Tweet Storms as Social Movements? Managing Stakeholders in the Social Media Era

Abstract

The manner in which social movements influence firms has garnered significant research among organizational scholars. This research has suggested that secondary stakeholders, lacking direct access or power, influence firms through enlisting the support of elites such as the media to increase the salience and urgency of collective actions. However, social media provide secondary stakeholders additional tools to bypass traditional media elites in pressing their agenda. We first develop new theory to describe how collective actions organized using social media influence firms through multiple paths. Specifically, collective actions (e.g., email campaigns, petitions, threats of boycotts) can influence managers directly through reputation threats on social media and indirectly through primary stakeholders who can pressure managers to address the social media propagated issues. We then introduce a new model for firms to manage social movements emanating from social media. The theoretical and practical implications of our model are also discussed.