How is the tension between conflict and deliberation resolved in shareholder engagement? We address this question by studying shareholder engagement as a deliberative process with three stages: establishing dialogue, solution development, and solution implementation. We theorize that two interactionist mechanisms, deliberative interaction and the voicing of disagreement, play different roles at different stages of the process. We test our hypotheses with a proprietary database of 169 environmental, social, and governance engagements with US public companies over 2007–12. We find that while (...) deliberative interaction does not help advance the engagement process, it positively moderates the effect of disagreement in the solution development stage. By contrast, in the solution implementation stage, deliberative interaction amplifies the negative effect of disagreement, thus hindering progress in the engagement. Our article contributes to shareholder engagement, deliberation theory, and interactionist organization theory by establishing that engagement effectiveness is an interactional achievement shaped by both deliberation and disagreement. (shrink)

Nowadays democratic liberal societies face a rising challenge in terms of fragmentation and erosion of shared values and ethical pluralism. Democracy is not anymore grounded in the possibility of a common understanding and interpretation of the same values. Neverthless, legal and political philosophy continue to focus on how to reach consensus, especially through monist, objectualist, contractualist, discursive and deliberative approaches, rather than openly affording the issue of disagreement. Far from being just a disruptive force, disagreement and conflict are matters of (...) fact that no reflection on democracy can underevaluate. They are the major issues through which to look at the intersection of law, politics and morals. The inclusion of dissent is a powerful tool for moral recognition of different understandings of justice. That is where legal procedures become crucial. Law is a fundamental element in the building of a democracy. But it is also particularly exposed to disagreement. Language indeterminacy, dogmatic concepts and value pluralism constitute the main elements that lead to alternative and conflicting interpretations of law in a democratic framework. Major legal progress in the past has come from different understandings of the same legal materials. In this article I argue that respect for disagreement should be a moral principle in democracy and that the role of legal disagreement is essential to understand the evolution and the future directions of democracy as the government of a political community. To do so, a link between respect for disagreement and legal interpretation and argumentation must be established in order to make room for reason and avoid extreme skepticism on the contribution of law to the enforcement of democracy. (shrink)