Social Movements, Collective Identity, and Workplace Allies: The Labeling of Gender Equity Policy Changes

Cynthia S. Wang (), Jennifer A. Whitson (), Brayden G King () and Rachel L. Ramirez ()
Additional contact information
Cynthia S. Wang: Dispute Resolution Research Center, Management & Organizations Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208
Jennifer A. Whitson: Management & Organizations Area, UCLA Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095
Brayden G King: Management & Organizations Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208
Rachel L. Ramirez: United Parent Leaders Action Network, Chicago, Ilinois 60616

Organization Science, 2023, vol. 34, issue 6, 2508-2525

Abstract: Social movements seek allies as they campaign for social, political, and organizational changes. How do activists gain allies in the targeted institutions they hope to change? Despite recognition of the importance of ally support in theories about institutional change and social movements, these theories are largely silent on the microdynamics of ally mobilization. We examine how the labeling of organizational policies that benefit women influences potential workplace allies’ support for these policies. We theorize that one barrier to mobilizing workplace allies is a misalignment of the labels that activists use to promote new policies and employees’ affiliation with collective identities. We conducted five experiments to test our hypotheses and 26 qualitative interviews to provide illustration of our core concepts. We demonstrate that employees high in feminist identification are more likely to support feminist-labeled (feminist and #MeToo) than unlabeled policies, whereas those low in feminist identification are less likely to support feminist-labeled than unlabeled policies (Studies 1–3). However, we find that participants for whom organizational identification was high (whether measured or manipulated) and feminist identification was low supported organizationally labeled policies more than feminist-labeled polices (Studies 4 and 5). This illustrates that policies whose aims may not align with one collective identity can still garner support by activating another relevant collective identity. Within our studies, we provide evidence that these effects are mediated via feelings of pride in the organization (and not fear or anger), suggesting that positive emotions are a central mechanism in mobilizing workplace allies.

Keywords: social movements; collective identities; labels; feminist; #MeToo; pride; organization and management theory; institutional theory; power and politics; research design and methods; laboratory research; experimental designs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1492 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:34:y:2023:i:6:p:2508-2525

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().