Virginia Tech
Investigating Shareholder Social Activism From an Issue-Selling Perspective—Issues, Strategies, and Success
Abstract
dc:description.abstractBuilding on the logic of issue selling, my dissertation explores the micro-processes of shareholder social activism through which shareholders interact with targeted firms and also addresses which micro-processes could affect the effectiveness and the success of shareholder social activism. To do this, my dissertation develops a theory with respect to the approaches of linguistically framing the contents of and of presenting shareholder social activism. Based on a qualitative (descriptive) analysis on 1,612 shareholder social proposals, my dissertation identifies six packaging strategies that are used by the proponents to linguistically frame the contents of their proposals and two selling strategies used by the proponents to present their proposals. Subsequently, a quantitative analysis demonstrates that the effectiveness of shareholder social proposals would be largely determined by the joint effects of opportunity framing, threat framing, coalition building, and repeated submitting and that other packaging strategies would have little unique contribution to the effectiveness and the success of shareholder social activism. I argue that my dissertation would make contributions to the understanding of shareholder social activism and also offer some theoretical considerations for future studies on issue selling, although my dissertation might not directly contribute to the body of work of issue selling.
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Ph. D.
- Level thesis:degree_level
- doctoral
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- Business, Management
- Department dc:contributor.department
- Management
- Grantor dc:publisher
- Virginia Tech
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2013
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Zhao, Xiaoping
- Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair
-
- Wokutch, Richard E.
- Carlson, Kevin D.
- Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
-
- Gnyawali, Devi R.
- Hatfield, Donald E.
Subjects
dc:subject × 6Rights
dc:rights- Statement dc:rights
-
- In Copyright
- Licence dc:rights.uri
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Dc Identifier Other
- vt_gsexam:1645
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/23887