Activists' strategies for confronting firms

This study enacts a novel theoretical and methodological approach to uncover and elaborate activist organizations’ strategies for confronting firms with contentious practices. Through the inductive analysis of 778 activist actions against firms, we identify three fundamental strategies and draw from relevant research to develop precise, versatile constructs that explain each one. We use our archetype to reconcile and enhance the validity of the diverse strategies from prior theories, as well as to elaborate how our improved constructs advance these theories’ predictions about activists’ strategic choices or the consequences of such choices. As an explicit form of theorizing, our study contributes a valid, reliable strategic archetype that increases the specificity, consistency, and generalizability of existing scholarship on how activists confront firms and provides a solid guide for future theory building efforts in this realm.