Lori Qingyuan Yue

Trouble in Store: Probes, Protests and Store Openings by Wal-Mart, 1998-2007

The authors consider how uncertainty over protest occurrence shapes the strategic interaction between companies and activists. Analyzing Wal‐Mart, the authors find support for their theory that companies respond to this uncertainty through a “test for protest” approach. In Wal‐Mart’s case, this consists of low‐cost probes in the form of new store proposals. They then withdraw if they face protests, especially when those protests signal future problems. Wal‐Mart is more likely to open stores that are particularly profitable, even if they are protested. This uncertainty‐based account stands in sharp contrast to full‐information models that characterize protests as rare miscalculations.

The failure of private regulation: Elite control and market crises in the Manhattan banking industry

In this paper, we develop an account of the failure of private market-governance institutions to maintain market order by highlighting how control of their distributional function by powerful elites limits their regulatory capacity. We examine the New York Clearing House Association (NYCHA), a private market-governance institution among commercial banks in Manhattan that operated from 1853 to 1913. We find that the NYCHA, founded to achieve coordinating benefits among banks and to limit the effect of financial panics, evolved at the turn of the twentieth century into a device for large, elite market players to promote their own interests to the disadvantage of rival groups that were not members. Elites prevented the rest of the market from having equal opportunities to participate in emergency loan programs during bank panics. The elites’ control not only worsened the condition of the rest of the market by allowing non-member banks to fail; it also diminished the influence of the NYCHA and escalated market crises as bank failures spread to member banks. As a result, crises developed to an extent that exceeded the control of the NYCHA and ended up hurting even elites’ own interests. This paper suggests that institutional stability rests on a deliberate balance of interests between different market sectors and that, without such a balance, the distributional function of market-governance institutions plants the seeds of institutional destruction.

Laws of Attraction Regulatory Arbitrage in the Face of Activism in Right-to-Work States

Past research recognizes that firms exploit regulatory variations to their advantage but depicts such regulatory arbitrage as a dyadic process between firms and regulators. We extend this account by including a firm’s non-market rivals and suggest that firms view regulatory differences as part of a corporate political opportunity structure and exploit regulatory variations to disadvantage their rivals. Empirically, we focus on variations in right-to-work (RTW) laws that signal the pro-business climate in a state; these laws exist in 22 U.S. states. Using a spatial-regression discontinuity design, we analyze how Walmart locates new stores in the face of anti-Walmart activists and exploits regulatory discontinuities on the borders between RTW and non-RTW states. We find that Walmart is more likely to propose new stores, and to open those stores even if they are protested, at the borders of RTW states, compared with the borders of neighboring non-RTW states. We conclude with a discussion of implications for the study of regulation, social movements, and organizations.

Information Spillovers from Protests against Corporations A Tale of Walmart and Target

In this study of the impact of protests against Walmart (a first entrant) on Target (a second entrant) from 1998 to 2008 in U.S. geographic markets, we develop and test a theory of information spillovers from protests against corporations proposing to enter a new market. We argue that the number of protests directed against a first entrant is a noisy signal for the second entrant because such protests are likely to be dominated by protest-prone activists and so do not reflect the sentiments of the community. The second entrant is likely to discount protests against the first entrant that are led by protest-prone activists and rely instead on protests led by local, decentralized activists as indicative of a community’s preferences. We argue that the second entrant differentiates between protests against the first-entrant firm and the organizational form, and discounts protests against a specific firm but not those against the form (e.g., big-box stores). Further, the second entrant is likely to rely on the reaction of the first entrant as an indication of the meaning of the protest. Finally, all of these signaling effects will be stronger in markets in which the second entrant has no experience and so lacks local knowledge. The study provides broad support for our arguments.

Asymmetric Effects of Fashions on the Formation and Dissolution of Networks: Board Interlocks with Internet Companies, 1996–2006

This paper extends the contextual perspective of network evolution to account for a more complete process of network evolution by showing that the impacts of fads and fashions on the formation and dissolution of interorganizational networks are asymmetric. Building on contact theory, this paper proposes that direct contact affords a flow of knowledge that counters tendencies to social conformity. Network dissolution differs from network formation in that partners have already obtained direct information. As a result, network dissolution is not as responsive to fads and fashions as network formation, and network structures induced by fads and fashions often survive beyond the life cycle of a fashion. An analysis of the interlocking ties of S&P 1500 firms with Internet companies from 1996 to 2006 supports the view that fads and fashions have asymmetric effects on the evolution of networks and also shows that (1) fads and fashions have a strong impact on the formation of networks but not on their dissolution, (2) the networking behaviors of organizations with direct contact are less induced by fads and fashions, and (3) the networks formed by organizations with direct contact during the heyday of a fashion survive longer.

Community Constraints on the Efficacy of Elite Mobilization: The Issuance of Currency Substitutes During the Panic of 1907

Organizing collective action to secure support from local communities provides a source of power for elites to protect their interests, but community structures constrain the ability of elites to use this power. Elites’ power is not static or self-perpetuating but changing and dynamic. There are situations in which elites are forced into movement-like struggles to mobilize support from their community. The success of elites’ mobilization is affected by cultural and structural factors that shape the collective meaning of supporting elites’ actions and the identities that are formed in doing so. I find broad support for these propositions in a study of the issuances of small-denomination currency substitutes in 145 U.S. cities during the Panic of 1907. I discuss the contributions of this article to elite studies, the social movement literature, and the sociology of money.

Activists, Categories and Markets: Racial Diversity and Protests Against Wal-Mart Store Openings in America

Identity movements rely on a shared “we-feeling” among a community of participants. In turn, such shared identities are possible when movement participants can self-categorize themselves as belonging to one group. We address a debate as to whether community diversity enhances or impedes such protests, and investigate the role of racial diversity since it is a simple, accessible, and visible basis of community diversity and social categorization. We focus on American communities’ protests against Walmarts entry from 1998 until 2005 and ask whether racial diversity affects protests after accounting for a communitys sense of pride and attachment to their town. We use distance from historical monuments as a proxy of a communitys pride and attachment, and after controlling for it, we find that communitys racial homogeneity significantly increases protests against Walmart.

Contesting Commercialization: Political Influence, Responsive Authoritarianism, and Cultural Resistance:

We develop theory on how a contentious moral market can develop, and we test it with data from a study of the commercialization of Buddhist temples in China from 2006 to 2016, as local government officials try to boost the local economy by transforming temples into tourist enterprises that charge admission fees. The practice is resisted by monks and the public such that the central government, which values public appearances of social justice, is pressured to support their resistance to local officials’ economic demands. Using a data panel of 141 temples, we show that temples’ admission fees are significantly related to the pressure that local government officials face to develop the economy. We also find that resistance to the fees exploits a factional political structure, as the monk-led movement leverages the influence of one political clique that is highly concerned with public appearances of social justice to resist the request of another. In addition, bottom-up channels such as the Internet and marketized media help the public voice its grievances, coordinate collective action, and therefore align with and mobilize the central government to override local government. The contentious view enhances our understanding of how resistance can be possible and effective, especially in an authoritarian regime.