To Kneel or Not to Kneel? Just Do It! Assessing Consumer Responses to Organizational Engagement in Political Discourse: An Abstract

Over the course of the past four decades, the conceptualization of what is encompassed by social and environmental sustainability has evolved in depth and scope. This evolution now arguably includes organizational engagement in discourse pertaining to divisive social–political issues or politically divisive discourse engagement (PDDE). In addition to the increase in PDDE, the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand Study found that the large majority of consumers (64%) now buy or boycott brands due to a brand’s stance on a social or political issue. Far fewer (39%) than the majority of consumers were influenced in this way only 4 years prior to the 2018 findings. While increasingly more organizations are partaking in PDDE and more consumers are influenced by an organization’s PDDE, there remains relatively scant literature-based guidance for organizations in this context and for understanding consumer reactions to an organization’s PDDE. Accordingly, this study seeks to contribute to the literature by investigating the impact of organizational PDDE on consumer perceptions of the following: legitimacy, courageousness, integrity, and empathy. Impacts on consumer behavioral intentions in relation to said phenomenon are also investigated.

Political corporate social responsibility (P-CSR) encompasses the area of CSR within which PDDE arguably best fits. P-CSR is an emerging area of CSR in which one of its multiple domains pertains to organizational behavior that illustrates a firm’s view of its social responsibility. In the case of this P-CSR domain, organizational behavior may impact government regulation even if this is not necessarily the intended aim. This behavior occurs due at least in part to existing gaps in global governance and national public relations. PDDE is argued to fit within this domain.

Legitimacy theory posits that organizations operate within the bounds of societal expectations. It is expected that PDDE will impact consumer perceptions of legitimacy. Courage, integrity, and empathy are each component of virtue ethics, which have been found to impact consumer behavior depending on perceptions of organizational activities. Finally, the relationships among the aforementioned factors to behavioral intentions are investigated. Political ideology and social–political ideology are included as factors to help better understand consumer responses in relation to each relationship of interest. A between-subjects experimental design is utilized to study the phenomenon of interest.