Brayden G King

Perspective---Finding the Organization in Organizational Theory: A Meta-Theory of the Organization as a Social Actor

Organization 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.

Keeping up Appearances Reputational Threat and Impression Management after Social Movement Boycotts

This paper explores the extent to which firms targeted by consumer boycotts strategically react to defend their public image by using prosocial claims: expressions of the organization’s commitment to socially acceptable norms, beliefs, and activities. We argue that prosocial claims operate as an impression management tactic meant to protect targeted firms by diluting the negative media attention attracted by the boycott. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 221 boycotts announced between 1990 and 2005. Results suggest that boycotted firms do significantly increase their prosocial claims activity after a boycott is announced. Firms are likely to react with a larger increase in prosocial claims when the boycott is more threatening (it receives more media attention), when the firm has a higher reputation, or when the firm engaged in more prosocial claims before the boycott. We demonstrate that firms fall back on their established impression management strategies when they face a reputational threat and will increase these previously perfected performances as the threat increases. In this way, the severity of a threat positively moderates the relationship between a firm’s prior performance repertoire and future performance repertoire, a mechanism we refer to as “threat amplification.” When an organization with high reputational standing has bolstered its position by using prosocial claims in its past performance repertoire, however, it will perceive itself to be shielded from movement attacks, decreasing the likelihood of any defensive response, a mechanism we call “buffering.” Our findings contribute to impression management by exploring the use of impression management in response to a movement attack and highlighting the important role that a firm’s pre-threat positioning plays in its response to an image threat.

The Practice of Theory Borrowing in Organizational Studies: Current Issues and Future Directions

The borrowing and application of concepts and theories from underlying disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, is commonplace in organization theory. This article critically reviews this practice in organizational research. It discusses the borrowing of theoretical perspectives across vertical (cross-level) and horizontal (cross-context) boundaries and makes an associated distinction between theories in organizations and theories of organizations. It also explicates several unintended consequences and metatheoretical challenges associated with theory borrowing and highlights the legitimate reasons and ways for borrowing theories. By way of example, this article reviews how theories and concepts have been borrowed and applied in organizational research from two different literatures: individual identity and social movements. Overall, it is argued that treating organizations as social actors is the key to appropriate horizontal and vertical theory borrowing in organizational studies, in that it highlights the distinctive features of the organizational social form and organizational social context.

A Social Movement Perspective of Stakeholder Collective Action and Influence

This article provides a social movement theory—based explanation for the emergence and influence of corporate stakeholders. The author argues that stakeholder influence originates in the collective action of potential stakeholders. Collective action binds individual stakeholders together, assists in the formation of a common identity and interests, and provides the means for stakeholder strategic action. The author suggests three main factors that explain the emergence of stakeholder collective action and its consequent influence: mobilizing structures, corporate opportunities, and framing processes. By focusing more on the collective action necessary for stakeholder influence, we also gain a better understanding of how negotiation processes might unfold between stakeholders and corporate decision makers.

The stages of the policy process and the Equal Rights Amendment, 1972-1982

Studies of how social movements impact policy outcomes typically treat policy change as a dichotomous phenomenon; a governmental unit either adopts or does not adopt a particular policy in a particular time frame. This simplistic view of the policy process runs the risk of masking how movements and other factors matter at various stages of the policy process. Each stage is characterized by different rules and different consequences; thus, movements and other factors ought to matter differently at each stage. The authors examine three stages of policy development with regard to state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Results show that movements mattered more to legislative decisions in the earlier stages of the policy process, but that their effects were eclipsed in later stages by public opinion.

Competition and Resource Partitioning in Three Social Movement Industries

Drawing hypotheses from resource mobilization and resource partitioning theories (RMT and RPT), this article examines how interorganizational competition and social movement industry (SMI) concentration affect the level of tactical and goal specialization of protest organizations associated with the peace, women’s, and environmental movements. Additionally, the article examines how specialization affects the survival of these organizations. By and large, the findings are commensurate with the expectations of RMT and RPT. Results indicate that interorganizational competition leads to more specialized tactical and goal repertoires. Concentration in the SMI also leads to specialization, but this is only true for less established organizations. Results also indicate that tactical and goal specialization decrease organizational survival, unless the industry is highly concentrated.

Social Movements, Risk Perceptions, and Economic Outcomes The Effect of Primary and Secondary Stakeholder Activism on Firms’ Perceived Environmental Risk and Financial Performance

Although risk assessments are critical inputs to economic and organizational decision-making, we lack a good understanding of the social and political causes of shifts in risk perceptions and the consequences of those changes. This article uses social movement theory to explain the effect of environmental activism on corporations’ perceived environmental risk and actual financial performance. We define environmental risk as audiences’ perceptions that a firm’s practices or policies will lead to greater potential for an environmental failure or crisis that would expose it to financial decline. Using data on environmental activism targeting U.S. firms between 2004 and 2008, we examine variation in the effectiveness of secondary and primary stakeholder activism in shaping perceptions about environmental risk. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that primary stakeholder activism against a firm affects its perceived environmental risk, which subsequently has a negative effect on the firm’s financial performance.

Social Movements, Civil Society and Corporations: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

The relationships between social movements and civil society on the one hand, and the corporate world on the other hand, are often shaped by conflict over the domination of economic, cultural and social life. How this conflict plays out, in current as well as in historical times and places, is the central question that unites the papers in this special issue. In this essay, we review the differences and points of contact between the study of social movements, civil society and corporations, and offer an agenda for future research at this intersection that also frames the papers in the special issue. We suggest that three research areas are becoming increasingly important: the blurring of the three empirical domains and corresponding opportunities for theoretical integration, the institutional and cultural embeddedness of strategic interaction processes between agents, and the consequences of contestation and collaboration. The papers in this special issue are introduced in how they speak to these questions.

Protest and Policymaking: Explaining Fluctuation in Congressional Attention to Rights Issues, 1960–1986

Although past research has failed to establish a link between protest and policy change, we reexamine the relationship at the agenda-setting stage of policymaking. We assert that protestors compete for attention among lawmakers at the agenda-setting stage. An issue receives more attention when the frequency of protest activity around a particular issue is sufficiently high for that issue to stand out within the field of competing issues. We examine this process by analyzing the factors associated with increasing and fluctuating attention to rights-related issues in Congress. We find that protest, issue legitimacy and issue competition account for variation in the number of congressional hearings granted to rights issues.

A Dynamic Process Model of Private Politics: Activist Targeting and Corporate Receptivity to Social Challenges

This project explores whether and how corporations become more receptive to social activist challenges over time. Drawing from social movement theory, we suggest a dynamic process through which contentious interactions lead to increased receptivity. We argue that when firms are chronically targeted by social activists, they respond defensively by adopting strategic management devices that help them better manage social issues and demonstrate their normative appropriateness. These defensive devices have the incidental effect of empowering independent monitors and increasing corporate accountability, which in turn increase a firm’s receptivity to future activist challenges. We test our theory using a unique longitudinal dataset that tracks contentious attacks and the adoption of social management devices among a population of 300 large firms from 1993 to 2009.