Beck, JoshuaEdelblum, Andrew2022-10-262022-10-262022-10-26https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27731Today’s dynamic market landscape affects and is affected by a variety of significant cultural shifts and touchstones, from global warming and racial injustice, to voter disenfranchisement and the Covid-19 pandemic. In the current dissertation, I examine how firms have expanded their institutional role to address these issues and communicate a sense of moral engagement linked to their brands. I associate these behaviors with a centralized phenomenon—corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA)—which reflects firms’ public speech or actions focused on polarizing issues of societal concern. Such shifts in business behavior coincide with fieldwide conversations among practitioners and scholars about the implied responsibility for broadened social engagement. However, despite the increasing prominence of CSA in the marketplace, the practice has only recently received scholarly attention. In turn, the current dissertation seeks to examine and conceptualize the theoretical, practical, and strategic implications of firms’ activist efforts using a multi-methodological approach. First, Essay I (“‘Focus on Our Cause: How Brand Activism Helps and Hurts Activist Organizations”; under third-round review at the Journal of Consumer Research) utilizes randomized controlled experiments with consequential outcomes to chart the impact of brand activism on consumers’ charitable giving to activist organizations. Next, Essay II (“An Institutional View of Investor Response to Corporate Sociopolitical Activism”; manuscript in progress; targeting the Journal of Marketing) is an event study that examines the moderating effects of issue legitimacy on stock market response to market leaders’ activist efforts.en-USAll Rights Reserved.brand activismcorporate social responsibilitycorporate sociopolitical activismstakeholderElectronic Thesis or Dissertation