Online Power Resource Management: Activist Resource Mobilization, Communication Strategy, and Organizational Structure

Abstract

The power resource management (Heath, 2008; Heath & Palenchar, 2009) and resource mobilization (McCarthy & Zald, 1977) literatures suggest that resource mobilization is a precondition of issues management and interdependent with strategic behavior. This study examined how activist organizations are using their Web sites to marshal the resources necessary to influence the outcome of issues. Activist group Web sites (N = 300) were coded to determine if online resource mobilization features were related to types of activist issues management strategies. Results of multivariate probit regression analyses revealed that particular types of resource mobilization efforts predict certain activist strategies. The study offers implications on how resource mobilization is used to enact issues management strategy and on how activist strategies, issue objectives, and organizational structure are interrelated.