Firms, activist attacks, and the forward-looking management of reputational risks

A growing literature investigates how activists launch attacks against firms to improve environmental practices, a situation typically referred to as “private politics.” Whether firms self-regulate in response has been shown to depend on reputational risks. However, reputation management in this literature is mostly reactive, whereas firms could be expected to anticipate and prevent reputation loss when faced with the threat of activism. How they would do so is not obvious, nonetheless, because firms have to consider two opposite effects: (1) a “reputational damage mitigation” effect, through which firms can pre-emptively align to what is expected from them, and (2) a “target enhancing” effect, in which self-regulation makes firms more visible and likely to be criticized. We show, theoretically and empirically, that these two effects actually co-exist and create heterogeneity in firms’ responses when they witness activist attacks in their industry. The real impact of activism on the development of more sustainable practices is thus not only greater than if we solely considered the responses of firms that suffer direct attacks, as many firms start self-regulating before being targeted, but also varies within industries.