Preliminary Conference Programme

We document that the #MeToo movement significantly narrows the gender promotion gap within firms by advancing female managers’ careers relative to male colleagues. The effect is stronger for lower-ranking and younger managers and is not driven by tokenism. At the firm level, the promotion gap declines after #MeToo, particularly in firms with stronger pre-existing sexist cultures. This greater decline in sexist firms is primarily driven by institutional investor pressure and is weaker in Republican-leaning states and states with restrictive labor mobility. Firm value rises following the narrowing of gender disparities, despite stagnant operating performance and a decline in productivity. Mobility patterns show that #MeToo changes labor-market sorting: female managers are less likely to leave and more likely to join sexist firms, whereas male managers are more likely to leave but not join such firms. Overall, the movement plays a corrective role in reducing gender disparities and reshaping managerial labor-market dynamics.

Despite growing interests in corporate sociopolitical activism (SPA), little is known about how stakeholders respond to multinational corporation (MNC) affiliates’ engagement in such activities. Integrating research on country-of-origin perceptions and expectancy violations theory, we examine how host-country consumers react to MNC affiliates’ SPA when it aligns or misaligns with their home-country values. We argue that SPA characterized by a high home-country value fit elicits greater support from host-country consumers who endorse the sociopolitical cause, compared to the same SPA with a low home-country value fit. Using data on restaurant industry MNC affiliates’ SPA during the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, we find MNC affiliates from high-democracy countries that supported the movement received more favorable reactions from consumers than those that took the same stance but were from low-democracy countries. MNC affiliates from high-democracy countries that opposed the movement received more punitive reactions from consumers than those that took the same stance but were from low-democracy countries. This study contributes to SPA research by introducing the concept of MNCs’ home-country value fit as a new type of value alignment that affects stakeholders’ reactions. This study also shows how democracy can be a liability rather than an asset for MNCs and their affiliates.

This paper examines how paid sick leave (PSL) mandates affect labor performance using the setting of financial analysts. Utilizing the staggered adoption of PSL mandates in the US states and cities, we find that the forecast accuracy of female analysts significantly improves relative to male analysts after the adoption of PSL mandates. The effects are more pronounced for female analysts likely with young children, for forecasts on firms more important to analyst career, and during the flu season. In addition, female analysts significantly increase the frequency of forecast revisions, and they are more likely to gain an all-star status after the enactment of PSL mandates. Our study provides direct evidence of the impact of labor protection laws on skilled labor performance and indicates that PSL mandates affect work performance differently across genders.