Indonesia's plastic waste crisis - with over 620,000 tons each year spilling from households to waterways - has fueled greater environmental advocacy from stakeholders such as Greenpeace, WALHI, Sungai Watch, and Nexus3. Each NGO has been able to shape public discourse and apply pressure on Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies including Danone, Unilever, and Tetra Pak to improve sustainability. Within this framework, this thesis examines how FMCG companies respond to NGO scrutiny by asking their decision-makers to reflect on strategic communication challenges and opportunities.
To address this research problem, qualitative case studies that utilize methodologies of media monitoring, interviews, and document analyses are used. Through the view of its research questions, this research finds that corporate initiatives (such as #BijakBerplastik) and public service announcements are dwarfed by antagonistic, emotional narratives from NGOs that compel stakeholders to take action. The challenges that FMCG faced included public skepticism towards the communication, accusations of greenwashing, and differing interpretations across business units.
The novel contributions of this research are: (1) situating the communication theories within the Indonesian cultural values of gotong royong (working together), (2) demonstrating a digital amplification bias perspective in the NGO-corporate behavior spectrum, and (3) highlighting an emergent collaboration of unexpected behaviours that draw into question some of the adversarial assumptions. Some recommendations included: being transparent with reports, pursuing digital consultations, and facilitating collaborations based on stakeholder priorities

Kata Kunci: FMCG, NGO advocacy, plastic waste, strategic communication, Indonesia, CSR, legitimacy, stakeholder engagement, greenwashing, collaborative sustainability