Ripple Effects: How Firm-Activist Collaborations Reduce Movement Contention

Abstract

Prior work suggests that firms can reduce the contentiousness of their social environments by forging cross-sector alliances or collaborations with activist organizations. In this paper, we explore the mechanisms that determine which activists within a social movement field represent the most effective partners for this purpose. To shed light on this question, we employ a unique, self-constructed 10-year panel tracking all contentious and collaborative interactions between 110 environmental movement organizations and a random sample of large, publicly-traded U.S. firms. We find collaborations with environmental activists reduce the contentiousness of the broader environmental movement through two distinct pathways: signaling and relational. As evidence of a signaling mechanism, we find firms experience a decrease in contentious challenges from the movement after they collaborate with a more contentious activist. Second, as evidence of a relational mechanism, we find firms face less contention from activists that are board-interlocked with an activist with which the firm collaborates. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering the influence firm-activist collaborations have outside the focal dyad in shaping the firm’s relationship with the broader movement field. They also shed light on important indirect effects of an understudied phenomenon in research on movements and markets — collaborations between social activists and firms.