There are four strategies for taking on something bigger than you: wit, stealth, patience and subdivision-namely breaking it down into manageable pieces. And as it is for elephants, so it's proving to be for the thorny issue of corporate power.

It's the stuff of legend by now, how in late 1999 an estimated 30,000 demonstrators gathered in Seattle, Washington to protest the behind-closed-doors meeting of the World Trade Organisation, viewed by them as the spidery mastermind of globalisation. It was an ugly three days. Windows were smashed, heads were cracked and by the time it was over, a message had been broadcast across our CNN planet: the world was split in two again. This time, though, the divide wasn't between communists and capitalists. It was between opponents and advocates of globalisation. Multinational corporations (MNCs)-for many people the legions of that very globalisation-are smack-dab in the middle of this. And the reason for this is power. In summer 2000, a Business Week feature story posed the question, 'Too Much Corporate Power?' commenting that: "Amid the good times, citizens feel uneasy about Big Business. The growing political issue is one that companies ignore at their peril … consumers are seething about insensitive corporate behavior." A poll by the same magazine found that nearly three-quarters of the American public "think business has gained too much power over too many aspects of their lives."

Why do so many people believe MNCs have too much power? Broadly speaking, there are four reasons. First, there's the governance gap that has emerged in recent years. The transition to a globalised economy has blurred national boundaries and outstripped institutional capacity to oversee the new world these transformations have created. MNCs are perceived as exploiting the resulting accountability vacuum. And although civil society is an increasingly powerful voice in the emerging global governance structure, many believe it lacks the resources to be an effective counterweight.

A second reason is sheer size. According to a 2000 report by the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies, 51 of the world's 100 largest economic entities are corporations-while only 49 are countries. The world's top 200 corporations are responsible for over a quarter of the economic activity on the globe. Meanwhile the gap between rich and poor is growing. According to the World Resources Institute, between 1960 and 1994 the income ratio of the richest 20 percent to the poorest 20 percent climbed from 30:1 to 86:1. Anti-corporate, anti-globalisation types see a cause-and-effect link between rising corporate power and this accelerating environmental decline and social inequity.

The third factor receives less attention. It has to do with 'meaning.' Ours is a secular, consumerist world, in which bottom-line thinking reigns supreme. One of the effects of this is to devalue alternative ways of experiencing the world. Valuing monetary wealth over the sense of the sacred is one example. Valuing quantities of stuff over quality of life is another. Being guided by the head, not the heart, is a third. Here again, corporations are perceived as the chief agents of a sort of psychological straitjacketing that favors one, dominant, worldview over others. And it's a worldview which the opponents of globalisation are increasingly calling into question.

The fourth reason is complexity. In today's systemic world, change happens incredibly quickly. This is unsettling and makes people feel powerless. One way to make sense of the dizzying pace and ease the cultural vertigo is to blame somebody-and MNCs make a convenient scapegoat. There's nothing new in this. People have been ranting about corporations since the 1950s (remember the 'military-industrial complex?'). Yet the circumstances in which it's occurring are fundamentally different this time around.

For one thing, civil society has considerably more clout than it used to. This makes it much more difficult for corporations to duck or stonewall accusations. A second difference is that we've entered a dual era of globalisation and democratisation-and it's these two in combination that is making things so difficult for corporations. People around the world increasingly expect, indeed demand, to live in an open society, in which they have a say. When stakeholders see decisions that affect them being made behind closed doors by the powers-that-be, they feel as if they're being cheated out of a basic right.

Two centuries ago, the rallying-cry of the American Revolution was: 'No taxation without representation!' Today, globalisation's opponents have a similar but broader grievance: No decision-making without representation. They want MNCs to accord civil society much the same rights that democracies grant their citizens. This is something new-for stakeholders and corporations alike.

Rightly or wrongly, this is the lens through which more and more people are viewing corporations-and it makes sense for MNCs to address it. But how do you tackle the vast and intangible issue of corporate power? The answer is: like eating an elephant, one bite at a time.

The power elephant, broadly speaking, has five distinct aspects-or bites, so to speak. Three are directly linked to the appetite for a more democratic corporate process: participation, transparency and accountability. Today's stakeholders want corporations to include civil society in the decision-making process, to honestly disclose what they do and to be answerable for their conduct. They also want to see companies acting proactively to expand corporate citizenship-the fourth bite-eliminating dissonance between what corporations say versus what they do. The fifth and final mouthful may be harder to swallow: fairness and the question of social justice.

Corporate efforts to address the different elements in the power equation have been mixed (see box). Overall, though, transparency is the issue business has digested most readily, as witnessed by a decade of voluntary corporate environmental reporting and by the success of the Global Reporting Initiative, the CERES-driven process that's developing a global standard for corporate sustainability reporting-with the support of many MNCs.

Another organisation that's starting to garner headlines in this area is the Berlin-based NGO Transparency International, which focuses on corruption. Here too, businesses are aligning themselves with the initiative: In late 2000, a group of the world's largest banks agreed to a set of global anti-money laundering guidelines for international private banks. Participating institutions in the agreement included Barclays Bank, Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Society Génerale and UBS. "Bank policy will be to prevent the use of its worldwide operations for criminal purposes. The bank will endeavor to accept only those clients whose source of wealth and funds can be reasonably established to be legitimate," the guidelines declare. Transparency International catalyzed the process which, according to NGO chairman Peter Eigen, "will make it harder for corrupt people to deposit their ill-gotten gains in the world's banking system." This is far from total openness, but it's tangible proof that business is nibbling, if not biting, the transparency bullet.

Proactivity is another area where companies are making strides. The traditional view of corporations is that they exist solely to make profits. If they create jobs in the process, that's fine-and if they give something back to the communities in which they operate, that's even better. For stakeholders preoccupied with the issue of corporate power, however, that's not enough: the role of the corporation in society needs to expand in line with their growing global clout.

There are signs that this is happening. About 950 people attended last year's annual gathering of Business for Social Responsibility, a San Francisco-based trade association. That's a whopping number compared to most business sustainability conferences and it testifies to companies' increasing acceptance of an expanded view of corporate social responsibility.

Corporate proactivity can take many forms. One option is lobbying for clearly pro-sustainability positions. US automaker Ford, for example, has lobbied for higher gasoline taxes in the US and, more recently, Kia Cars (UK) has encouraged business motorists to take heed of the social and environmental implications of car use-a move that runs counter to the auto-industry party line of encouraging people to drive as much as possible.

Corporations can also work to directly build social and environmental capital. This is the approach the non-profit National Business Initiative (NBI) in South Africa has taken. An association of 175 companies, NBI's avowed mission it to "enhance the business contribution to South Africa's success." It pursues this through programs in local government capacity-building, urban and economic development, education and training.

Dow Chemical's Tanzania International Small-group and Tree-planting Program (TIST), which will be launched later this year, is a further example of corporate proactivity. Tanzanian subsistence farmers are deforesting their country at what Scott Noesen, director of sustainable development for Dow, calls "an alarming rate." Under TIST, Dow transfers funds to the Clean Air Action Corporation (CAAC), a Canada-based for-profit enterprise. CAAC provides the farmers with know-how and materials, including seed, which improve their environmental and economic performance. CAAC also provides trees, which the farmers plant. Through this double-barreled approach, the farmers' quality-of-life improves and deforestation is combated. Dow, meanwhile, gets two main benefits from this pilot program, both of them prospective: credit for emissions reductions and good will in emerging markets.

The third mouthful of the power elephant is participation-and here corporate take-up has been slacker. Anti-corporate types claim that civil society remains effectively excluded from most corporate decision-making, even where such decisions affect it directly. The recent demonstrations against the WTO and World Economic Forum (WEF), however, are an indication that the era of non-participative decision-making may be drawing to a close.

One company that's taking the inclusion bull by the horns is Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux (SLE), a global supplier of water services. In many of its contracts with municipalities, SLE is required to provide universal coverage. This is often easier said than done. Under the terms of its Buenos Aires contract, for instance, delivering service to the city's two million poor would have swallowed up 15 percent of the expenses but generated only two percent of the revenues. There is often resistance from the poor as well, who are more comfortable with the devil they know than with the devil they don't.

SLE calls its solution 'Water For All.' The program has been successfully implemented in Argentina, Bolivia, South Africa, Morocco and elsewhere and a critical dimension of the initiative is community participation. Under the program, members of the local community help decide where the pipes will go and when specific households will connect. Sometimes they do the work themselves and reduce their costs. "The local community participates during the design, building and maintenance phases," says Francois Kaisin, director of quality, environment and safety at SLE. Importantly, SLE doesn't steamroller these communities. "We only go into a neighborhood if 60 percent of the residents say yes," Kaisin insists.

Because of the good will this creates, a very high percentage of people pay their water bills. "They've participated in the process," Kaisin explains. "They feel a kind of ownership." This is good for communities and good for SLE, too. It enables the company to meet its contractual obligations and creates a model it can export to other venues.

If stakeholder participation is a dark continent to most corporations, accountability has proved less palatable still. While it is ultimately company law that makes corporations accountable, what is emerging is a new, more informal type of accountability-the ability to respond openly to the demands and critical feedback of civil society.

This is essentially a function of governance. To be truly 'response-able', corporations must have appropriate safeguards built into their management and board structures. Unfortunately, says Peter Zollinger, executive director of SustainAbility, a UK-based consultancy and think-tank, many business leaders "don't yet recognise that corporate governance and the role of boards are closely linked to corporate accountability to society."

Two strategies are emerging for encouraging corporate response-ability, according to authors Jem Bendell and Rob Lake in their forthcoming book Terms for Endearment: Business, NGOs and Sustainable Development. The first-the 'democratic' approach-sees stakeholders participating directly in the decision-making process. This is practiced to a limited extent in Germany where, by law, shareholders and employees are entitled to elect half of a company's directors. It addresses the issue of participation head on, but can diffuse authority and fragment corporate agendas-or such is the view of many people in the corporate community, where the more cautious 'responsive' approach is making faster headway.

In an ideal world, 'response-ability' would be a function of plain old good listening. Given the human capacity for selective deafness, however, it's better to embed that capacity structurally. Some companies have therefore created dedicated board committees on sustainability-related issues, such as social and environmental accountability (Rio Tinto), environmental and corporate governance (Alcan) and public issues (Coca-Cola). British Telecom has established a European Stakeholder Advisory Panel-though without direct access to board members. Such committees feed into the board, but at arm's length. Stakeholder forums, such as those convened by Ford, Shell, BP, Novo Nordisk, Monsanto, Dupont and Nestlé, offer another possible route to participation. It's an area where we can expect significant progress: witness the opening up of this year's WEF meeting in Davos to NGOs-a first for the exclusive forum.

If participation is a mouthful, by far the toughest morsel for companies cutting their teeth on the power challenge is the issue of fairness. A growing area of concern for stakeholders leery of corporate might is the question of equity and social justice-ensuring that the pie is shared equally. Their allegation: that most corporate activity benefits corporations and the 'haves' at the expense of the have-nots.

One emerging antidote to this power imbalance is fair trade. It favors disadvantaged small businesspeople in developing countries through such measures as paying them a better price than they could negotiate independently and giving them financial credit when needed. "It's about taking positive action to increase the portion of value-added that goes back to the primary producer," says Philip Angier, outgoing chief executive of Traidcraft, a UK-based NGO that specialises in fair trade.

It's a very proactive step, so much so, Angier acknowledges, that "it will always be a marginal activity." Still, it does seem to be catching on, especially in Holland, Belgium, Germany and the UK. In 1997, according to Traidcraft, total fair trade turnover in Europe approached $200m. Altogether there are about 800 trading partners in 45 countries, serving some 800,000 producer families in developing countries. Most but not all of these trading partners are small 'socially responsible' companies: UK retailers Waitrose and Sainsbury are among the larger, more mainstream enterprises that have made a public commitment to fair trade.

In the United States, Seattle-based Starbucks, which has more than 2000 coffee-houses nationwide, now carries a line of fair trade coffee, which it procures through TransFair USA, an Oakland, California-based NGO. The initiative is part of Starbucks' 'Commitment to Origins' initiative, which also includes organic and shade-grown coffee. "Although we're very pleased with the initial marketplace response, we're talking about a very young market niche. TransFair is working diligently to establish this market and we're clearly an important step along the way," reports Sue Mecklenburg, Starbucks' director of environmental and business practices. "As this market grows, getting enough of these types of coffee that meet our quality standards will be an additional challenge."

Starbuck's commitment to fair trade isn't only about fairness. The program also supports transparency. "The best thing a retailer can do is provide products that have transparency associated with them," says Mecklenburg. "Our Commitment to Origins lines do that."

Piece by piece, then, companies are taking in stakeholder demands to right the power imbalance. But what about the whole picture? It's at this 'generic' level that civil society is especially riled up. The systemic question of whether MNCs have too much power and what they should do about it is amorphous and hard to broach; it's also threatening to discuss-and most companies shy away from prizing open what they perceive as a Pandora's box of governance possibilities.

To MNCs' credit, this seems to be changing. Again, the World Economic Forum (WEF) conference in Davos serves as a useful barometer. This annual industry and government retreat-which, according to one progressive writer "bring[s] together the heaviest of the heavy hitters to reinforce and propagate the global elite's vision of the dawning New World Order"-has become a lightening rod for anti-globalisation feeling. Yet the agenda at this year's gathering reflected real concern about the popular reaction against globalisation. The program was dotted with session titles such as 'Addressing the backlash against globalisation,' 'Corporate responsibility redefined' and 'Partnering for the future.' If the written descriptions are taken at face value, their aim was to foster understanding and promote real progress.

This is encouraging, as it demonstrates an acknowledgement by the corporate sector that the civil-corporate power equation needs recalibrating. But while corporations are under siege for having too much power, internally it doesn't always feel that way. As Jane Nelson, director of business leadership and strategy for the Prince of Wales Business Leadership Forum comments: "If you look at MNCs generally, a massive transfer of assets is taking place that favors the private sector. But if you look at single companies, even if they're very large ones, it isn't true they have unlimited power. They're being squeezed on all sides. There's more regulatory oversight, there's stiffer marketplace competition, there are new voluntary codes and standards and societal expectations are increasing. The perception that corporations have too much power may be true at the macro level but not for single companies. While individual corporations have more power than they did in the past, there are also more and different demands for them to be accountable."

Mark Wade, sustainable development director for Shell International, agrees. "In addition to being limited by laws and regulations, responsible companies are also limited by their own Business Principles, which bar such things as paying bribes and colluding on pricing. Public commitments by companies, such as those by Shell to support fundamental human rights and contribute to sustainable development, raise expectations that must be honored. Another limiting factor is the Internet and the global media, which can flash events and issues around the world in seconds. Companies that behave in ways that society finds unacceptable run an increasing risk of damaging their brand and viability."

Stakeholders need to consider this perspective, too. To reunite a world cleft in two there must be honest, open-minded dialogue and beyond that, there must be concrete action. Chewing the cud, where it doesn't lead to deadlock, can be a delaying tactic. "The process has to do more than make us, as businesspeople, feel at peace with what we're currently doing," says Jem Bendell, an associate with the UK-based New Academy of Business. "There's a big difference between comfortable understandings and real change."

For now, then, corporations and anti-corporate types alike might want to keep that Peptobismol handy.

In recent years, many strategies have emerged for redressing the perceived abuses of corporate power. They come from every imaginable sector, especially from civil society and think-tanks, sometimes with the support of progressive business. Herewith, some of the leading movements and solutions:

• The employee ownership movement
• Multi-stakeholder partnerships
• Large-scale ecosystem management

• The anti-corruption movement
• The Global Reporting Initiative

• The corporate charter movement (supports making corporate charters revocable for bad behavior)
• The corporate governance movement (works to transform corporations' internal decision-making process)
• The Socially Responsible Investing movement

• The environmental justice movement (opposes concentrating environmental risks in poor, often black, communities)

• The corporate-citizenship movement
• The Global Compact

What eye-opening actions could corporations take to tackle the power challenge head on? Here are eight radical stretch goals advocated by experts in the field.

• Commit to corporate disclosure well beyond the scope of current regulatory requirement or non-regulatory convention; e.g., when credible scientific studies suggest health problems are associated with a company's product.
• Convene a multi-stakeholder World Commission on Corporate Power, after the model of the World Commission on Dams.
• Underwrite a third party audit of the alignment of your corporation's lobbying activities with its sustainability commitment. Publish the results.
• Install real-time web-cams in corporate production facilities. Invite NGOs to make unannounced visits to production facilities at any time.
• Invite NGOs to vet the corporate sustainability report. Publish their appraisals in the report, unedited.
• Make a public and significant commitment to fair trade.
• Go against the conventional lobbying grain and take a stand contrary to narrow self-interest. Do this twice a year and do it on significant issues.
• Get out of lockstep. Corporations tend to criticise each other gently or not at all. Speak from the heart and denounce behavior that gives your sector a bad name.

Anti-corporate types (ACTs) with an ax to grind about corporate power are on the rise. Here's a sampling.

• Wendell Berry: US-based writer and farmer and champion of locally self-reliant economies. Says: "Properly speaking, global thinking is impossible and those who have tried it have usually been tyrants."
• David Korten: US-based writer and lecturer. Author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate State.
• Helena Norberg-Hodge Swedish-born author of Ancient Futures, which describes the negative impacts of globalisation on indigenous Ladakh in northern India. Founder of the International Society for Ecology and Culture. Winner of the 1986 Right Livelihood Award.
• Vandana Shiva: An India-based physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author-most recently, of Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Founder of Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights, and director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy Institutions.

• Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org): A San Francisco-based human rights organisation dedicated to promoting environmental, political and social justice around the world.
• Center for Campus Organising (www.ccco.org): A Boston-based organisation dedicated to building progressive movements on college campuses.
• The Ecologist (www.theecologist.org): A well-established British-based publication committed to "rethinking basic assumptions." Its mission, according to website material, is to "(divert) our society from a path that has proven to be environmentally, socially and economically unsound." Founded by Edward Goldsmith.
• Schumacher College (www.gn.apc.org/schumachercollege/): Based in southwest England, this alternative educational center specialises in ecological studies. Anti-biotechnology and anti-globalisation in orientation. Attracts high-profile teachers as well as students from around the world.

THE ISSUE COMPANY PROGRESS (on a scale of 1-5 ‘ticks’) THE LOWDOWN Transparency This is where corporations are most aggressively engaging the power issue. The Global Reporting Initiative has a lot to do with this. Proactivity   This is attracting more and more corporate attention, thanks to such things as the UN’s Global Compact and expanding notions of corporate citizenship. Participation   MNCs have numerous praiseworthy initiatives, but civil society feels a long way from empowered. Accountability   A tricky issue. Corporations understandably resist formal accountability to civil society (above and beyond the law). Progress is slow here. Fairness   Fair trade is a great concept but it hasn’t been widely embraced. Corporate defenders argue that globalisation promotes fairness by creating wealth and imposing higher business standards. Opponents disagree. The ‘whole elephant’   Barely on the corporate agenda, though that may be changing. A difficult but critically important subject for serious dialogue.