Toward a Theory of Activist‐Driven Responsible Innovation: How Activists Pressure Firms to Adopt More Responsible Practices

Abstract

Accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate social responsibility (CSR), situated in the CSR domain, have recognized that activists mitigate information asymmetries between firms and consumers. However, depictions of activists as information disseminators do not explain how they perform their quintessential role—pressuring resistant firms to engage in responsible innovation that emphasizes the creation of socioenvironmental value. Drawing from social movement theory that identifies claims as the instrument of such pressure, we examine four activist organizations' use of claims across six campaigns to drive firms to adopt more socially and environmentally responsible practices, a form of responsible innovation. Our core contribution is an empirically grounded theory of activist‐driven responsible innovation (ARI) that proposes how activists use claims to drive firms to engage in responsible innovation, as well as how features of the two sides may shape this outcome. Our ARI theory primarily enriches accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate social responsibility in the CSR domain and, in doing so, secondarily enriches accounts of the influence of activists' claims on firms in the social movement domain. These contributions also speak to the resolution of grand challenges, a core interest of the special issue.

Full text

TOWARD A THEORY OF ACTIVIST-DRIVEN RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION: HOW
ACTIVISTS PRESSURE FIRMS TO ADOPT MORE RESPONSIBLE PRACTICES
Theodore L. Waldron, Ph.D.*
Associate Professor
Area of Management
Jerry S. Rawls College of Business
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79609
Email: tlwaldron@gmail.com
Chad Navis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Management Department
College of Business
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29673
Email: chadn@clemson.edu
Elizabeth Karam, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Area of Management
Jerry S. Rawls College of Business
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79609
Email: elizabeth.karam@ttu.edu
Gideon Markman, Ph.D.
Professor
Management Department
College of Business
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
Email: gideon.markman@colostate.edu
* Corresponding author
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TOWARD A THEORY OF ACTIVIST-DRIVEN RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION: HOW
ACTIVISTS PRESSURE FIRMS TO ADOPT MORE RESPONSIBLE PRACTICES
ABSTRACT:
Accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate social responsibility (CSR), situated in
the CSR domain, have recognized that activists mitigate information asymmetries between firms
and consumers. However, depictions of activists as information disseminators do not explain
how they perform their quintessential role—pressuring resistant firms to engage in responsible
innovation that emphasizes the creation of socioenvironmental value. Drawing from social
movement theory that identifies claims as the instrument of such pressure, we examine four
activist organizations’ use of claims across six campaigns to drive firms to adopt more socially
and environmentally responsible practices, a form of responsible innovation. Our core
contribution is an empirically grounded theory of activist-driven responsible innovation (ARI)
that proposes how activists use claims to drive firms to engage in responsible innovation, as well
as how features of the two sides may shape this outcome. Our ARI theory primarily enriches
accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate social responsibility in the CSR domain and, in
doing so, secondarily enriches accounts of the influence of activists’ claims on firms in the social
movement domain. These contributions also speak to the resolution of grand challenges, a core
interest of the special issue.
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INTRODUCTION
Theories of corporate social responsibility (CSR) commonly posit that firms are obligated
to serve all stakeholders, not only shareholders, through responsible innovation (Carroll, 1991;
Freeman, 2010)—the proliferation of socially, environmentally, and commercially beneficial
practices, products, and policies, among others (Von Schomberg, 2013). Scholars have offered
discretionary and deterministic explanations for such innovation (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012;
Mellahi, Frynas, Sun, & Siegel, 2016). Discretionary explanations emphasize the reasons that
firms proactively engage in responsible innovation (Frynas & Yamahaki, 2016; Mellahi et al.,
2016; Siegel & Vitaliano, 2007). For example, Waldman, Siegel, & Javidan (2006) found that
CEOs’ transformational behavior positively related to their firms’ adoption of social and
environmental initiatives, with Russo and Fouts (1997) reporting that such initiatives can provide
resources that contribute to enhanced financial performance. In contrast, deterministic
explanations focus on the reasons that firms reactively engage in responsible innovation (Frynas
& Yamahaki, 2016; Mellahi et al., 2016). For instance, Zeng, Xu, Yin, and Tam (2012) found that
firms became more likely to issue environmental information disclosures and to disclose greater
amounts of information therein as their industry peers engaged in such behavior.
Of the various deterministic explanations for responsible innovation by firms,
stakeholders play a crucial role in contexts where firms resist innovation that does not primarily
emphasize the creation of commercial value. Specifically, scholars have recognized that
stakeholders pressure resistant firms to innovate in ways that align with the stakeholders’ social
and environmental interests (Frooman, 1999), moving beyond the firms’ commercial interests.
Lamberti and Lettierti (2009) echo this proposal, finding that a large Italian baby food
manufacturer improved its food safety initiatives at the behest of consumers, suppliers, and
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communities. Similarly, Brammer and Millington (2004) reported that firms increased their
charitable contributions in response to calls from consumers. Darnall, Henriques, and Sadorsky
(2010) found that the efforts of regulators, public interest groups, and professional groups
prompted firms to adopt new environmental policies. Likewise, Moir and Taffler (2004)
described how various stakeholders led firms to increase their support of the arts.
In response to largely unanswered calls for finer-grained understanding of specific
stakeholders’ efforts to influence firms (Harrison & Freeman, 1999), CSR scholars have begun to
attend to the influence of activists, given their interest in responsible innovation by firms
(Coombs & Holladay, 2015). Such work has recognized that activists provide a public good by
informing other stakeholders—notably consumers—about the authenticity of firms’ efforts to
abandon their existing practices in favor of more socially and environmentally responsible
alternatives, efforts that may be misrepresented by the firms’ management (Feddersen &
Gilligan, 2001). The proliferation of digital and social media has afforded activists with low-cost
channels for sharing their perspectives (Boyd, McGarry, & Clarke, 2016), an important finding
as media attention heightens responsible innovation (Zyglidopoulos, Georgiadis, Carroll, &
Siegel, 2012). Such media channels make activists and their perspectives more salient to firms
and their stakeholders alike under certain conditions, increasing the potential for the former to
influence the latter (Coombs & Holladay, 2015).
Recognizing that activists mitigate information asymmetries between firms and
consumers does not explain how activists successfully perform their quintessential role—
pressuring firms to engage in responsible innovation (Markman, Waldron, & Panagopoulos,
2016). Such pressure may emanate from the nature of the information that activists provide about
firms and depend on features of the activists and firms themselves (Waldron, Navis, Aronson,
York, & Pacheco, 2019), neither of which theories of CSR adequately address. Scholars have
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recognized that activists rely on various media to pressure firms (Boyd et al., 2016), yet these
accounts have not attended to the nature and impact of the information that activists disseminate
through these channels.
Moreover, the pressure generated by activists, potentially borne of the information they
disseminate about firms and the features of the organizations involved, may also factor into why
some activists succeed and others do not in securing change by firms, (Waldron, Navis, & Fisher,
2013), a consideration also absent from CSR theories. While scholars have proposed various
conditions that matter in activists’ efforts to influence firms (Coombs & Holladay, 2015), they
have not attended to the manner in which the information disseminated by activists contributes to
the outcomes of their efforts.
Such limitations to extant theoretical understanding of activists, who have prompted
change by some of the largest firms in the world (e.g., Wal-Mart and McDonalds), has
contributed to calls for further exploration and explanation of this phenomenon in the CSR
domain (Carroll & Brown, 2018). Answering these calls may provide CSR theory on stakeholder
influence with a more useful and realistic account of activists’ methods for overcoming firms’
resistance to responsible innovation, an account that may hold implications for resolution of
grand challenges. Consequently, our general objective is to elaborate how activists successfully
pressure resistant firms to engage in responsible innovation, particularly by adopting more
socially and environmentally responsible practices.
Drawing from social movement theory, which depicts activists as change agents, we
suggest that the pressure necessary to overcome firms’ resistance to adopting more responsible
practices may emanate from activists’ claims about those firms. Scholars have posited that
activists disseminate claims though visible demonstration tactics (e.g., advertisements, press
releases, protests, boycotts, and shareholder proposals) to contest firms’ practices (Briscoe &
Gupta, 2016). Such claims convey information—the focus of theory in the CSR domain—that
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draws media attention, grows awareness of problems with firms’ practices (cf., McDonnell &
King, 2013), and potentially turns key stakeholders against those firms (den Hond & de Bakker,
2007). Potential ostracism by stakeholders purportedly constitutes necessary and sufficient
pressure to invoke practice change by firms (Waldron et al., 2013).
This general conception of how claims work offers three opportunities to develop richer
understanding of how activists use claims to pressure firms to adopt more responsible practices,
borne of calls to elucidate the means through which claims contribute to such change (Briscoe,
Gupta, & Anner, 2015; Ganzin, Gephart Jr, & Suddaby, 2014). The first opportunity entails
discerning the types of claims that activists make about firms and the mechanisms of pressure
through which these claims enable activists to overcome firms’ resistance to practice change. The
second opportunity entails addressing how activists’ use of claims over time overcomes firms’
evolving resistance to practice change and moves them toward such change. The third
opportunity entails unearthing the features of activists and firms that may shape the influence of
claim use by the former on practice change by the latter. We consequently sharpen our study’s
general objective to account for these opportunities. Specifically, we look to discern the claim
types and pressure mechanisms used by activists to overcome firms’ resistance to responsible
innovation, to determine how activists’ claim use over time contributes to firms’ engagement in
responsible innovation, and to understand the features of activists and firms that may moderate
the influence of claim use on such innovation.
To pursue our research objectives, we perform a multi-case study that uses longitudinal
data (Santos & Eisenhardt, 2009), selecting a research setting where activists’ claims played a
vital role in pressuring resistant firms to engage in responsible innovation. Our sample consists
of six campaigns, conducted by four activist organizations (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace
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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Rainforest Action Network), to pressure
targeted firms to engage in such innovation—namely, by adopting more responsible practices.
Four of the six campaigns were successful and two were unsuccessful in producing such change,
enabling us to evaluate how activists used claims when firms changed and when they did not. By
sampling successful and unsuccessful campaigns by the same activists against different firms in
the same industries, we minimize potential confounds in our exploration of how activists’ use of
claims influences firms’ adoption of more responsible practices. This approach distinguishes our
study from typical multi-case studies, where the presence of such controls is uncommon. It also
distinguishes our study from prior qualitative research on activism, which tends to focus on
single successful cases. Additionally, by obtaining longitudinal data from multiple sources and
actors for each campaign, we cultivate a rich foundation to support the development of theory on
the influence of claim use on practice change.
Our inductive qualitative study provides an empirical foundation for the development of
activist-driven responsible innovation (ARI) theory, which offers an account of how activists
successfully use claims to “drive” responsible innovation by firms. Our theory of ARI posits that
resistant firms’ engagement in responsible innovation depends on activists’ strategic
choreography of various types of claims and pressure mechanisms, with certain organizational
features moderating the influence of claim use on such innovation. Although ARI theory refers to
activists and firms for parsimony and clarity, it predicates on the assumption that activists’ and
firms’ actions—in terms of claims and responsible innovations, respectively—are attributable to
their leaders (Waldman & Siegel, 2008). That is, in order for activists to drive firms to engage in
responsible innovation, activists’ leaders make claims to drive firms’ leaders to make more
responsible decisions (cf. Waldman et al., 2006).
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ARI theory consists of three proposals. First, activists use destabilizing, antagonizing,
and fomenting claims that harness institutional, existential, and competitive mechanisms,
respectively, to overcome firms’ resistance to responsible innovation. Second, the manner in
which activists configure these claims across the initiation, translation, and intensification stages
of their campaigns shapes the likelihood of responsible innovation by firms, specifically by
overcoming firms’ unique resistance to change during each stage. Finally, activists’
inconsistency in choreographing their claims across campaigns, as well as firms’ organizational
structure and experience with activism, further shapes the influence of activists’ claims on firms’
likelihood of responsible innovation.
Our central contribution, then, is the empirically grounded development of ARI theory.
ARI theory primarily informs CSR accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate social
responsibility by enriching extant conceptions of activists as information disseminators and
answering calls to attend to the influence of specific stakeholders on this outcome (Carroll &
Brown, 2018; Harrison & Freeman, 1999). It secondarily informs social movement theory by
enriching basic conceptualizations of how activists’ claims work and addressing calls to
elaborate the manner in which such claims facilitate organizational change (Briscoe et al., 2015;
Ganzin et al., 2014). In making these contributions, we speak to the special issue’s attention to
grand socioenvironmental challenges by elaborating a potential deterministic source of
organizational solutions to them.
METHODOLOGY
To develop theoretical understanding of how activists successfully use claims to drive
responsible innovation by firms, specifically by adopting more socially and environmentally
responsible practices, we adopted a multi-case research design (Eisenhardt, 1989). In particular,
we adapted the methodology used by Santos and Eisenhardt (2009) to suit our research setting
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and objectives. The replication logic of multiple cases allows scholars to confirm or disconfirm
the inferences drawn from individual cases (Yin, 2003), yielding more robust theory than is
typically possible from a single case (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007).
Case Selection
Following this methodology, we sought to identify theoretically relevant cases.
Consistent with our research objectives, cases where activists used claims to drive resistant firms
to engage in responsible innovation were of particular interest. We decided to study activists that
operated as formal organizations, conducted campaigns to make specific firm’s practices more
responsible, and relied on claims about those firms to affect such change. This choice was guided
by the knowledge that activist organizations frequently drive firms to undertake this form of
responsible innovation (Waldron et al., 2013). Moreover, activist organizations specialize in
publicly and pervasively disseminating claims about firms, creating the impetus for practice
change by potentially turning key stakeholders against those firms (Waldron et al., 2019).
We began by identifying an initial set of ten activist organizations from which to identify
a sample of campaigns. Given our interest in activists’ claims, which tend to be publicly
disseminated to generate attention and (potential) opposition to firms (McDonnell & King,
2013), we sought the activist organizations most frequently mentioned in the media. Cognizant
of data availability issues prior to the mid 1990s, we searched the media for mentions of activist
organizations that campaigned against firms between 1996 and 2015, affording us with a sample
frame of 20 years. This range also allowed for the completion of campaign activities, including
in the years immediately following the sample frame. A general search of the Business Source
Complete database returned 6,733 articles. We imported the articles into NVivo, analyzed the
words most frequently mentioned in the them, identified activist organization names and
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acronyms from among these words, and then discerned the ten most frequently mentioned
activist organizations.
Using the initial set of ten activist organizations, we identified a sample of campaigns to
make firms’ practices more responsible. We initially focused on successful campaigns where
claims appeared to play a vital role in driving such change and for which rich longitudinal data
were accessible, providing a robust foundation for theory development (Harris & Sutton, 1986;
Santos & Eisenhardt, 2009; Siggelkow, 2007). Four successful campaigns by four activist
organizations—Friends of the Earth (FOE), Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA), and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN)—met these criteria. FOE’s
campaign drove The Home Depot to offer garden products that were safe for bees. Greenpeace’s
campaign drove Trader Joe’s to offer fish that did not contribute to the destruction of marine
ecosystems. PETA’s campaign drove McDonald’s to improve the living conditions of the
chickens used in its food products. RAN’s campaign drove The Home Depot to sell wood
products that did not contribute to the destruction of old-growth forests.
We subsequently focused on unsuccessful campaigns where claims did not appear to
drive practice change, in order to examine how activists used claims when firms changed and
when they did not. Whereas successful campaigns referred to those where firms adopted the
more responsible practices sought by the activists, unsuccessful campaigns were those where
firms have indefinitely resisted such innovation. The term “indefinitely resisted” reflects the
tendency for activists to persist in their efforts even in the face of sustained resistance, meaning
that it is difficult to label any given campaign as an absolute failure.
We sought to identify unsuccessful campaigns that were connected to and immediately
followed the successful campaigns in our sample, as well as for which sufficient longitudinal
data existed to support meaningful inferences (Harris & Sutton, 1986; Santos & Eisenhardt,
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2009; Siggelkow, 2007). These data needed to span from campaign inception to the present day,
ensuring that campaigns did not succeed after our sample frame. Selecting successful and
unsuccessful campaigns by the same activists against different firms in the same industries
allowed us to isolate the influence of claim use on practice change from potential confounds.
Two unsuccessful campaigns met these criteria. Immediately after its successful
campaign against The Home Depot, FOE unsuccessfully campaigned to drive Ace Hardware to
offer bee friendly products. Immediately after its successful campaign against McDonald’s,
PETA unsuccessfully campaigned to drive Kentucky Fried Chicken to improve the living
conditions of the chickens used in its food products. Adding these unsuccessful campaigns
resulted in a sample of four successful and two unsuccessful campaigns by four activist
organizations. Table I characterizes the sampled activists’ campaigns.
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Two features of our sample make it unique and valuable. First, in obtaining six
campaigns that were successful and unsuccessful in driving firms to adopt more responsible
practices, our sample moves beyond the single successful campaigns typically considered in
prior research on activists. Second, in obtaining successful and unsuccessful campaigns by the
same activist organizations against firms in the same industries, our sample mitigates alternative
explanations for these different outcomes in ways that multi-case studies typically do not. The
distinctiveness of our sample underscores the rarity of comprehensive data on activist
campaigns, particularly the unsuccessful variants, and the difficulty in obtaining such data.
Data Collection
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For each of the six cases, we sought data to support the development of theory on how
activists use claims to drive firms to engage in responsible innovation. Communications from the
sampled activists provided the primary foundation for such inferences. Communications from
target firms and other campaign actors, such as celebrities and regulators, supplemented those
from the sampled activists and enabled us to develop a more holistic understanding of claim use
and influence during campaigns. Overall, we gathered data on the sampled campaigns from 683
sources, which were primarily comprised of media articles (n=193), press releases (n=143),
letters and emails (n=116), web pages (n=77), and blog posts (n=71), among others (n=83). We
obtained these sources from the activists themselves, the firms they targeted, other actors that
were involved in the campaigns, typical databases (e.g., Factiva, Business Source Complete), and
atypical archives (e.g., RAN’s Old-Growth Campaign archive at UC-Berkeley). Table II
summarizes the data obtained for each campaign.
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Analysis
We began our analysis by evaluating each case through the lens of our specific research
objectives. Our attention was on the types of claims and associated mechanisms of pressure that
activists use to overcome firms’ resistance to responsible innovation, the use of these claims over
time that contributes to such innovation, and the features of activists and firms that shape the
influence of claim use on such innovation. Each of the four authors independently analyzed data
within and across cases, without the privilege of existing theoretical perspectives or expectations
of what to find, before collectively sharing and reconciling their independent assessments.
The analytical process entailed three steps. The first step was to develop case histories
that chronicled the evolution of each campaign and temporally bracketed each campaign into
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stages (Langley & Truax, 1994). These temporally bracketed stages provided context within
which to situate and evaluate claim use throughout each campaign. We assigned labels to these
stages based on themes in the activities that characterized each one, particularly distinct claim
use by activists and resistance by firms. Labels for these stages reflect a “certain continuity in the
activities within each period and there are certain discontinuities at its frontiers” (Langley, 1999:
703; citing Langley &Truax, 1994).
The second step was to fulfill our study’s specific research objectives by exploring how
activists use claims to drive firms to engage in responsible innovation, particularly by adopting
more socially and environmentally responsible practices. We began by identifying types of
claims initially based on themes in informational content (i.e., what the claims say about firms)
and subsequently based on latent themes in mechanisms for overcoming resistance (i.e., how the
information disseminated in claims pressures firms to change). Claim informational content
provided the criterion to discern categories in the data, and claim pressure mechanisms provided
the criterion to discern the constructs reflected in these categories. We continued by discerning
the use of these claim types within and across the stages of the sampled campaigns, contrasting
themes in successful and unsuccessful campaigns to glean insights about the link between claim
use and practice adoption by firms. We concluded by looking for additional themes within and
across sampled campaigns, in this instance to discern the features of activists and firms that may
shape the influence of claim use on practice adoption.
Throughout this step of our analysis, we abductively imbued our empirical inferences
with conceptual meaning not directly observable in the data (Åsvoll, 2014). Our abductive
evaluation entailed exploring extant theory to determine possible explanations for our empirical
observations before selecting those that best fit our data (Buchler, 1955). We specifically focused
on conceptualizing the mechanisms through which the observed claim types pressured firms to
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adopt more responsible practices, as well as the mechanisms through which the observed
organizational features moderated the influence of activists’ claims on firms’ adoption decisions.
The third step was to weave our inferences into a holistic theory of how activists use
claims to drive responsible innovation by firms. We specifically sought to formulate propositions
and clarify our contributions. An important consideration is that the overall explanatory value of
our theory exceeds the isolated value of any of its composite parts.
THEORY DEVELOPMENT
Our qualitative study informed the development of ARI theory, which offers an
empirically grounded account of how activists successfully use claims to drive firms to engage in
responsible innovation. We present our theory as a holistic account that synthesizes empirical
observations and theoretical proposals, establishing and reflecting the inextricable link between
concept and data. This section uses our study’s specific objectives as a framework to organize
our elaboration of ARI theory, as each objective corresponds to a component of the theory.
Activists’ Claim Types and Pressure Mechanisms
The first objective of our study was to identify and conceptualize the claim types and
associated pressure mechanisms through which activists drive firms to engage in responsible
innovation, as embodied in the adoption of more socially and environmentally responsible
practices. We posit that activists rely on destabilizing, antagonizing, and fomenting claims for
this purpose. Each claim type conveys unique information about firms that invokes institutional,
existential, and competitive mechanisms of pressure, respectively, to overcome unique aspects of
those firms’ resistance to adopting more responsible practices. This section conceptualizes the
unique informational content and pressure mechanisms associated with each claim type, as well
as illustrates their grounding in the data.
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Destabilizing claims and institutional pressure mechanisms. Activists’ destabilizing
claims, which establish societal reasons for firms to adopt more responsible practices than their
existing versions, harness institutional mechanisms to overcome firms’ resistance to such change.
Institutions refer to sociopolitical rules of behavior, such as regulations and norms, that govern
the actions of firms in fields of activity (Scott, 1995). Rules of this sort form, propagate, and
become taken-for-granted through social interactions (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer &
Rowan, 1977; Zucker, 1977). Institutions provide firms with a framework to distinguish between
normal and abnormal, ethical and unethical, and legal and illegal behavior, defining what is and
is not legitimate. Since firms can experience devaluation and ostracism when they fail to adhere
to societal institutions (e.g., Jonsson, Greve, & Fujiwara-Greve, 2009; Suchman, 1995), they face
the impetus to mitigate the impact of external forces that expose them to such risk.
Activists alert firms to such institutional pressure by questioning behavior, specifying
actions, and identifying consequences, three forms of destabilizing claims. Each form of
destabilizing claim conveys unique information about firms that contests their legitimacy in the
broader institutional environment. Questioning behavior entails construing firms’ existing
practices as illegitimate. Specifying action involves establishing the adoption of new practices as
a pathway to legitimacy. Identifying consequences entails illuminating the potential untenability
of illegitimacy. We now describe the informational content of these destabilizing claims and
illustrate their use by the activists in our sample (summarized in Table III), as well as elaborate
the distinct mechanisms through which each one construes institutional pressure on firms.
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Destabilizing claims that question behavior elaborate the adverse socioenvironmental
effects of firms’ existing practices. We suggest that such claims construe firms’ existing practices
as illegitimate in the broader institutional environment, invoking tension between how firms
currently act and how society expects them to act. FOE, for instance, used such claims to
delegitimize The Home Depot’s sale of bee-harming pesticides:
Europe has banned bee-harming pesticides, retailers in the UK are refusing to sell them, and
stores like Home Depot…have a moral obligation to make the same commitment here in the U.S.
(August 13, 2013)
Destabilizing claims that specify action designate the changes required for firms to
eliminate the adverse socioenvironmental effects of their existing practices. We suggest that such
claims construe the adoption of more responsible practices as behavioral pathways for firms to
regain their legitimacy in the broader institutional environment, invoking tension between how
firms currently act and how activists want firms to act. Greenpeace, for instance, called for
Trader Joe’s to mitigate its negative impact on marine fisheries and associated ecosystems by
removing unsustainably harvested—described as red-listed—seafood from its stores. To
disseminate such content, Greenpeace directed its supporters to call for Trader Joe’s to remove
“red-list species from their shelves,” adopt “sustainable seafood purchasing policies,” and
provide “clear and informative labeling on all the seafood products they sell” (Greenpeace
activist toolkit, June 10, 2009).
Finally, destabilizing claims that identify consequences address the various forms of loss
awaiting firms if they fail to change their existing practices in specified ways. We suggest that
such claims construe the firms’ illegitimate practices as potentially self-destructive, invoking
tension between how firms currently act and what will happen if they continue such behavior.
PETA, for instance, warned McDonald’s of the impending consequences of failing to address its
suppliers’ inhumane treatment of chickens:
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After calling off two years of negotiations with McDonald’s over its mistreatment of animals,
PETA has now declared October “Slam McDonald's Month” because of the company's failure to
make even the smallest improvements for the millions of animals it raises inhumanely and
slaughters annually. More than 300 demonstrations are planned at McDonald’s restaurants around
the world beginning October 16, as PETA launches a new, massive, international campaign
against the company. Graphic in-your-face billboards and newspaper advertisements that read,
“Do you want fries with that? McCruelty to go,” above a picture of a slaughtered cow’s head will
be run to inform consumers about McDonald’s failure to implement basic reforms in the way that
animals are raised and killed for its restaurants. (October, 1999)
Antagonizing claims and existential pressure mechanisms. Activists’ antagonizing
claims, which establish organizational reasons for firms to replace their existing practices with
more responsible alternatives, harness existential mechanisms to overcome firms’ resistance to
such change. Specifically, such claims threaten firms’ reputations and identities (e.g., Hoffman &
Ocasio, 2001; King, 2008; Weber, Rao, & Thomas, 2009), exposing the firms to the various
forms of loss foreshadowed in activists’ destabilizing claims (i.e., identify consequences). The
difference between destabilizing claims that identify consequences and antagonizing claims,
then, is that the former address what will happen to firms if they do not change, whereas the
latter enact those promises.
The existential importance of firms’ reputations and identities hinges on their meaning to
organizational stakeholders. Reputations constitute the salient features that stakeholders ascribe
to and use to distinguish the merits of firms (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990; Fombrun, 1995). Firms
rely on their reputations to secure, among other desired outcomes, higher market values, sales,
and product prices (Davidson, Worrell, & El-Jelly, 1995; Dewally & Ederington, 2006; Rindova,
Williamson, Petkova, & Sever, 2005). Organizational identities consist of beliefs about a firm’s
defining attributes as an industry member and distinct organization (Albert & Whetten, 1985;
Corley, Harquail, Pratt, Glynn, Fiol, & Hatch, 2006). Firms rely on their identities to understand
and construe differences between their firms and others (Livengood & Reger, 2010; Navis &
Glynn, 2010; Wry, Lounsbury, & Glynn, 2011). Moreover, firms’ identities factor into their
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members’ self-concepts, self-worth, and organizational attachments (Ashforth & Mael, 1989;
Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994; Hatch & Schultz, 2000; Mael &
Ashforth, 1992).
Both reputation and identity threats from activists create the impetus for firms to mitigate
the impact of these threats (Bromiley, 1993; McDonnell & King, 2013; Waldron et al., 2013).
Activists alert firms to such existential pressure by attaching stigma, identifying hypocrisy, and
leveraging opposition, three forms of antagonizing claims. Each form of antagonizing claim
conveys unique information about firms that threatens their reputations and identities. Attaching
stigma poses a reputational threat by blaming firms directly for the adverse socioenvironmental
impact of their existing practices. Identifying hypocrisy poses an identity threat by decrying
misalignment between the adverse socioenvironmental impact of firms’ existing practices and
facets of their self-conceptions. Leveraging opposition substantiates these reputational and
identity threats by recognizing key stakeholders’ resistance to firms’ existing practices. We now
describe the informational content of these antagonizing claims and illustrate their use by the
activists in our sample (summarized in Table IV), as well as elaborate the distinct mechanisms
through which each one construes existential pressure on firms.
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Antagonizing claims that attach stigma decry firms for failing to replace their existing
practices with the more responsible alternatives sought by the activists. We suggest that such
claims construe firms’ existing practices as a threat to their reputations, inciting tension between
how the targets act and how stakeholders expect them to act. Facing stakeholder ostracism
localizes the impetus for firms to change. RAN, for instance, leveraged graphic descriptions to
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blame The Home Depot for destroying ancient rainforests, displacing native populations, and
even ruining global ecosystems, among other atrocities. RAN exemplified this approach when it
accused The Home Depot’s executives of doing nothing as “millions of acres of ancient
rainforests have been destroyed” and described their inaction as “barbaric as continuing the trade
in ivory” (October 1998).
Antagonizing claims that identify hypocrisy highlight firms’ failure to replace their
existing practices with more responsible alternatives as inconsistent with core tenets of their
existence, as reflected in the firms’ own statements, commitments, and histories. We suggest that
such claims construe the adverse socioenvironmental impact of firms’ existing practices as a
threat to their identities, inciting tension between how firms act and how those firms (claim to)
expect themselves to act. Recognizing the misalignment between firms’ practices and identities
internalizes the need for those firms to change. PETA, for instance, challenged KFC for making
public statements about its concern for animal welfare that contradicted its failure to improve its
suppliers’ treatment of chickens:
On its website and in statements to media, KFC claims that it is “committed to the humane
treatment of animals,” that “treating animals humanely ... is a key part of [its] quality assurance
efforts,” and that “animals should be free from mistreatment at all possible times from how they
are raised and cared for to how they are transported and processed.” KFC makes these statements
to help it sell more than 350,000,000 chickens in the United States each year. But KFC’s
statements are false…[several sentences detailing charges]….The FTC should enjoin KFC from
making demonstrably false and deceptive statements to consumers about the treatment of
chickens killed for its restaurants and should order corrective advertising. (April 10, 2009)
Antagonizing claims that leverage opposition publicize efforts by stakeholders to oppose
firms for failing to adopt more responsible practices. We suggest that such claims substantiate
threats to firms’ reputations and identities, validating tension between how firms act, how they
(claim to) expect themselves to act, and how stakeholders expect them to act. Confirming that
stakeholders reject their existing practices concretizes the need for firms to change. Greenpeace,
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for instance, signaled mounting opposition to Trader Joe’s seafood sourcing practices by citing
evidence of consumer uprisings against the company:
We had our kick off events today here in San Francisco, we’ll have 3 tomorrow in the east bay
and starting Monday we will begin on our roadtrip down the coast hitting as many Trader Joe’s
along the way as possible! Each stop will be different, but our basic idea is to set up the voting
booth, banners, and such, and have people vote for sustainable seafood! Like I said, we had 2
events today and we already collected 299 postcards in 3 hours! At the end of the trip we will be
sending these off to Trader Joe’s headquarters and then they will know for sure that their
customers want sustainable seafood now! (July 2, 2009)
Fomenting claims and competitive pressure mechanisms. Activists’ fomenting claims,
which establish the commercial need for firms to adopt more responsible practices than their
current versions, harness competitive mechanisms to pressure firms to change. Competitive
dynamics theory proposes that firms, driven to ensure competitive parity with or advantages over
rivals, continually evaluate their competitive position relative to rivals in markets where they
overlap (Chen, 1996). These evaluations, which can be triggered by external forces like activists
(Waldron et al., 2013; Waldron et al., 2019), lead firms—whether coercively or inspirationally—
to imitate rivals to ensure parity or to act before them to accrue advantages (Barnett &
McKendrick, 2004; Derfus, Maggitti, Grimm, & Smith, 2008).
Activists alert firms to such competitive pressure by playing favorites and promising
glory, two forms of fomenting claims. Each form of fomenting claim conveys unique
information about firms that invokes uncertainty about their competitiveness relative to rivals in
the broader industry environment. Playing favorites entails portraying rivals as early adopters
with which target firms must keep pace. Promising glory entails recognizing that early adoption
can allow the targets to attain advantages over their rivals. We now describe the informational
content of these fomenting claims and illustrate their use by the activists in our sample
(summarized in Table V), as well as elaborate the distinct mechanisms through which each one
construes competitive pressure on firms.
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--------------------------------------------
INSERT TABLE V ABOUT HERE
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Fomenting claims that play favorites laud early adopters of the responsible practices
sought by the activists. We suggest that such claims construe target firms’ existing practices as an
ongoing source of competitive disadvantage relative to rivals that have adopted more responsible
alternatives, invoking tension between what the targets and their rivals are doing. Doing so plays
on firms’ motivation to keep pace with their rivals, creating the impetus for the targets to match
the practices adopted by those rivals to ensure parity with them. For instance, FOE referenced a
competing retailer’s agreement to phase out neonic pesticides before Ace Hardware, even
contrasting change by the former with resistance by the latter:
In December 2015, Home Depot (NYSE: HD), the second largest home-improvement chain,
announced it has removed neonicotinoid pesticides from 80 percent its flowering plants and it
will complete its phase-out in plants by 2018…The marketplace is shifting. It’s past time for Ace
… to step up to the plate and follow other industry leaders by making a firm commitment to
eliminate bee-killing pesticides from both plants and off-the-shelf products. (February 23, 2016)
Fomenting claims that promise glory elaborate the potential benefits for firms if they
adopt the responsible practices specified by the activists. We suggest that such claims construe
the adoption of more responsible practices as an opportunity for firms to secure competitive
advantages over their rivals, invoking tension between where targets are and where targets could
be relative to their rivals. Such claims imply that rivals might exploit this opportunity if target
firms do not act, underscoring the importance of moving first. This approach plays on firms’
motivation to secure future advantages over rival firms, creating the impetus for the targets to
enact the change sought by activists before their rivals do. RAN, for instance, suggested that The
Home Depot could become an environmental leader among home-improvement retailers: “The
Home Depot is in a unique position to slow the pace of rainforest destruction by ending the sale
of old growth wood in all of your company’s stores” (December 1998).
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Activists’ Claim Use and Firms’ Engagement in Responsible Innovation
The second objective of our study was to identify and conceptualize how activists use
claims over time to overcome firms’ resistance to responsible innovation, as embodied in the
adoption of more socially and environmentally responsible practices. We posit that activists
configure claims in ways that overcome shifts in the nature of firms’ resistance to the adoption of
more responsible practices and that drive those firms toward change. Three general findings
informed this proposal. First, the four successful campaigns progressed through three stages—
initiation, translation, and intensification—before reaching their conclusion. Second, the activists
used all three claim types to pressure firms during each stage of their successful campaigns,
though they used certain claim types more than others during each stage. Third, beyond
differences in the activists’ claim use between successful and unsuccessful campaigns, neither of
the two unsuccessful campaigns progressed beyond the translation stage, with one of those
campaigns failing to progress beyond the initiation stage. Table VI summarizes these findings.
--------------------------------------------
INSERT TABLE VI ABOUT HERE
--------------------------------------------
The remainder of this section articulates the theory based on these findings in two ways.
First, for each campaign stage, we conceptualize the claims that activists emphasize to overcome
firms’ resistance to adopting more responsible practices, illustrate the grounding of these
inferences in our data, and elaborate the role of the emphasized claims in driving firms toward
change. Second, building on our conceptualization of activists’ claim use across the campaign
stages, we specify and elaborate the essence of our theory of how activists use claims to drive
firms to engage in responsible innovation.
22

Initiation stage. Activists’ destabilizing claims appear to play a central role during the
initiation stage of their campaigns to pressure firms to adopt more responsible practices.
Destabilizing claims harness institutional mechanisms to delegitimize firm’s existing practices,
to advocate more responsible alternatives, and to foreshadow the consequences of not adopting
those alternatives. During the initiation stage, firms resist the contention that their existing
practices are no longer accepted, used, and even taken for granted (e.g., Greenwood, Suddaby, &
Hinings, 2002; Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). Activists can
overcome such resistance by using destabilizing claims to establish the societal need for firms to
adopt more responsible practices, providing a framework to localize, internalize, and concretize
pressure on those firms to change in subsequent stages.
These ideas were evident in our sample. Destabilizing claims were used more heavily
than any others during the initiation stages of the four successful campaigns. This tendency was
also observed during the initiation stage of PETA’s unsuccessful campaign against KFC, perhaps
indicating why the former progressed beyond this stage. In contrast, one activist—FOE—did not
heavily use destabilizing claims during the initiation stage of its unsuccessful campaign against
Ace Hardware and failed to progress beyond this stage. While FOE heavily used destabilization
claims over other claim types during the initiation stage of its successful campaign against The
Home Depot, it abandoned this emphasis in favor of heavily using all three claim types during
the same stage of its unsuccessful campaign against Ace. That is, FOE adopted a “blitzkrieg”
approach to making claims about Ace.
The importance of destabilizing claims during the destabilization stage informs three
insights. First, destabilizing claims may be necessary for activists to move beyond the initiation
stage of their campaigns, as such claims prevent firms from “taking for granted” their existing
23

practices’ societal legitimacy. Second, destabilizing claims are insufficient for activists to
motivate practice change by firms during the initiation stage, as they do not localize, internalize,
and concretize the problems with those firms’ practices. Third, reducing the use of destabilizing
claims relative to other types during the initiation stage may dilute the former’s meaning and
influence, preventing activists from moving beyond this stage. We consequently posit that, as
activists rely more on destabilizing claims during the initiation stage, the activists become more
likely to progress beyond this stage and to increase firms’ eventual likelihood of adopting more
responsible practices.
Translation stage. Antagonizing and fomenting claims take on more importance during
the translation stage of activists’ campaigns to pressure firms to adopt more responsible
practices. Antagonizing claims harness existential mechanisms to stigmatize firms for their
existing practices, recognize that such behavior contradicts firms’ self-conceptions, and
substantiate that such behavior has alienated key stakeholders. During the translation stage, firms
resist the contention that they are directly and individually responsible for perpetuating the use of
societally illegitimate practices. Effectively, firms resist the conversion of institutional into
organization-specific pressure during this stage. Activists can overcome such resistance by using
antagonizing claims, in concert with destabilizing claims. Fomenting claims may play a more
supplementary role, harnessing competitive mechanisms to underscore the impact of (not)
changing on firms’ (dis)advantages relative to their rivals and establishing the commercial need
for change. The confluence of these tendencies in claim use begin to localize, internalize, and
concretize pressure on those firms to adopt more responsible practices.
These ideas were evident in our sample. Destabilizing and antagonizing claims were used
heavily or moderately during the translation stage of the four successful campaigns. PETA and
24

FOE continued their heavy use of destabilizing claims and moderately used antagonizing claims,
with PETA increasing and FOE maintaining their use of antagonizing claims from the initiation
stage. In contrast, Greenpeace and RAN more heavily used antagonizing claims than
destabilizing claims during the translation stage. Moreover, none of the activists responsible for
the successful campaigns heavily used fomenting claims during this stage or any other, but two
—PETA and RAN—increased their use of such claims from the initiation stage.
Interestingly, one activist—PETA—differently used and composed destabilizing and
antagonizing claims during the translation stage of its unsuccessful campaign than during the
same stage of its successful campaign. Regarding claim use, PETA more abruptly and heavily
used antagonizing claims during this stage of its unsuccessful campaign against KFC than it did
during its successful campaign against McDonald’s. Moreover, whereas PETA increased its
supplementary use of fomenting claims to moderate levels during this stage of its successful
campaign, it reduced its use of such claims during the same stage of its unsuccessful campaign.
Regarding claim composition, PETA designed destabilizing claims that less explicitly
construed KFC’s practices as illegitimate than it did in such claims about McDonald’s. PETA
also designed antagonizing claims that decried KFC’s statements about its practices rather the
practices themselves, a tendency less prevalent in such claims about McDonald’s. Relative to its
successful campaign, then, the more relaxed content of PETA’s destabilizing claims during the
initiation stage of its unsuccessful campaign seemingly led to the less focused content of its
antagonizing claims during the translation stage of that campaign.
These tendencies in claim use during the translation stage inform three insights. First,
increasing the use of antagonizing and fomenting claims may be necessary for activists to move
beyond the translation stage of their campaigns, as such claims make the societal need for
25

practice change—established during the initiation stage—more relevant to and actionable by
firms. This premise underscores that the impact of institutional pressure on specific organizations
depends on the individualized meaning of such pressure to those organizations (Oliver, 1991),
meaning established by antagonizing and fomenting claims.
Second, increasing the use of antagonizing and fomenting claims may be insufficient for
activists to motivate firms’ adoption of more responsible practices during the translation stage.
One explanation is that firms have not yet experienced adequate amounts and durations of
existential and competitive pressure to favor change over staying the same, particularly given the
extensive costs of practice change. Such conditions may lead firms to overweigh the risks
associated with practice change and to favor the status quo (Waldron et al., 2013), indicative of
the proposal that actors exhibit loss aversion when making decisions with uncertain outcomes
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1979).
Third, as exemplified in PETA’s unsuccessful campaign against KFC, shifts in claim
content from the initiation to the translation stage may dilute claim meaning and influence,
preventing activists from moving beyond the translation stage. We thus posit that, as activists
rely more on antagonizing and fomenting claims during the translation stage, without modifying
claim content, the activists become more likely to progress beyond this stage and to increase
firms’ eventual likelihood of adopting more responsible practices.
Intensification Stage. Antagonizing claims play an even more central and crucial role
during the intensification stage of activists’ campaigns to drive firms to adopt more responsible
practices. During the intensification stage, firms resist the contention that they must replace their
existing practices—deemed by activists to be illegitimate in society—with more responsible
alternatives. Effectively, firms resist the conversion of organization-specific pressure into change
26

at this stage. Activists can overcome this resistance by relying on antagonizing claims to escalate
the level and increase the duration of existential pressure on firms to adopt more responsible
practices, further localizing, internalizing, and concretizing the pressure on those firms to
change. Destabilizing and fomenting claims appear to serve more supplementary and contextual
roles during the intensification stage, perhaps to remind firms of the institutional and competitive
reasons to adopt more responsible practices. Such tendencies, predicated and informed by those
in prior stages, culminate in firms enacting such change.
These ideas were evident in three themes across the four successful campaigns in our
sample, with neither of the unsuccessful campaigns progressing to this stage. First, three activists
—Greenpeace, PETA, and RAN—heavily used antagonizing claims and decreasingly used
fomenting claims during the intensification stage of their successful campaigns. Second, other
than Greenpeace’s decrease in its use of destabilizing claims from the translation stage to low
levels during the intensification stage, the other activists did not modify their use of such claims
across these two stages. Third, FOE did not change its claim use throughout the stages of its
successful campaign, suggesting that other factors—discussed at more length in the next section
on organizational features—may have contributed to the success of this static approach.
The criticality of antagonizing claims during the intensification stage informs two
insights. First, when supplemented by destabilizing and fomenting claims, antagonizing claims
may be necessary and sufficient to conclude the intensification stage and to motivate the
adoption of more responsible practices by firms. Theory on how threats to reputations and
identities affect organizations and their members reports that, whether real or not, such threats
motivate actions to resolve them (Albert & Whetten, 1985; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Elsbach &
Kramer, 1996). This effect helps to explain why firms are more likely to change when they
27

believe activists are undermining their reputations and identities (McDonnell & King, 2013;
Waldron et al., 2013).
Second, in order for antagonizing claims to play a central and crucial role in driving firms
to change during the intensification stage, activists must configure their claim use during prior
campaign stages to overcome firms’ evolving resistance to such change. Although this insight
reflects extant theory’s proposal that hostility indeed drives firms to adopt more responsible
practices (King & Soule, 2007; Waldron et al., 2013), it also recognizes that this effect rests on
the construction of a more nuanced and multi-faceted framework of pressure throughout
campaigns. In a sense, activists who overuse the “stick” to pressure firms may reduce their
chances of getting firms to change. We consequently posit that, as activists rely more on
antagonizing claims during the intensification stage, the activists increase firms’ likelihood of
adopting more responsible practices during this stage.
Theoretical synthesis. The findings, inferences, and proposals in this section constitute
the essence of our theory of activist-driven responsible innovation (ARI), which took the form of
practice adoption in our study. ARI theory posits that firms become more likely to engage in
responsible innovation as activists expose firms to organizational pressure, positioned within a
framework of institutional pressure, through the strategic choreography of claims.
Externality, time, and consistency characterize the strategic aspect of activists’ claim use.
The various negative externalities created by firms, whether real or imagined, underpin and
inform the various mechanisms of pressure harnessed in activists’ claims. The adverse impact of
firms’ existing practices on society and the environment—externalities—enable activists to
construe firms as illegitimate (institutional pressure), irreputable and hypocritical (existential
28

pressure), and uncompetitive (competitive pressure), providing distinct—yet interconnected—
reasons to innovate responsibly.
Additionally, the passage of time enables activists to sequence claim use and pressure
mechanisms in ways that iteratively overcome shifts in the nature of firms’ resistance to
responsible innovation, moving their targets toward such innovation. Time creates the
opportunity for activists to expose firms to the sequences, intensities, and durations of pressure
necessary and sufficient to drive responsible innovation, though the specific amounts of time and
thresholds of pressure required may vary across activists and firms.
Finally, consistency in claim use and content enables activists to overcome the
aforementioned shifts in firms’ resistance in ways that may translate across targets and
campaigns. Doing so standardizes the pressure on targets and informs their expectations,
potentially minimizing variation in how different firms make sense of and deal with such efforts.
Organizational Features and Firms’ Engagement in Responsible Innovation
The third and final objective of our study was to identify and understand the features of
activists and firms that may moderate the influence of activists’ claims on firms’ likelihood of
engaging in responsible innovation, as embodied in the adoption of more socially and
environmentally responsible practices. These moderating proposals emerged from the abductive
evaluation of organizational features, observed in our data, that appeared to amplify or dampen
the influence of activists’ claim types on firms’ adoption of more responsible practices. This
process entailed discerning the potential moderating effects of the focal organizational features,
exploring extant theory to determine explanations for these effects, and using our familiarity with
the data to select the best-fitting explanation (cf., Åsvoll, 2014).
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Three observations from our data, particularly in terms of differences between the
successful and unsuccessful campaigns in our sample, led us to identify activists’ inconsistency,
firms’ structure, and firms’ experience as the organizational features of relevance to our theory.
In terms of activists’ inconsistency, PETA and FOE choreographed claims differently in their
successful campaigns against McDonald’s and The Home Depot than in their subsequent
unsuccessful campaigns against KFC and Ace Hardware. This change in claim use may have
dampened PETA’s and FOE’s capacity to influence KFC and Ace. In terms of firms’ structure,
the firms targeted in FOE’s successful and unsuccessful campaigns—The Home Depot and Ace
Hardware—maintained different organizational structures. Whereas The Home Depot maintained
a highly centralized structure, Ace Hardware—comprised of loosely coupled and highly
independent franchises—maintained the most decentralized structure of the firms in our sample.
In terms of firms’ experience, The Home Depot adopted more responsible practices in response
to FOE’s campaign, even though FOE used claims differently than the other successful activists
in our sample. The Home Depot’s change in response to RAN’s earlier campaign may have
increased the company’s likelihood of change in response to FOE’s later campaign.
The remainder of this section articulates the theory based on these findings in two ways.
First, we conceptualize how the three organizational features may uniquely moderate the
influence of activists’ claims on firms’ likelihood of adopting more responsible practices, as well
as ground these proposals in our data. Second, we qualify our thesis to account for the impact of
these organizational features on how activists use claims to drive firms to engage in responsible
innovation, as embodied in more socially and environmentally responsible practices.
Activists’ inconsistency. Inconsistency, which we define as variation in activists’ claim
use across campaigns (cf. Mitchell, Shepherd, & Sharfman, 2011), may affect their capacity to
30

pressure firms to adopt more responsible practices. Inconsistency in activists’ claim use across
campaigns may emanate from the hostile environments in which they exist (cf. Mitchell et al.,
2011). Hostile environments disrupt and degrade decision makers’ information processing and
inhibit their consideration of past decision alternatives (Janis, 1982; Baradell & Klein, 1993),
contributing to subsequent decisions that are less rational and effective (Dean & Sharfman, 1993;
Goll & Rasheed, 1997). Such effects could explain why activists—notably their leaders—shift
from claim use that contributes to change in earlier successful campaigns to claim use that does
not in subsequent unsuccessful campaigns.
The inference that activists’ inconsistency matters for our theory predicated on two
observations from FOE’s and PETA’s successful and unsuccessful campaigns. FOE and PETA
shifted how forcefully they used claims during the initiation stages of their successful and
unsuccessful campaigns. For instance, FOE unsuccessfully tried to force Ace to adopt new
practices immediately through the “blitzkrieg” use of all claim types simultaneously, an approach
it did not follow during the preceding successful campaign against The Home Depot. FOE and
PETA also shifted how dynamically they used claims in response to firms’ resistance during their
successful and unsuccessful campaigns. For instance, PETA more abruptly and extremely shifted
from destabilizing to antagonizing claims to overcome KFC’s resistance than it did to overcome
McDonald’s resistance during the preceding successful campaign.
The mechanism through which inconsistency moderates the influence of activists’ claims
on firms’ likelihood of adopting more responsible practices is straightforward, yet potent. Failing
to replicate the strategic choreography of claims in successful campaigns may prevent activists
from cultivating the sequences, intensities, and durations of pressure necessary to overcome
firms’ evolving resistance to the adoption of more responsible practices. We consequently
31

propose that, as activists become more inconsistent in their claim use between successful and
subsequent campaigns, the influence of the activists’ claims on firms and their likelihood of
adopting more responsible practices diminishes in the latter settings.
Firms’ Structure. Firms’ structure, in terms of degree of (de)centralization, may affect
their capacity to change in ways desired by activists. More centralized firms consolidate decision
making at the level of the entire organization, whereas more decentralized firms disaggregate
decision making into loosely coupled and independent subunits (Siggelkow & Levinthal, 2003).
These structural differences increase variation in how each subunit makes sense of and reacts to
information about the broader organization (Tushman & Nadler, 1978).
As firms become more decentralized, then, activists’ claims may become less likely to
affect the firms’ subunits uniformly and pervasively, making holistic organizational change less
likely. This tendency may help to explain why—beyond differences in its claim use—FOE was
unsuccessful in its campaign against a more decentralized firm (Ace Hardware), but successful in
its campaign against a more centralized firm (The Home Depot). The three other successful
campaigns in our sample also targeted firms that skewed toward more centralized structures,
perhaps allowing activists’ claims to affect the targets more uniformly and pervasively. We thus
propose that, as firms become more decentralized in structure, the influence of activists’ claims
on firms’ likelihood of adopting more responsible practices diminishes.
Firms’ Experience. Firms’ experience, in terms of the outcomes of their prior
interactions with activists, may also influence the nature of pressure required to drive those firms
to adopt more responsible practices (Waldron et al., 2019). The features of such experience may
be codified in organizational memory (Walsh & Ungson, 1991), which contributes to the
32

development of routines for making sense of and handling similar experiences (Moorman &
Miner, 1997).
When firms have previously adopted practices at the behest of activists, then, they may
require less antagonization to do the same during subsequent campaigns, mitigating the need for
activists to rely increasingly on such claims. Indicative of this premise, The Home Depot’s
acquiescence to RAN may have made the company more likely to acquiesce to FOE in its
subsequent campaign, even though FOE appeared to use claims less strategically than RAN and
the other successful activists in our sample.
The converse effect may hold when firms have not previously adopted practices at the
behest of activists, observable in other successful campaigns in our sample (e.g., Greenpeace and
Trader Joe’s), where the strategic claim use proposed by our theory may be required to pressure
those firms to change. We thus propose that, as firms become more experienced with changing at
the behest of activists, the influence of activists’ claims on firms’ likelihood of adopting more
responsible practices diminishes.
Theoretical synthesis. To reiterate, ARI theory posits that firms become more likely to
engage in responsible innovation—the adoption of more responsible practices in our study—as
activists expose firms to organizational pressure, positioned within a framework of institutional
pressure, through the strategic choreography of claims. The findings, inferences, and proposals in
this section hone our theory by recognizing that activists’ inconsistency, as well as firms’
structure and experience, may moderate the influence of activists’ claims on firms’ likelihood of
engaging in responsible innovation. This influence may attenuate when activists abandon
strategic claim choreographies that have successfully driven firms to change, target firms with
less centralized structures, or target firms that have acquiesced to prior activism. In contrast, this
33

influence may amplify when activists and the firms they target exhibit the opposite features.
Ultimately, activists’ likelihood of driving firms to engage in responsible innovation hinges on
what they say (i.e., activists’ claims), how what they say persists across targets (i.e., activists’
consistency), and who they target (i.e., firms’ structure and experience). proven
DISCUSSION
Our central contribution is the empirically grounded development of ARI theory, which
explains how activists successfully drive responsible innovation by firms. According to our
theory, activists make destabilizing, antagonizing, and fomenting claims about firms, each
conveying different information and construing unique pressure on those firms. These claims
designate firms as illegitimate and present threats to their reputations and identities for resisting
responsible innovation, as well as elaborate competitive reasons for them to embrace such
innovation. Additionally, activists strategically choreograph their claims over time to overcome
shifts in firms’ resistance to responsible innovation, consequently increasing the likelihood those
firms will innovate. This outcome occurs when activists use claims in ways that harness
externality, time, and consistency to expose firms to organizational pressure, positioned within a
framework of institutional pressure. Finally, certain organizational features—activists’
consistency, firms’ structure, and firms’ experience—may moderate the influence of activists’
claims on firms’ engagement in responsible innovation. This influence diminishes when activists
fail to apply the choreography of claims in their successful campaigns to other campaigns, target
firms with less centralized structures, and/or target firms that have acquiesced to prior activism.
Contributions to the CSR Theory
Our theory of ARI primarily informs accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate
social responsibility in the CSR domain. Such work has tended to examine the impact of
stakeholders on firms’ engagement in responsible innovation (Frynas & Yamahaki, 2016). Within
34

this broader umbrella, activists have been conceived as third-party disseminators of information
about firms’ social responsibility initiatives, mitigating information asymmetries between those
firms and other stakeholders—notably consumers (Feddersen & Gilligan, 2001). Missing from
such work is how activists perform their quintessential role—pressuring resistant firms to engage
in responsible innovation (Markman et al., 2016).
ARI theory addresses this constraint by drawing from social movement theory to
recognize how activists’ role as informational disseminators informs their role as change agents,
positing how activists use claims to drive firms to engage in responsible innovation. A key facet
of our theory is that the information conveyed in claims enables activists to construe
institutional, existential, and competitive pressure on firms, providing the impetus for responsible
innovation. This contribution answers calls to attend to the impact of specific stakeholders on
firms’ social responsibility (Harrison & Freeman, 1999), notably activists (Carroll & Brown,
2018), further disambiguating the homogeneous treatment of stakeholders as deterministic forces
in prior CSR research (Frynas & Yamahaki, 2016).
As our theory of ARI theory predicates on the assumption that activists’ and firms’
leaders determine their organizations’ actions, notably claims and responsible innovations, it also
offers the potential to inform the growing literature on responsible leadership (Waldman, &
Balven, 2014). Responsible leadership describes “intentional actions taken by leaders to benefit
the stakeholders of the companies and/or actions taken to avoid harmful consequences for
corporate stakeholders and the larger society” (Stahl & Sully de Luque, 2014: 238). Scholars
have largely focused on how leaders “act and make decisions” regarding their firms’ CSR
initiatives (Waldman & Balven, 2014: 224), with some conceptualizing activists as distal
35

contextual factors that can contribute to the advent of such leadership behavior (Stahl & Sully de
Luque, 2014).
ARI theory begins to enrich this premise by specifying how activists drive firms to adopt
more responsible practices, which, implicitly, requires activists to drive firms’ leaders to make
more responsible decisions. Consistent with Waldman et al. (2006), activists’ claims
intellectually (and emotionally) stimulate responsible decision making by firms’ leaders.
Additionally, the data informing our theory suggest that activists constitute more than a distal
contextual determinant of responsible leadership, as such actors proximally and directly pressure
firms and their leaders to become more responsible. This recognition aligns with recent theory
that recognizes activists and firms as rivals (Waldron et al., 2019).
Contribution to Social Movement Theory
Our theory of ARI secondarily informs accounts of activists’ claims in the social
movement domain. Work in this domain has offered a general conception of how claims work
(Waldron et al., 2013), offering a starting point to cultivate richer understanding of how activists
use claims to overcome firms’ resistance to the adoption of more responsible practices. ARI
theory cultivates such understanding by elaborating how activists choreograph various types of
claims to drive firms to change and how key features of activists and firms moderate the
influence of claim use on practice change. More basically, our theory recognizes that claim
influence depends on what is said and when, as well as who is involved. This contribution
predicates on the evaluation of comprehensive data from an array of successful and unsuccessful
activist campaigns, features that distinguish our sample from those used in prior studies of
activism. Enhancing social movement theory in these ways answers calls to elaborate the manner
in which claims facilitate organizational change (Briscoe et al., 2015; Ganzin et al., 2014).
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Contribution to the Special Issue
In making these contributions, ARI theory speaks to the special issue’s interest in the
intersection of firms, responsible innovation, and grand challenges (George, Howard-Grenville,
Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016). Pollution, deforestation, poverty, inequality, inequity, corruption, and
other issues constitute some notable grand challenges (Markman et al., 2016). These challenges
are immune to cultural, national, and generational boundaries and constitute blemishes on
humanity’s long list of positive accomplishments. This special issue builds on the premise that
responsible innovation by organizations, as embodied in socially and environmentally
responsible practices, policies, and products (von Schomberg, 2013), plays a crucial role in the
resolution of such grand challenges. In attending to activists’ efforts to overcome firms’
resistance to responsible innovation, our theoretical account elucidates a potential deterministic
force in leading firms to tackle grand challenges, enriching understanding of organizational
solutions to such challenges.
Assumptions, Limitations, and Future Research
Beyond testing our theory of ARI’s proposals, the theory’s assumption about the role of
leadership presents opportunities for further exploration and development. Responsibility
orientation, a construct that typifies firms’ leaders according to their breadth of focus on and
accountability to stakeholders (Pless, Maak, & Waldman, 2012), provides a starting point for
such inquiry. This construct could help to explain why activists’ claims differently affect firms’
leaders. For instance, the competitive mechanisms harnessed by fomenting claims may be more
meaningful and influential to opportunity seeking leaders than other types (cf. Pless et al., 2012),
underscoring the importance of fit between claim pressure mechanisms and firm leader
orientations. Moreover, integrative leaders may interpret the competitive mechanisms harnessed
37

by fomenting claims as inspirational, whereas economist leaders may interpret such pressure as
coercive (cf. Pless et al., 2012). Although typically applied to firms’ leaders, scholars might
evaluate activists’ leaders’ responsibility orientations and their implications for ARI theory.
The limitations of the multi-case methodology used to develop ARI theory offer two
other opportunities for further inquiry. First, the multi-case methodology is useful for unearthing
and conceptualizing—but not testing—causal relationships due to small sample sizes, creating
the potential to evaluate our proposals about the influence of activists’ claims on firms’
likelihood of responsible innovation. Further scrutiny of variation in claim use and influence
promises to yield additional insights about why some activists are more successful than others in
driving responsible innovation by firms. Second, the multi-case methodology is useful at
producing inferences of direct relevance to the research setting and sample. Scholars can
consequently explore the applicability of our inferences about campaigns by activist
organizations to related—but distinct—phenomena, such as efforts by activists operating as
individuals or groups.
Managerial Implications
Our theory of ARI holds implications for the management of activist organizations and
firms. ARI theory offers activists insights about the optimal types and combinations of claims to
use throughout their campaigns, as well as cautions activists against relying too much or too
abruptly on hostility to pressure firms to change. That is, it informs activists how to select the
“right” claims over time.
ARI theory also informs activists about the value of replicating claim use during
successful campaigns in their other campaigns, in addition to targeting firms that have
centralized structures and that have previously acquiesced to activism. Evident here is the
38

importance of reflecting on instances of success, learning from them, and applying those
learnings in other settings, actions perhaps overlooked by activists due to their immersion in the
“heat of battle.”
Although ARI theory focuses on what activists do to pressure firms, firms might also
draw on its proposals to understand the nature and implication of activists’ strategies for claim
use. Such knowledge could enable firms to anticipate their susceptibility to various types of
claims, to free themselves from path dependencies created by the strategic choreography of these
claims, and to vet potential response strategies.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, we developed an empirically grounded theory of how activists successfully
use claims to drive responsible innovation by firms, which we describe as ARI theory. ARI
theory contributes primarily to accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate social
responsibility in the CSR domain and secondarily to accounts of activists’ claims in the social
movement domain. We hope our theory will inform intentional and systematic scholarly efforts
to examine activists’ role in overcoming firms’ resistance to responsible innovation.
39

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X

Table II. Summary of campaign data by activist
Data source
FOE
GP
PETA
RAN
Media articles
51
36
50
56
Blog posts
15
23
19
14
Letters/emails
14
2
82
18
Press releases
53
9
58
23
Website pages
20
36
13
8
Reports
5
0
4
8
Other *
13
8
17
28
Total
171
114
243
155
* Includes interview transcripts, flyers, lectures, shareholder resolutions, Facebook pages, Flickr and other
images, policy messages, action toolkits, petitions, presentations, testimonies, and videos