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Conference Programme

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available). Note that the schedule is subject to changes.

Daily Overview

Session

Parallel with Discussants 2: Labour & Society
Location: Seminar Room 7 (Level 2)
Session Chair: Kate Odziemkowska, University of Toronto

Presentation 2

Does It Pay To Take A Stand Abroad? Home Country Value Fit And Stakeholders’ Reactions To MNC Affiliates’ Sociopolitical Activism

Fangwen Lin¹, Ishva Minefee², Lori Yue³

1: Singapore Management University, Singapore; 2: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; 3: Columbia University

Discussant: Brayden King (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University)

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.