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Corporate Sociopolitical Activism

Introduction

Building Understanding of Organizational Stances on Controversial Issues, Special issue of the Journal of Business Research; Deadline 1 Jul 2024

INTEREST CATEGORY: MARKETING STRATEGY, MARKETING AND SOCIETY
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Posted by: Meike Eilert

Journal of Business Research Special Issue

Call for Papers

Corporate Sociopolitical Activism: Building Understanding of Organizational Stances on Controversial Issues

Submission Window

  • Submission window opens May 1, 2024
  • Deadline for submissions July 1, 2024

Special Issue Guest Editors

  • Jacob Brower,Queens University, Canada (Executive Guest Editor; jbrower@queensu.ca)
  • Ernest Baskin,泭 Josephs University, USA (ebaskin@sju.edu)
  • Meike Eilert,University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA (meike.eilert@unl.edu)
  • Sommer Kapitan,Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand (skapitan@aut.ac.nz)
  • Jessica Vredenburg,泭Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand (jessica.vredenburg@aut.ac.nz)

Special Issue Information

Over the past decade, the world has faced an increasing degree of public polarization over a variety of social, political, and environmental issues (Edelman, 2023). Despite this polarization, for-profit organizations are increasingly participating in these conversations by taking public stances and trying to shape the narrative in the marketplace and beyond (Brower, Forthcoming; He et al., 2021; Kapitan et al., 2022). While prior work has applied various labels to describe and study this emerging phenomenon, we follow recent work for the purpose of this call for papers and refer to these types of organizational actions as corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) (Brower, Forthcoming). In most cases, these public CSA stances remain highly controversial in the modern marketplace and, often, are only tangentially related to organizations fundamental business models (Korschun, Martin & Vadakkepatt, 2020). Consequently, research finds that nearly as many consumers oppose CSA as support this behavior (Hydock et al., 2020). As a result, organizations receive mixed messages from salient stakeholder groups: For example, while some surveys show that anywhere from 33% to 60% of individuals expect companies to take a public stand on social issues (Barton, 2020; Hydock, Paharia & Blair, 2020), other surveys report that a majority of respondents believe too many brands now use societal issues as a marketing ploy (Edelman, 2019).

A key result of this unsettled landscape is that CSA requires an organizational willingness to potentially alienate one or more groups of stakeholders as the organization supports and speaks to other groups that are more aligned to the issues supported by their CSA activities. That is, as Bhagwat et al. (2020, p. 3) note, in taking an CSA stance, a company risks backlash from stakeholders with opposing views. At its core, this fundamental characteristic of CSA – the engagement with a controversial issue and thus high potential for negative stakeholder reactions – differentiates it from other, more well-studied, aspects of an organizations strategic efforts to manage the demands of their key stakeholders, especially those broadly falling under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) umbrella. Whereas CSR activities are generally viewed as beneficial by society (e.g, donations to charitable organizations) and involve broadly accepted issues, CSA involves publicly adopting a non-neutral stance on controversial social issues in which significant segments of the public vocally disagree on whats right or appropriate (Wettstein & Baur, 2016). This renders CSA messaging and actions inherently controversial (Eilert & Cherup, 2020; Vredenburg et al., 2020).

While a nascent body of work has emerged around topics related to CSA as a strategic tool that can be used to signal organizational values to various stakeholder groups, there remains much to understand and explore. As recent work has described, there are two broad areas of study related to CSA to date in the literature (Brower, Forthcoming). First, researchers have begun to explore the antecedents of CSA, the study of which has been relatively evenly split between a top down perspective, and a bottom-up perspective (Eilert and Cherup, 2020). Top down studies to date tend to draw upon Upper Echelons theory and have focused on the impact of C-level executives and top management team (TMT) characteristics on an organizations CSA adoption (e.g., Eilert & Cherup, 2020; Hambrick & Wowak, 2021 Nalick et al., 2016). On the other hand bottom-up studies have typically employed stakeholder theory to explore how CSA is driven by the adoption or co-creation of the values of social movements, often together with an organizations employees, customers, and supply chain partners (Eilert & Cherup, 2020; Georgallis, 2017; Kapitan et al., 2022). While limited empirical evidence exists in this sphere to date, the key takeaway is that CSA adoption seems to be driven by both forces (e.g., Hambrick & Wowak, 2021), and further exploration is required, drawing on additional theoretical bases, to understand the factors driving organizational CSA adoption more fully.

The second – and most heavily researched to date -domain of study for CSA explores outcomes related to these activities across multiple levels of analysis, covering aspects of the micro- and macro-level outcomes. At the micro level, past research has focused primarily on stakeholder-level responses to CSA efforts and how these responses aggregate into organizational level outcomes. Specifically, prior work has primarily explored these questions from the perspective of customers (e.g., Dodd & Supa, 2014, Garg & Saluja, 2022; Hydock et al., 2020; Hambrick & Wowak, 2021; Hoppner & Vadakkepatt, 2019; Korschun et al, 2016; Mukherjee & Althuizen, 2020; Schmidt et al., 2022; Vredenburg et al., 2020), and to a lesser extent employees (e.g., Hambrick & Wowak, 2021; Wowak et al., 2022), investors (e.g., Bhagwat et al., 2020), and supply chain partners (e.g., Kapitan et al., 2022). At the macro level, researchers have suggested that the primary goal of social change espoused in the definition of CSA requires that one also consider the societal implications of these initiatives as an important outcome (e.g. Bhagwat et al., 2020; Brower, forthcoming; Hoppner & Vadakkepatt, 2019; Spry et al., 2021). However, deeper exploration of the macro-level outcomes associated with CSA have thus far been underexplored in the business management field.

Ultimately, academic research in this growing area of organizational practice has been accelerating over the past several years, and the aim of this special issue is to serve as a gathering space for intellectual work on the theorization, drivers, and underpinning reactions and responses to CSA in modern strategy.

Potential Research Questions

We invite a broad range of topics related to CSA. While much research on CSA to date has come from business management and marketing, we envision space in this special issue for other fields such as entrepreneurship, human resource management, finance, accounting, and international business to encompass the broad spectrum of JBR readership.

To that end we welcome manuscript submissions that explore:

  • We welcome both empirical and conceptual papers related to more clearly defining the CSA construct as well as methodological papers related to improving the way that we conceptualize and study CSA from an academic lens. For example, how might we be able to apply or integrate new theoretical lenses into the study of CSA.
  • Theoretical and empirical exploration of antecedents of and responses to CSA across a variety of stakeholder groups both internal (e.g., customers and employees) and external (e.g., supply chain partners, investors, communities, NGOs, government, social movements) to the organization.
  • Theoretical and empirical studies exploring macro-level effects of CSA on the evolution of institutional fields, social norms, and especially societal well-being, where there has been limited exploration of the nature of the effects of CSA on sociopolitical conditions, levels of polarizations in society, political engagement, and general societal outcomes.
  • Theoretical and empirical studies exploring contextual features (e.g., environmental, social, technological, etc.) that affect or moderate the emergence, persistence, and impactfulness of CSA across various stakeholder levels and levels of analysis.
  • Studies of how and why organizations select certain types of CSA activities, and how they manage and navigate the fluctuating and polarized demands placed upon them by competing stakeholder groups, especially for multi-national organizations navigating the complexity of the international landscape.
  • Studies of the organization-level impacts of the adoption of CSA activities, with a special eye towards studies that can increase our understanding ofwhen,泭why, andhowsome organizations experience differential outcomes associated with CSA.
  • Research exploring how organizations manage, monitor, and report their CSA activities through, for example, public statements, reports, financial documents, and advertising as well as any gaps between their reporting and stakeholder perceptions.
  • Research exploring the complex interplay between CSA and the political and legal spheres, and the renegotiation of the role of organizations as drivers of political change.

Manuscript Submission Information

Submissions are welcomed starting: May 1, 2024

Paper Submission Deadline: July 1, 2024

If you’d like to submit to this special issue, you can do it.

Please make sure you select the Article Type‘VSI: Corporate Sociopolitical Activism’when submitting your paper.

All submissions will go through the JBR regular double-blind review process and follow the standard norms and processes.