Online Seminar – Political Protest and Corporate Philanthropic Giving: A Natural Experiment of Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan

Professor Haibin Yang, City University of Hong Kong

Drawing on social movement literature and network spillover effect, we theorise that social movement targeting at a particular political group may bring about negative spillover to politically-connected firms, and consequently, firms are likely to use corporate philanthropic giving to preempt possible damages. We test our theory by examining listed firms in Taiwan that responded to the Sunflower Student Movement against the ruling party Kuomintang (KMT). Our difference-in-differences estimates provide evidence that pre-event linkages to the protested party KMT exhibited significantly higher levels of philanthropic giving following the movement. Furthermore, two important contingencies, namely a firm’s location in Taipei and its B2C market type, significantly increased prior KMT-connected firms’ philanthropic amount after the social movement than that of non-KMT connected firms. These findings shed fresh light on the spillover effect of political movement on organisations, the adverse impact of political connections, and the insurance function of corporate social activities in counterbalancing the corporate political missteps.

Speaker bio

Haibin Yang is a Professor in Strategic Management at City University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD from University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests include alliance networks, acquisitions, innovation, entrepreneurship, and competition in transition economies. His research works have appeared in some top-tier management journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management, and Journal of Management Studies, etc. He currently serves in the editorial boards for Strategic Management Journal, Journal of World Business, Long Range Planning, Asia Pacific Journal of Management and Journal of Marketing Science.

Reade the paper Political Protest and Corporate Philanthropic Giving: A Natural Experiment of Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan.

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