Ronei Leonel

E-petitions have evoked an important debate about the potential for digital activism to pressure firms to change social policies and practices. One prevailing perspective is that slacktivism, a tendency of online supporters to provide only token support, undermines any possible impact. An alternative perspective is that social media dynamics underlying digital activism offer new pathways for social activists to pressure firms toward social change. To explore this debate, we combine insights from research on social movements, social media, and the logic of connective action to theorize the impact of social media mechanisms such as e-petition connectivity and velocity. With a hand-coded database of 1587 e-petitions targeting Fortune 500 firms from 2012 to 2017 through the platform Change.org, we empirically evaluate whether these e-petitions matter. Our empirical results strongly suggest that e-petitions do matter, and we explain when digital activism has impact. The activation of social media mechanisms spreads negative information and directly intensifies the threat to the targeted firm’s reputation, pressuring firms to concede to e-petitioner demands. Furthermore, our findings indicate that firm visibility and resource availability can represent boundary conditions for the firm’s vulnerability and ability to respond to digital activism.

There is an ongoing debate about whether digital media undermines or enhances the ability of stakeholders—in particular, secondary stakeholders—to influence a firm’s policies and practices. One prevailing perspective (Barnett, Henriques & Husted, 2020; Barnett, Henriques & Husted, 2024) is that digital media leads to slacktivism, a token display of support, which impedes the ability of stakeholders to act collectively and makes it easier for firms to dismiss stakeholder claims. Another perspective (Colleoni, Zyglidopoulos & Illia, 2024) argues that even though synchronicity may be difficult to achieve, digital media in the form of hashtags makes it easier for heterogeneous stakeholders to converge around a broader demand for societal change and indirectly pressure firms to change their policies and practices. In this exchange, we expand on Colleoni, Zyglidopoulos, and Illia’s (2024) arguments by encompassing other forms of digital activism beyond generic hashtags. Drawing from the logic of connective action, we argue that two universal pathways—connectivity and velocity—applicable across a wide range of digital activism, are reshaping and enhancing stakeholders’ ability to influence a firm’s social policies and practices.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, small business owners faced unprecedented challenges, including the looming threat of bankruptcy. In response, owners adopted various changes to their business models, with the extent of these adaptations, including pivoting to new strategies, increasing as the perceived threat of closure grew. However, owners who applied for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, marketed as government rescue funding, were less likely to make significant adjustments. This study introduces the ‘artificial rigidity’ concept to describe how PPP assistance may have delayed or deterred immediate, adaptive responses to environmental exigencies. Drawing on Terror Management Theory (TMT) and the Threat Rigidity Effect, we argue that the perception of a more distant threat—mediated by the expectation of financial support—encouraged owners to revert to existing, known practices instead of pivoting to new strategies. Using a dataset of 1083 small business owners surveyed in Utah between April and May 2020, we show that businesses facing higher bankruptcy threats were more likely to adapt, but PPP recipients were less likely to change. This study contributes to understanding how external interventions may push or pull adaptive behavior during times of crisis, with implications for both theory and practice.