Does Company Sociopolitical Activism Influence Company Performance?
Presenters: Yashoda Bhagwat (Texas Christian University) and Nooshin Warren (University of Arizona)
Many stakeholders now expect firms to demonstrate their values by expressing public support for or opposition of partisan sociopolitical issues, a phenomenon the authors call corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA). The authors analyze 293 CSA events initiated by 149 firms across 39 industries to understand the impact on the firm’s stock market performance. This research also considers how the CSA’s deviation from key customer, employee, and government stakeholders’ values and the company’s brand image as well as CSA implementation characteristics, such as whether or not the CEO makes the announcement, whether it involves words or behaviors, and how many companies publicly support the cause affect both investor and customer responses.
Other authors: Joshua Beck (University of Oregon) and George Watson (Portland State University)
"When Does Corporate Social Irresponsibility Become News? Evidence from More than 1,000 Brand Transgressions Across Five Countries"
Presenters: Samuel Stäbler (Tilburg University) and Marc Fischer (University of Cologne)
Consumers beware! Media outlets do not report corporate misconduct, such as environmental offences, corruption, or violating societal standards around human rights or employee working conditions consistently and independently. Instead, media are influenced by their own interests, including advertising revenues paid by offending companies. This webinar will report on the results of a new study in the Journal of Marketing that analyzes the media coverage of 1,054 corporate social irresponsibility events reported in leading media outlets in five countries. Results point to key country, company, and brand factors that influence media reporting that can amount to millions of dollars in lost stock market performance.