This paper uses a theory of social movement outcomes, the political mediation model, to explain why certain corporations targeted by boycotts were more likely to concede to boycotters' demands. We should expect that boycotts threaten tangible and intangible resources held by corporate targets, that these threats are transmitted indirectly through media coverage of the boycotts, that past performance declines create opportunities for movement influence, and that the level of threat posed by a boycott generates more influence when targeted against corporations that recently experienced performance declines. Using a sample of corporate boycotts reported in major national newspapers between 1990 and 2005, the results provide support for the political mediation model. Corporate targets of boycotts were more likely to concede when the boycott received a great deal of media attention. The effect of media attention was amplified when the corporate target previously experienced a reputational decline.
This paper uses social movement theory to examine one way in which secondary stakeholders outside the corporation may influence organizational processes, even if they are excluded from participating in legitimate channels of organizational change. Using data on activist protests of U.S. corporations during 1962–1990, we examine the effect of protests on abnormal stock price returns, an indicator of investors' reactions to a focal event. Empirical analysis demonstrates that protests are more influential when they target issues dealing with critical stakeholder groups, such as labor or consumers, and when generating greater media coverage. Corporate targets are less vulnerable to protest when the media has given substantial coverage to the firm prior to the protest event. Past media attention provides alternative information to investors that may contradict the messages broadcast by protestors.
While much of economic sociology focuses on the stabilizing aspects of markets, the social movement perspective emphasizes the role that contentiousness plays in bringing institutional change and innovation to markets. Markets are inherently political, both because of their ties to the regulatory functions of the state and because markets are contested by actors who are dissatisfied with market outcomes and who use the market as a platform for social change. Research in this area focuses on the pathways to market change pursued by social movements, including direct challenges to corporations, the institutionalization of systems of private regulation, and the creation of new market categories through institutional entrepreneurship. Much contentiousness, while initially disruptive, works within the market system by producing innovation and restraining capitalism from destroying the resources it depends on for survival.
O rganization theory is a theory without a protagonist. Organizations are typically portrayed in organizational scholarship as aggregations of individuals, as instantiations of the environment, as nodes in a social network, as members of a population, or as a bundle of organizing processes. This paper hopes to highlight the need for understanding, explicating, and researching the enduring, noun-like qualities of the organization. We situate the organization in a broader social landscape by examining what is unique about the organization as a social actor. We propose two assumptions that underlie our conceptualization of organizations as social actors: external attribution and intentionality. We then highlight important questions and implications forming the core of a distinctively organizational analytical perspective.
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