Counter-Activism Against Ideological Opponents: Evidence Based on the Competitive Dynamics of Corporate Engagement in Advocacy Giving

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Seo, Haram
• 署名单位: Texas A&M University System; Texas A&M University College Station; Mays Business School
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2023.17382
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 1333-1356
• 关键词: corporate activism; employee ideology; competitive differentiation; counter-movements

摘要

A growing body of literature has sought to understand the strategic drivers of corporate activism, emphasizing the ideological composition of a firm's workforce as its salient internal driver. Despite these advancements, however, the heterogeneity in its effect remains underexplored, leaving it unclear when employee ideology is more likely to translate into activism. I address this gap by considering competitors' actions-another important driver uncovered in the scholarship-as a key source of heterogeneity. I examine how these actions can shape the external context in which a firm's employees evaluate the value of its activism, thereby influencing the firm's incentives to act on employees' preferences. My central conjecture is that activism by so-called ideological opponents of a firm's employee base will be a particularly strong driver of its own activism. This is because actions taken by competitors who hold stances opposite to those valued by a firm's employees can create a temporal window during which the firm can gain enough employee appreciation for its activism-particularly counter-activism opposing the stance of the competitor. Leveraging the donation records of corporate foundations to advocacy nonprofits as a novel channel for studying corporate activism, I find support for this conjecture. Consistent with my theory, I further find that this effect is driven by firms whose employees hold homogeneous ideological preferences and arises primarily around issues with strong ideological contention.