Engaging in organizational advocacy to fulfill corporate responsibility to race: How passion drives activists’ behavior

Abstract

This study relies on corporate responsibility to race (CRR) as an overarching framework, arguing that organizations have a moral obligation to combat racial injustice. We further contend that organizational advocacy, when strategically managed, offers one means to fulfill this normative obligation, particularly when focusing on activist publics as an audience of primary interest. Relying on an experimental survey design, we investigate various message attributes (rhetoric- vs. action-oriented) and their impact on BLM activism trajectories (conventional vs. high-risk vs. social media activism). Findings indicate the importance of harmonious and obsessive passion among activists in bolstering conventional and high-risk activism, respectively. Moreover, social media activism is shown to influence offline activism, especially among harmoniously passionate activist publics.