila, 2006). The discursive approach to media texts enables us to explore the underlying logics of competing interests and gives rise to new possibilities for action (Hoffman & Ventresca, 1999).
Second, analyzing media texts allows for capturing the role of societal culture in the workings of organizations and institutions (Creed, Langstraat, & Scully, 2002). Analysis of media texts allows for depicting the cultural and social conditions under which organizations address, respond to, and solve problems (Hoffman & Ventresca, 1999). In this line of research, media is seen as an actor that constructs reality by making interpretations of it. These interpretations do not occur in a vacuum; rather they are filled with traces of authors, institutions, other texts, types of texts, and expected readership (Fairclough, 1992, 2005b). Media texts are a part of collections of texts that produce the social categories and norms that shape the understandings and behaviors of actions (Phillips et al., 2004). Media texts, thus, shape and create the possibilities for available and accepted choices a company can make.
In using newspaper articles data, the authors follow studies in the field of management studies, where media texts have been used to show, for instance, how textual strategies are utilized to legitimate a multinational corporation’s actions (Vaara & Tienari, 2008), the ways by which power relations are constructed, and the implications of these constructions on transnational mergers (Risberg, Tienari, & Vaara, 2003), the implications of public discourse on a large multinational company’s responsibility on human rights (Holzer, 2007), and the process of legitimacy in corporate responsibility (Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2009). The use of both the press releases and newspaper articles gave the authors a possibility for data triangulation.
Data Analysis
Qualitative content analysis (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008; Graneheim & Lundman, 2004; Krippendorff, 2004; Marshall & Rossman, 1995) and frame analysis were chosen as the methods of analysis (Entman, 1993; Goffman, 1974). With the qualitative content analysis, the authors outlined the course of events and organized a timeline with four phases that depict the main periods in the project. With the frame analysis, the authors focused on the language in press releases and newspaper articles to depict empirically the ways by which discourse operates in the different phases of the project.
Frame analysis is a method to analyze how a common stock of key words, phrases, images, sources, and themes highlights and promotes specific facts, interpretations, and judgments seeking to make them salient (Entman, 1993; Gamson et al., 1992; Pan & Kosicki, 1993; Tucker, 1998). The interest lies in elucidating the ways by which the presentation of particular aspects of perceived reality promote problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation (Entman, 1993).
The authors and three research assistants participated in the data analysis. The process of analysis started with content analysis. First, expressions of the events were gathered and listed from the data. After listing the expressions, they were grouped into themes to create a condensed description of the events during the investment project. After having depicted the main events, the authors created a detailed description of the sequence of the phases. This sequencing was done to understand how the project proceeded and what characterized the different phases of the project.
Second, the analysis was continued to examine issues related to stakeholders and firm–stakeholder relationships. To identify important stakeholders, two of the research assistants identified the different stakeholders mentioned in the data by calculating how often different stakeholders were mentioned. Stakeholders mentioned in the data were the governments of Uruguay, Argentina, and Finland; local people; NGOs; financiers; and workers. The most often mentioned stakeholders were the Uruguayan government (mentioned 21 times in press releases and 41 times in newspaper articles), the local people (6 and 56, respectively), and the Argentinean government (5 and 42, respectively). These were identified as the key stakeholders. The Finnish government and NGOs were not at all mentioned in the press releases, and financiers and workers were not at all mentioned in the newspaper articles. The Finnish government was mentioned 16 times and NGOs 15 times in the newspaper articles, whereas financiers were mentioned 9 times and workers 8 times in the press releases.
After completing the content analysis that was used to outline the course of events into a timeline depicting the four phases of the project (Table 3), the authors performed frame analysis to understand how discourse operates in the different phases of the project. The frame analysis started with a close reading of the data and identifying frames that were meaningful in terms of firm–stakeholder relationships. This inductive frame analysis is different from a deductive frame analysis, which would take particular pre-identified frames as a starting point and then seek to analyze how journalists use these frames (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). The frame analysis was performed by the authors and one of the research assistants. First, the research assistant performed coding to identify substance themes. As a result, a table with the date of the text, the title, events, topics, and actors mentioned was built up. Themes that repeated themselves were looked for with the help of the table. Second, the research assistant identified similarities and differences between the texts and through questioning and close reading of the texts brought up various potential interpretations of the pulp mill investment project. The authors then read the texts again and discussed their interpretations until a common understanding about the frames was achieved.
Timeline Depicting the Four Phases of the Fray Bentos Project With Counts of Press Releases and Media Texts.
Note. The set of press releases and media texts is essentially that used in Kujala, Toikka, and Heikkinen (2009), with a small increase in the number of press releases from 38 to 40. EIA = environmental impact assessment; ICJ = International Court of Justice; CIS = cumulative impact study; IFC = International Finance Corporation; PR = Public Relations.
Finally, the authors completed the frame analysis by examining how firm–stakeholder interaction was represented in each frame. The reading included questioning the taken for granted in the texts and writing up different possible interpretations of the events. The key stakeholders and their relationships were in the focus of analysis. Attention was paid to the set of characteristics of the stakeholders and the duties, rights, and expectations expressed toward them. In analyzing stakeholder relations, attention was paid to the representations of relationships between the key stakeholders. This analysis resulted in three frames and the respective key stakeholder positions and the dynamics of relationships as presented in Table 4. This new information forms the main empirical contribution of the study.
Key Stakeholder Positions and Dynamics of the Relationships in Three Different Frames.
Research Case Findings
The findings are reported in two sections. In the first section, the authors illustrate the course of events with the timeline of four phases. In the second section, the authors present the results of the frame analysis and show, first, how the frames appeared as the dispute evolved, and second, how the frames constructed the key stakeholder positions and the dynamics of relationships between the key stakeholders.
Course of Events
The four phases of the project illustrate the progress of the investment project and show the eruption of the dispute. Table 3 describes the course of events that occurred from the beginning of 2003 until the end of 2007. In the first phase, the company plans the investment and engages stakeholders in the project. In the second phase, the stakeholder resistance increases and the dispute starts to emerge. In the third phase, the dispute becomes heated conflict, and in the fourth phase, the project is finalized despite the dispute. Each of these phases is described in more detail.
Phase 1: Investment is planned and stakeholders are engaged
The first phase of the project runs from first quarter of 2003 until first quarter of 2005. In March 2003, the Finnish pulp company Botnia purchased a 60% share in the Uruguayan company Compańia Forestal Oriental S.A. (FOSA). Botnia soon announced plans to begin studying the possibility to build a pulp mill on the Uruguayan side of the Uruguay River, which forms the border with Argentina. The city of Fray Bentos was considered an ideal location for the pulp mill because of eucalyptus supply, operating environment, pulp logistics, and regional socio-economic impacts. The total calculated investment of about US$1.2 billion was the biggest industrial foreign investment in the history of both Finland and Uruguay. The Uruguayan government supported the project by granting a free trade area to the factory, which eliminated any import tariffs on the equipment.
From the very beginning of the project, Botnia tried to engage different stakeholders in planning and maintain an open conversation with interested parties. Already in 2003, conferences and meetings for the press, local communities, and NGOs were held in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, and in Fray Bentos. An independent team of experts from Uruguay and Finland were asked to carry an obligatory environmental impact assessment (EIA). The socio-economic impacts of the planned mill were also addressed in the assessment as Botnia commissioned a larger than required study to clarify the economic impact of the project. In February 2004, the secretary to the president of Uruguay and the ambassador of Uruguay to Finland together with the representatives of the Uruguayan press visited Botnia’s mill in Finland. Two public forums for questions regarding the project in Fray Bentos and the nearby city of Mercedes were organized and scientific seminars were held to answer the questions related to the diverse environmental and socio-economic aspects of the project.
In April 2004, the EIA and the socio-economic study were completed, and the conclusions of both studies were very favorable to the project. According to the socio-economic study, the completion of the mill would increase the GDP of Uruguay by 1.6% and create 8,000 jobs for the nation. At the beginning of 2005, the Uruguayan government granted an environmental permit to the project. Botnia’s board of directors made the final decision of proceeding with the construction of the mill in March 7, 2005. To announce the pulp mill project, press conferences were held in the Finnish capital Helsinki, and in Montevideo, the capital city and Fray Bentos in Uruguay.
Phase 2: Resistance grows and the dispute begins
In the second quarter of 2005, environmental activists and Argentineans held demonstrations against the project at the border bridge between Uruguay and Argentina. Argentina claimed that the Uruguayan government had not asked for its permission to build the plant. Tens of thousands of people organized protests against the installation of the pulp mill during spring and summer 2005. In June 2005, the presidents of Uruguay and Argentina agreed to set up a bilateral committee to examine the environmental impact of the plant. The Argentinean government requested the World Bank to freeze the funding for the project in July, and as a response to that, the Uruguayan government withdrew from the bilateral negotiations.
In August 2005, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) commissioned a cumulative impact study (CIS). Immediately, Argentina requested suspension to the project until the new environmental report was delivered, and threatened to summon Uruguay to the Hague International Court of Justice (ICJ) to resolve the dispute. In December 2005, the CIS concluded that the mill does not compromise the surrounding environment. The government of Argentina considered the CIS report as inadequate. At the end of 2005, activists established a long-term road block on the border bridge. The opponents of the project in Argentina argued that Uruguay did not hand over all available information on waste treatment and potential air pollution. Members of environmentalist groups and the residents of Gualeguaychú, the Argentinean city across the river from the plant, protested against the project, arguing that it would, among other things, pollute the river, foul the area, and ruin the area tourism business.
Phase 3: The dispute becomes heated conflict
The situation heated at the beginning of 2006 when Argentina brought a case to the Hague ICJ claiming that the construction of the mill violated a 1975 bilateral agreement on the use of Uruguay River. The Uruguayan authorities countered that negotiations regarding the use of the border river had been held between Uruguay and Argentina as required by the bilateral agreement, and further, argued that the negotiations were filed at the time without objections from Argentina. In March 2006, the presidents of Uruguay and Argentina urged a 90-day moratorium on construction and activists agreed to remove the road blocks. Botnia expressed readiness to suspend the construction work to contribute to the dialogue between the two countries. However, it halted the works for only 10 days, which action provoked the activists to reactivate the road blocks on the bridge.
In April 2006, the Argentinean president put pressure on the Finnish government to become involved in the dispute, but the Finnish government declined to intervene in the affairs. The Finnish minister of foreign trade and cooperation for development canceled a visit to Argentina claiming that she might not be welcomed. In addition, she stated that the issue was to be resolved by Uruguay, Argentina, and Botnia. In May 2006, Botnia brought Argentinean journalists to visit a Botnia pulp mill in Finland to convince them of the company’s reliable operating practices. Also, Botnia agreed to conduct one more environmental impact study with the IFC. In June 2006, Botnia presented an open invitation to visit its mills either in Finland or Uruguay to verify how the company operates.
In July 2006, the Hague ICJ voted 14 to 1 against the claim of Argentina and ruled that Botnia could continue building the pulp mill. In August 2006, representatives of the Argentinean environmental groups presented a petition including the signatures of 40,000 residents of Gualeguaychú. Once again, Botnia invited all interested parties to visit Botnia’s Joutseno mill in Finland to support dialogue concerning the social, environmental, and economic impacts of the Botnia mill in the Uruguay River region. The communications function in Botnia’s Uruguay project was reinforced by appointing a Communications and Public Relations (PR) team to handle the communications and public relations of the project.
In October 2006, the IFC and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) released the final CIS for the pulp mill project. The final report confirmed the main findings of all previously conducted environmental studies and concluded that the mill met all environmental standards and would generate significant economic benefits for the Uruguayan economy. Botnia made a statement that the study clearly shows that the mill will implement best available techniques (BAT); would be accepted in Canada, the United States, and Europe; and will be likely to perform better than any of the existing mills with respect to environmental performance. In November 21, 2006, the IFC approved a US$170 million loan to Botnia for undertaking the construction work. Moreover, MIGA agreed to provide US$350 million as political risk insurance for the project.
In the spring of 2007, Argentina and Uruguay tried to solve the situation in negotiations led by the king of Spain. At the same time, the opponents demanded that the construction work should be halted, and organized a demonstration of over 100,000 participants in April 2007. The Uruguayan Government installed a wired fence and a special police force of about 500 members to protect the Botnia pulp mill.
Phase 4: The project is finalized
In August 2007, the ONTUR harbor, the port Terminal de Nueva Palmira in Uruguay run by Ontur International S.A. handling Botnia’s pulp deliveries, was inaugurated by the Uruguayan president. The harbor was enlarged to facilitate the pulp deliveries and to host one of the largest warehouses in Uruguay. The harbor company was owned by Botnia (40%) together with several local and international partners. The location of the port, next to the point where Rio Uruguay, Rio de la Plata, and Rio Paraná meet, and where the Atlantic ships may enter to meet the river barges, provided strategic advantage to Botnia. In addition to pulp deliveries, the harbor was to become an important export hub for fruit and other products.
Although the negotiations between Argentina and Uruguay continued without reaching any concrete results during the second half of 2007, the investment project was finalized successfully. In October 2007, Botnia announced that the construction and installation works on Botnia’s pulp mill in Uruguay were technically almost completed and that the start-up of the pulp mill would take place when the permit procedure was finalized. Botnia expressed that it will continue to work in close cooperation with the authorities. The start-up process of Botnia pulp mill in Fray Bentos began as the Uruguayan authorities gave the authorization for the plant to start operations in November 2007. The mill was started in November 2007, and at the end of the year, the first vessel with Uruguayan eucalyptus pulp sailed from the ONTUR harbor.
Frames in Texts
The timeline depicted above outlines the course of events in the investment project. It does not, however, explain the dynamics through which firm–stakeholder relationships were (re)shaped in the course of events and why and how the dispute evolved. Frame analysis was conducted to understand the key stakeholder positions and the dynamics of stakeholder relationships. Moreover, frame analysis made it possible to address the question of stakeholder dialogue and its outcomes in the dispute.
The authors identified three ways of framing the dispute in the press releases and the newspaper articles: (a) the investment frame, (b) the conflict frame, and (c) the political frame (Table 4). Each of these frames represents a different “storyline” about the FDI. The frames attribute certain positions to the firm and the key stakeholders. The investment frame was the first to arise at the very beginning of the project in 2003. It was followed, first, by the conflict frame at the beginning of 2005 when the demonstrations started at the border bridge and soon after by the political frame as the governments of Uruguay and Argentina became involved. Thus, the emergence of the frames during the FDI is sequential in the beginning but overlapping as the project proceeded (Figure 1). Each frame is described in detail.
Phases and frames in the Fray Bentos Investment Project.
The investment frame
In the investment frame, the events are evaluated mainly from the company’s point of view. Since the beginning of the project, the pulp mill was treated as an investment with great future promise and financial benefits, and the economic value and technical excellence were emphasized. In this frame, the pulp mill has the news value as being the largest investment by a Finnish company outside of Finland, and the largest foreign investment and development project in the history of Uruguay. Botnia is positioned into a strong leader position in relation to the key stakeholders. Ironic representations of Argentineans belittle not only the activists but also the Argentine government and politics in general. This underestimation was typically expressed through the quotations of representatives of the focal company. The following extracts, from the newspaper articles, show how the investment frame represents the dispute as a typical, soon to be solved issue in foreign investment. In these extracts, which the authors have selected as representative of the investment frame, the journalists give voice to a representative of Botnia:
Due to political reasons, Argentineans have been left out from Botnia’s contracts, although the construction site is right on the border between the countries. “It is unfortunate that Argentina treats its own companies like this,” says Piilonen [Botnia Project Manager in Uruquay]. (Helsingin sanomat, November 18, 2005) Trust toward authorities and institutions is traditionally weak here and doubts are great. “There is strong belief that foreign companies can enter the country by using old technology that is already forbidden in Europe,” says Jolkkonen [the Finnish Embassador in Buenos Aires]. (Helsingin sanomat, March 13, 2006)
In the investment frame, Botnia, as the initiator of the project, is represented as the focal actor. The government of Uruguay and the local people are presented as active parties, who have the power to influence the progression of the project. In this frame, the local opinions and knowledge are treated as important, which is represented through a welcoming attitude and examples of indirect support toward them. The positive stance and relation between Botnia and the government of Uruguay are constructed by explicating the interdependence between these two actors. The government of Uruguay offers the operating environment for the company, and the firm brings a new source of wealth for the poor country. In addition, interdependencies between the company and its owners and between the company and the local community are emphasized.
In the investment frame, stakeholder relationships are built on the idea that implementing the investment plan in collaboration with the different stakeholders is strategically important for the focal company. The taken-for-granted assumption is that the success of the investment relies on the support of the stakeholders, who need the company for creating wealth (the owners), earnings and infrastructure (the government of Uruguay), and wealth, infrastructure, and work (the local people). The government of Argentina and citizens of Gualeguaychú are presented as opponents without a reason. They are portrayed, on one hand, as outsiders who have no rights and no reason to go against the project, and on the other hand, as troublemakers who are resisting the project just for the sake of resistance. Botnia is considered dependent on its supporters’ backup and building collaborative, win–win relations are viewed as important. Botnia’s activity and capability in communication are perceived as necessary in seeking to come into the desired outcome.
The conflict frame
As the opposition toward the pulp mill project grew, the conflict frame emerged. It emphasizes disagreements among individuals, groups, and organizations. In this frame, the actors are set against each other, their actions are equated with winning and losing, and the events are dramatized and polarized. The frame highlights the contrasting opinions and views by different actors. The conflict frame positions the actors into certain roles, for or against the investment, and represents the situation as a struggle for power between the focal company and the opposing government, Argentina. The authors selected the following extracts from the newspaper articles as representative of the conflict frame. In these extracts, journalists give voice to the representatives of Botnia to state their position and to express their frustration over the situation:
Botnia has not been able to influence the opinions of Argentineans, although the mill’s environmental report is a public document. “Most likely hardly anyone in Argentina has read the report, and the general public does not have any understanding of this business. And if they do, it is based on the image of the industry in the past”, says Varis. (Helsingin sanomat, August 11, 2005) The Finnish pulp and paper manufacturer Metsä-Botnia is progressing with the construction of a pulp mill in Uruguay, in Fray Bentos on the Uruguay River, which forms the border with Argentina. The construction is going ahead in spite of an appeal by the presidents of both countries for a temporary halt. . . . Piilonen does not expect Uruguay to order a complete halt to the construction. He expects the company to suspend some work. “Then it is up to the companies to decide, in the final instance, whether or not to agree to the request of the President.” “We will not suspend anything before we get a request from the state. Then we will consider the matter.” (Helsingin sanomat, March 13, 2006) Responding to demands from Argentina that Metsä-Botnia should do more to defuse the crisis, the company’s CEO Erkki Varis indicated that Botnia had done “enough gesturing.” (Helsingin sanomat, April 14, 2006)
Within the conflict frame, Botnia and the governments of Uruguay and Argentina are represented as parties fighting against each other with the help of local people. The contradictory interests, expectations, and facts produced by independent institutions are highlighted. Argentina is depicted as the troublemaker while Uruguay is portrayed as only partly guilty for the dispute. Local people on both sides are represented both as active parties in the dispute and as passive subjects to company information. Citizens in Fray Bentos are described as active defenders of the mill and as believers in its benefits. Citizens of Gualeguaychú are portrayed to fear for the environmental damages and loss of tourism and therefore organizing demonstrations and road blocks. However, the “right” information does not reach them as they have no trust in big companies. In the struggle, Botnia is represented as a company having to address the misconception of the pulp and paper industry in general. It is viewed as an actor seeking to claim justification for its action by communicating and giving information. Botnia is also depicted as dependent on institutional power in legitimizing the project. For the company, acting according to the given rules and regulations, refraining from commenting on the dispute, and staying outside the dispute becomes constructed as desired action. This posture is seen as a way to maintain neutrality and sustain the company’s reputation among financiers and other institutional actors, which help in ensuring the continuation of the project.
In the conflict frame, the stakeholder relations are constructed as quarrelsome, troubled, and even angry. The focal company, however, is presented as an actor striving for informative and assuring relationships, and the opponents’ arguments are understated. Obeying the rules and regulations and being decisive are portrayed as ways out of the dispute.
The political frame
Within the third frame, the political frame, the pulp mill investment is set in a political context, where the company is excluded from the discussion, and the responsibility for causing and solving the problem is attributed to the politicians. The frame constructs the reasons for the dispute as entirely political. The responsibility for causing and solving the conflict is attributed to the presidents and governments. The following extracts illustrate how the journalists give voice to the CEO of Botnia to argue for the withdrawal of the company from the dispute. The authors have chosen these extracts to illustrate how the political frame operates in giving meaning to the actions of the company:
Botnia CEO Erkki Varis argues the demands are political and are not based on scientific and technical facts. Varis says that the work will continue as planned. (Helsingin sanomat, August 11, 2005) Botnia does not actively engaged in influencing the Argentinian opinion, this is a task of the Government of Uruquay. (Helsingin sanomat August 11, 2005)
In the political frame, Argentinean and Uruguayan governments are represented as influential actors and they are presented as strategically important parties to the dispute. Botnia is given a role of a bystander in the intergovernmental discussion. Power, opportunity, and responsibility to solve the issue are assumed to be in the hands of the host government, Uruguay. The Argentinean government is blamed for the dispute and its motives in getting involved are questioned. The local people are represented as demonstrators for or against the plant.
Interestingly, the home country of Botnia, Finland, is considered as a stakeholder, but not represented as an active party to the dispute. Rather, the government of Finland is expected to stand by the company, but not to become involved in the dispute. The stakeholder relations are presented either as ignoring (toward Argentina) or empowering (toward Uruguay). This frame suggests that abstaining from the political game is the strategically correct action for the focal firm.
Table 4 depicts four key actors, Botnia, Uruguayan and Argentinean governments, and the local people in the dispute. These key stakeholders were mentioned in the data most often and were the active parties throughout the project. Other stakeholders, including the Finnish government, the IFC, and the NGOs, participated in the dispute when the key actors called for their support or involvement.
Each way of framing the foreign investment highlights the particular interests of different stakeholders, and thus, promotes particular ways of conducting stakeholder dialogue as natural and self-evident. The corporation, Botnia, the governments of Uruguay and Argentina, and the local people become identified as the most powerful actors. Other stakeholders are mentioned but their roles do not become constructed as important as the roles of these actors.
Each frame constructs stakeholder dialogue between Botnia and the key stakeholders differently. First, the investment frame makes it natural and strategically feasible for Botnia to maintain a close relationship with Uruguay while seeking to build a more distant and neutral relationship with Argentina. This frame assumes a power position for Botnia in relation to both the Uruguayan and Argentinean governments and highlights the company’s assets that are of interest to these two stakeholders. Second, the conflict frame presents the firm as a mere victim of the local struggle where Argentina is the true troublemaker. Within this frame, building a neutral relationship with two local governments and treating their interests as locally based issues that have little relevance in running a global business would be assumed of the corporation. Finally, the political frame constructs both governments as passionate parties with conflicting interests and the firm as a passive victim to the events over which it has little control. This frame assumes a low power position to the firm in relation to the governments. Within this frame, it would be natural and self-evident to assume that the firm treats the interests of the governments as urgent, requiring immediate action, so that the operations would not be jeopardized.
The investment frame is prevalent in the press releases. They portray a company determined to carry out the planned strategic investment no matter what happens. The press releases are coherent in producing a power position for the firm in relation to the stakeholders. At the start of the events, the press releases emphasize the positive socio-economic impacts of the investment to the local community and the local government. Also, the corporation’s interest in the environmental impact is highlighted. When the situation erupted, the press releases gave attention to proactive stakeholder dialogue and argued for the corporation’s willingness to openly discuss with the opposing stakeholders. Toward the end, the press releases highlight the positive impacts of the investment and care in the environmental issues.
Conclusion
In stakeholder literature, a growing interest lies in better understanding the dynamics of stakeholder relationships and stakeholder dialogue. Language and meaning making, however, have not gained much attention in stakeholder research. This study shows that a focus on language provides a way to study how stakeholder dynamics are continuously reproduced through language and how the possibilities and barriers to stakeholder dialogue materialize with the use of language.
A foreign investment that has gained a lot of media coverage and academic attention was chosen as an empirical context for the study of stakeholder relationships. The investment project provides an interesting case, because despite the focal company’s professed good intentions and attempts to engage various stakeholders in a participatory process of stakeholder dialogue, the situation escalated and turned into an international dispute. A total of 40 press releases and 147 newspaper articles were analyzed using frame analysis.
This study contributes to stakeholder literature in two ways. First, the research shows how, despite the focal company’s professed good intentions and attempts to engage various stakeholders in a participatory process of stakeholder dialogue, the situation escalated and turned into an international dispute. The company was not able to reassure the critics or create participatory relationships with the opposing stakeholders; rather, stakeholder dialogue was successful only with those supporting the investment. Although literature on stakeholder dialogue promotes the idea of integrating stakeholders’ concerns into the corporate decision-making processes and gives advice on how to translate stakeholder dialogue theory into actual practice in a complicated situation (Pedersen, 2006; van Huijstee & Glasbergen, 2008), the authors argue that, to understand the emergence of a stakeholder dispute, attention needs to be paid to the frames, which constructs meaning to stakeholder relationships. The frame analysis unveils the complex constructs of interests, values, and expectations inherent in the firm–stakeholder interaction. The authors identified three frames, the investment, the conflict, and the political frame, and showed how they evolved sequentially and partially overlapping in the course of the dispute. Each frame positioned the focal firm and the key stakeholders differently in the dispute and provided reasoning for the varying dynamics in the stakeholder relationships.
As a main empirical contribution of the study, through frame analysis, the authors show how the frames in texts covering the investment have a direct impact on the stakeholder dialogue. Without paying attention to the different ways of framing the FDI project, the firm may not realize why the stakeholders are not willing to accept its arguments. And vice versa, if the different stakeholders are fixed with their own approaches in framing the issue, they are unable to see other ways of viewing the situation.
Second, the authors show how stakeholder relations are constructed through language. By focusing attention on texts and language, the study contributes to the request for additional research on communication in conflict situations (Walton, 2007) and research on language on stakeholders (Jensen & Sandström, 2013) to better understand stakeholder dialogue and the dynamics of the stakeholder relationships. In the existing stakeholder literature, the authors position themselves among those who claim that the critical relationships between organization and its stakeholders include cooperation, collaboration, and network influence (Post, Preston, & Sachs, 2002). The authors show how language is effective in creating the “known reality” of the stakeholder relationship and how, by questioning the use of language, the “known reality” can be analyzed and the consequences of language in the stakeholder relationships be brought to under scrutiny. Treating language not so much as a tool to be used to convince stakeholders but more as a context in which firm–stakeholder relationships gain meaning allows for understanding how different realities of stakeholder relationships coexist and how companies and stakeholders orient their actions in each reality.
The study is subject to at least four limitations. First, the presented view can be argued to be one-sided as the events are described mainly from the point of view of the focal company. In the information collected, there is some bias toward the company perspective as the company press releases and newspaper articles only from the home country of the company headquarters constitute the data. Newspaper articles often position issues in national terms (Li, 2009). Over the years, in the Finnish media, the pulp and paper industry has been praised for developing the world’s leading technology, and the forest industry companies have been acclaimed for taking good care of the Finnish forest, considered as a highly significant national asset. Both in the press releases and the newspaper articles, it is taken for granted that companies in this sector use the best available practices and the most advanced technology (cf. Laurila & Lilja, 2002), and that the Finnish practices are of high quality and transferrable to other countries as such. In terms of the data analysis, additional reliability would be achieved by including other newspapers in the analysis. As the chosen methodology, however, demands a very close and detailed analysis of the data, additional data could have led to losing the accuracy of the focused analysis.
Second, there is a lack of proof of the frames. Although space prevents detailed presentation of the texts themselves, excerpts, or quotes, the authors offer their interpretation of the frames and events based on a fine-grained textual analysis. The authors add one more interpretation of the event, from a scholarly perspective looking at publicly available communication on the dispute.
Third, the limitation embedded in most textual analyses is that newspaper articles and press releases are not naturally occurring data as they are written for the purpose of the publishing media. Thus, an important aspect of the analysis is what is left unstated or outside the frames (Fairclough, 1992). In the field of business journalism, there is a dominance of the neoliberal discourse (Fairclough, 2005a; Vaara & Tienari, 2002; Vaara et al., 2006), which means that the texts are much more likely to address investment issues than ethical, moral, or environmental issues.
Fourth, as a single case study, the generalizability of this research is inevitably limited. The framing processes are culture- and nation-specific (Strömbäck & Dimitrova, 2006) as are the ways in which corporations are managed. Newspaper articles are a result of various factors, including commercial imperatives, the political system and its configuration, political–cultural notions and values, and pleasing the powerful elites (Strömbäck & Dimitrova, 2006). As many of these factors have traits that are in common with other Western countries, it can be argued that this analysis describes cross-national diversity (Aguilera & Jackson, 2003).
Companies are taking corporate responsibility issues seriously, and the responsiveness to the expectations of different stakeholders has become greater than before (Crane, Matten, & Spence, 2008; Freeman, Harrison, & Wicks, 2007). The values of business environment affecting corporations are increasingly pluralistic, and political and ethical responsibilities are ever more pressed upon corporations (Burchell & Cook, 2008; Calvano, 2008; Hendry, 2005). Companies that are interested in corporate responsibility issues and the far-reaching societal impacts of their business activities can benefit from the results of this study in reflecting on the ways by which the texts produced by the company and its stakeholders participate in shaping the reality where the firm operates (Svendsen, 1998). Sensitivity toward language and the ways by which the use of language constructs stakeholders’ interests and values provides for finding a common ground and for codifying practices for multi-stakeholder dialogue (Calvano, 2008) as well as for finding ways to improve corporate communication (Kujala et al., 2009; Lehtimäki et al., 2011). Furthermore, by understanding stakeholder relations as constructed through language, firms are better equipped to consider the long-term effects of stakeholders’ claims (Aaltonen et al., 2008) and more prepared to devote resources to conflict management and management of relationships with other parties (Skippari & Pajunen, 2010). Researching a foreign investment with a discursive approach informs corporate decision makers of the role of language in managing firm–stakeholder relationships.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article.
The article was accepted during the editorship of Duane Windsor.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We are grateful for the financial support of the Foundation for Economic Education.