Business Unity and Anti-Corporate Social Movement Protests in the United States

• In Event: 048 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Paper Session. Organizations and Social Inequality

Abstract

Do large corporations in the U.S. respond to social movement protests with a firm-centric rationale or do they develop their strategies relationally? If they do so relationally, do corporate networks enable them to show class-wide unity in their responses to protests? I address these questions through analysis of newspaper coverage of protests against Fortune 100 firms in 2010 and assess the impact of social movement-, firm-, and class-wide forces in firm strategies against protests. Incorporating research on Board of Director interlocks and firm involvement in policy-planning organizations, I find that these networks are meaningful guides for corporate action. Firms that are more embedded in the Board of Directors network concede to protest demands less often while retaliating against protesters more. In addition, firms more involved in conservative policy organizations are less likely to concede, while firms more involved in liberal policy organizations concede more often. These findings suggest that the networks forged by large corporations not only impact the outcomes of social movement contests, but also shape them in ways that reflect the ideologies of the actors these firms become networked with. This study advances sociological theory by bridging theoretical perspectives from economics, social movements, organizational sociology, and class analysis in the context of anti-corporate protests.

Author

• Tarun David Banerjee, State University of New York-Stony Brook