Counter-Activism Against Ideological Opponents: Evidence Based on the Competitive Dynamics of Corporate Engagement in Advocacy Giving

Haram Seo ()
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Haram Seo: Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843

Organization Science, 2025, vol. 36, issue 4, 1333-1356

Abstract: A growing body of literature has sought to understand the strategic drivers of corporate activism, emphasizing the ideological composition of a firm’s workforce as its salient internal driver. Despite these advancements, however, the heterogeneity in its effect remains underexplored, leaving it unclear when employee ideology is more likely to translate into activism. I address this gap by considering competitors’ actions—another important driver uncovered in the scholarship—as a key source of heterogeneity. I examine how these actions can shape the external context in which a firm’s employees evaluate the value of its activism, thereby influencing the firm’s incentives to act on employees’ preferences. My central conjecture is that activism by so-called ideological opponents of a firm’s employee base will be a particularly strong driver of its own activism. This is because actions taken by competitors who hold stances opposite to those valued by a firm’s employees can create a temporal window during which the firm can gain enough employee appreciation for its activism—particularly counter-activism opposing the stance of the competitor. Leveraging the donation records of corporate foundations to advocacy nonprofits as a novel channel for studying corporate activism, I find support for this conjecture. Consistent with my theory, I further find that this effect is driven by firms whose employees hold homogeneous ideological preferences and arises primarily around issues with strong ideological contention.

Keywords: corporate activism; employee ideology; competitive differentiation; counter-movements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:36:y:2025:i:4:p:1333-1356

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