Take a Stand or Keep Your Seat: Board Turnover after Social Movement Boycotts

McDonnell, Mary-Hunter; Cobb, J. Adam

doi:10.5465/amj.2017.0890

Cited by 59 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Our focus on the role of directors in making decisions in the domain of corporate social action is consistent with prior work (e.g., Marquis and Lee, 2013; McDonnell and Cobb, 2019). The role of directors may be even more salient in the Chinese context (Zhang, Marquis, and Qiao, 2016), where the board is often not independent from the top management in Chinese companies and is ultimately responsible for the firm’s operations and involved in internal decisions (Kato and Long, 2006: 14–15; see also Firth, Fung, and Rui, 2006: 1295; Liao et al, 2009: 20).…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 55%

Coming Back and Giving Back: Transposition, Institutional Actors, and the Paradox of Peripheral Influence*

Luo

Chen

Chen³

2020

Administrative Science Quarterly

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We explore transposition—bringing ideas from one context to a distant other context—as a mechanism for institutional change, and we study the conditions under which institutional actors successfully undertake it. Prior work on transposition has emphasized the paradox of embedded agency: actors embedded in a context may struggle to effect change because they lack exposure to fresh ideas. We complement this work by arguing that transposition is also subject to a paradox of peripheral influence: actors not embedded in a context, who may be a source of fresh ideas, can struggle to effect change because of their peripheral or outsider status. We suggest that these dual paradoxes can be overcome by actors who simultaneously have exposure to alternative institutional environments and are sufficiently embedded in the focal field to gain trust and buy-in from other decision makers. Such actors can both see the potential of new ideas and navigate their implementation successfully. We identify returnees from abroad, who have studied or worked elsewhere and then emigrated back to their home country, as one such type of actor. Using data on publicly listed Chinese companies from 2000 to 2012, we show that the presence on firms’ boards of directors of returnees with relevant exposure abroad significantly raises firms’ participation in corporate social responsibility, specifically in the form of making corporate donations. Supporting our theorizing about the two paradoxes, the effect of returnees is stronger when they or their board allies have greater exposure to foreign experience and greater embeddedness in the local context. The effect is also stronger when field conditions, such as insufficient economic development, present greater need for change.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 55%

Coming Back and Giving Back: Transposition, Institutional Actors, and the Paradox of Peripheral Influence*

Luo

Chen

Chen³

2020

Administrative Science Quarterly

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“…Lastly, as mentioned above, our study identifies important facilitators of change (i.e., presence of women in power positions). This complements prior findings in this literature that decision makers who are sympathetic to a movement's cause are crucial allies for realizing change (McCarthy and Zald, 1977;Tarrow, 1998;Briscoe et al, 2014;McDonnell and Cobb, 2019).…”

Section: Related Literaturesupporting

confidence: 81%

“…Research finds that the strength of sympathy depends on factors such as whether one is in the same state as the victim, shares similar past experience, and has social proximity (e.g., same racial and gender groups) (Loewenstein and Small, 2007). Studies of social movements also stress the importance of collective identity, solidarity, and commonly shared beliefs and ideologies as powerful motivations to participate in and support a movement (e.g., Briscoe et al, 2014;McDonnell and Cobb, 2019). This suggests that female producers are more likely than male producers to be sympathetic to the call of #MeToo to empower women.…”

Section: Heterogeneity In Weinstein-association Effect By Gender Composition Of Production Teamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While it is unclear how costly change is in these contexts, the fact that 43% of the replacements for the fired individuals cited in the NYT article are women suggests that the so-called "pipeline problem" may be less constraining than assumed. In contrast, #MeToo may have a limited impact in geographies and sectors that do not typically attract media attention, in which stakeholders tend to be ideologically opposed to the movement's claims (Marquis et al, 2006;McDonnell and Cobb, 2019), or if changes are genuinely costly.…”

Section: External Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scandal, Social Movement, and Change: Evidence from #MeToo in Hollywood

Luo

Zhang

2022

Management Science

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Social movements have the potential to effect change in strategic decision making. In this paper, we examine whether the #MeToo movement, spurred by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, leads to changes in the likelihood of Hollywood producers working with female writers on new movie projects. Because #MeToo affected the entire industry, we use variation in whether producers had past collaborations with Weinstein to investigate whether and how #MeToo may spur change. We find that producers previously associated with Weinstein are, on average, about 35% more likely to work with female writers after the scandal than they were before, relative to nonassociated producers, and the size of this effect increases with the intensity of the association. Female producers are the main drivers of our results, perhaps because they are more likely than male producers to resonate with the movement’s cause and face relatively low costs of enacting change. Changes made by other groups, such as production teams with the most intense association with Weinstein and less experienced all-male teams, may be better explained by motivations to mitigate risk. We also find that producers do not sacrifice writer experience by hiring more female writers and that both experienced and novice female writers have benefited from the increased demand. Our study shows that social movements that seek to address gender inequality can, indeed, lead to meaningful change. It also provides perspective for thinking about whether, and to what extent, changes may occur in broader settings.

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“…For example, prospective employees with pro-social attitudes are willing to work for less compensation when a firm is revealed to be socially responsible (Burbano, 2019), and this is particularly true of the highest performers (Burbano, 2016). Further, social activist boycotts that accuse a firm of malfeasance tend to increase turnover among organizational elites who sympathize with the challenging movement (McDonnell & Cobb, 2020). Employees who are pro-socially oriented also perform at higher rates when their employers act as more than mere profit maximizers (Flammer & Luo, 2017).…”

Section: Extending Werner's Cross-sectional Analysis In the Alec Exposed Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reexamining investor reaction to covert corporate political activity: A replication and extension of Werner (2017)

Minefee

McDonnell

Werner

2020

Strategic Management Journal

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Exploiting a whistleblower's leak of the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) corporate sponsors, we quasi-replicate and extend Werner's (2017) event study of investor reaction to covert corporate political activity (CPA). Werner found that investors reacted positively to the accidental disclosure of covert ties to the Republican Governors Association. In contrast, when we apply the same research design to the ALEC leak, we find that, on

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Take a Stand or Keep Your Seat: Board Turnover after Social Movement Boycotts

Cited by 59 publications

References 72 publications

Coming Back and Giving Back: Transposition, Institutional Actors, and the Paradox of Peripheral Influence*

Coming Back and Giving Back: Transposition, Institutional Actors, and the Paradox of Peripheral Influence*

Scandal, Social Movement, and Change: Evidence from #MeToo in Hollywood

Reexamining investor reaction to covert corporate political activity: A replication and extension of Werner (2017)

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