Kate Odziemkowska

Journal Publications

[1] Chung, B., Odziemkowska, K. and Piazza, A. “Threading the Needle of Corporate Activism: How Firms Frame their Stances on Polarizing Social Issues” Accepted, Academy of Management Journal. (link to paper forthcoming)

Synopsis: Corporate activism, or the active involvement of business in contested social and political issues, presents strategic challenges for organizations. Despite the risks of stakeholder backlash, corporate activism is on the rise. We suggest that how firms speak out on polarizing social issues may help explain this quandary. Leveraging corporate press releases and Twitter accounts of Fortune 500 companies that spoke on LGBTQ issues between 1999 and 2019, as same-sex marriage progressively became legal across the United States, we find that prior to legalization in their home state, firms default to touting the economic merits of their track record on LGBTQ workplace issues, avoiding contentious debates. Once marriage equality is enacted, firms shift their speech towards activism, advocating for broader societal change. Further, the shift to activism is highly dependent on internal and external stakeholder preferences. Our findings point to an irony: corporate "activism" in pursuit of social change often takes place only after polarizing issues have been settled. This study contributes to the growing literature on corporate activism by shedding light on how firms strategically frame their communications to navigate the complex terrain of stakeholder expectations, and how these framing strategies are shaped by the evolving legal and institutional landscape.

[2] Odziemkowska, K. and Zhu, Y. “How Social Movements Catalyze Firm Innovation” Accepted, Organization Science. (link to paper forthcoming)

Synopsis: We investigate the impact social movements have on firm innovation through private politics. We argue that firms strategically respond to private politics by investing in new technologies that address movement-advocated issues materialto firms’ performance. Contentious private politics—when activists contentiously target firms—increases the amount of innovation firms undertake by drawing managerial attention to movement-advocated issues material to the firm prompting search for solutions to those issues. Conversely, cooperative private politics—when activists and firms collaborate—provides firms access to new knowledge which encourages firms to search for solutions in areas more distant from their existing knowledge, in so doing, increase innovation involving distant recombination on material issues. Supplementary analyses corroborate the mechanisms that undergird our theoretical predictions: contentious private politics is associated more innovation closer to a firm’s expertise while cooperative private politics is associated with innovations that draw on more distant knowledge.

[3] Odziemkowska, K. and McDonnell, M.-H. 2024 “Ripple Effects: How Collaborations Reduce Contention” Strategic Management Journal , 45(4): 775-806. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3566

Synopsis: Prior work suggests firms can reduce stakeholder contention (e.g., protests, lawsuits) by establishing collaborations with those stakeholders. We explore when collaborations produce ripple effects beyond the firm’s partner to attenuate contention from a broader set of stakeholders. Collaborations reduce contention against firms through two pathways: signaling and relational. As evidence of a signaling mechanism, we find that firms experience a decrease in contentious challenges from a movement after they collaborate with a more contentious activist in that movement, provided their partner can signal the authenticity of its motive for collaboration. As evidence of a relational mechanism, we find that firms face less contention when an activist with which they collaborate has more board interlocks with other activists in the movement. Our findings also generalize to stakeholder criticism beyond movement organizations, suggesting stakeholder collaborations are powerful means by which firms can exploit the identity and networks of stakeholder partners to fashion less contentious environments.

  • Winner of Best Proposal Award from the Strategic Management Society’s Stakeholder Strategy Interest Group, 2017

[4]  Odziemkowska, K. 2022 “Frenemies: Overcoming Audiences’ Ideological Opposition to Firm–Activist Collaborations” Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2): 469-514. Journal website (open access); SSRN

Synopsis: Concerns about audience approval impede cross-sector collaborations forming between firms and social movement organizations (SMOs) despite their potential societal benefits. Firms wanting to signal their genuine efforts in support of a movement’s cause are eager to form collaborations with SMOs. However, when SMOs’ supporters or peers define their identity in opposition to firms—what I call oppositional audiences—collaborations do not form. Moreover, firms’ inclination to collaborate after being contentiously targeted by a movement to repair reputations with their own audiences, exacerbate the challenge of partnering with the enemies of your friends.

[5]  McDonnell, M.-H., Odziemkowska, K., and Pontikes, E. 2021. “Bad Company: Shifts in Social Activists' Tactics and Resources after Industry Crises” Organization Science, 32(4): 1033-1055. Journal website; SSRN

Synopsis: Industry scandals differentially affect contentious and collaborative social movement organizations: those that collaborate with firms later implicated in an industry scandal experience a sharp drop in financial contributions after the scandal, and those that had contentiously interacted with firms in the industry enjoy increased contributions. Given these risks cannot be fully mitigated, we find industry scandals can result in a significant drop in cross-sector collaborations. 

[6]  Odziemkowska, K. and Dorobantu, S. 2021. “Contracting Beyond the Market” Organization Science, 32(3): 776-803. Journal website; SSRN

Synopsis: Companies increasingly use formal contracts or collaborations to manage relationships with nonmarket stakeholders. We find companies are more likely to establish formal cooperative relationships with stakeholders that have use rights to the resource the company seeks, are subject to negative externalities from the company’s operations, and have a demonstrated an ability to collectively mobilize.

  • Best Paper Proceedings, Academy of Management Strategic Management Division, 2019

[7]  Odziemkowska, K. and Henisz, W. 2021. “Webs of Influence: Secondary Stakeholder Actions and Cross-National Corporate Social Performance” Organization Science, 32(1): 233-255. Journal website; SSRN

Synopsis: NGOs, labor and community organizations, and governments, drive cross-country differences in companies’ social and environmental performance (CSP) by influencing the degree to which managers prioritize the issues for which they advocate. Companies’ CSP is higher in countries where these stakeholders interact frequently with important socio-political actors, where there a broad-base of support for CSP issues, and where they directly target firms (e.g., protests, boycotts), especially if these actions are taken by densely connected groups of stakeholders.

  • Winner of the Best Conference PhD Paper Prize, Strategic Management Society, 2016
  • Finalist for the Temple/Academy of International Business Best Paper Award, 2016

[8]  Dorobantu, S., and Odziemkowska, K. 2017. “Valuing Stakeholder Governance: Property Rights, Community Mobilization and Firm Value” Strategic Management Journal, 38(13): 2682-2703. Journal website; SSRN; video abstract

Synopsis:  Shareholders value formal contracts with stakeholders who can disrupt firms’ access to valuable resources, particularly those with strong property rights or experienced in protest.  

  • Winner of Outstanding Paper Award, Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability, 2017

Other Publications

[9]  Odziemkowska, K. 2022 . "Firm-NGO Collaborations for Sustainability: A Comparative Research Agenda" in George, G., Joshi, H., Haas, M., McGahan, A. and Tracy, P. (eds.), Handbook on the Business of Sustainability: The Organization, Implementation, and Practice of Sustainable Growth, Edward Elgar Publishing, Massachusetts, pp.100-117.

Synopsis:  I develop a comparative framework and agenda for research on firm-NGO collaborations that aims to shift academic focus from descriptive analyses of processes within collaborations to interrogating the comparative effectiveness of different forms of collaborations, different partners, and alternative forms of cooperation and conflict, between firms and NGOs in advancing business sustainability.

Using Format