#AOM 2026 Panel Symposium
Beyond the Focal Firm: The Broader Impact of Nonmarket Strategy
📅 Session #15961 | Sponsored by: STR, OMT, SIM
🕛 Monday, August 3 | 8:00–9:30 AM (EDT)
📍 Convention Center, 120B
🔗 View the session in the AOM program
Panelists:
• Forrest Briscoe (Cornell University)
• Sinziana Dorobantu (New York University)
• Aseem Kaul (University of Minnesota)
• Alessandro Piazza (Rice University)
Organizers:
• Zhao Li (New York University)
• Xuege (Cathy) Lu (University of Minnesota)
• Haram Seo (Arizona State University)
Firms increasingly rely on nonmarket strategies-corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate political activity (CPA), and corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA)-to shape their external environment. While prior research has often focused on how these strategies affect the focal firm, we know less about their second-order effects on other actors in the environment, including rival firms, activist organizations, policymakers, and the public.
This symposium brings together four leading scholars to build a unified framework for understanding these effects, illuminating how firms' nonmarket strategies shape the broader systems in which they are embedded.
🧩 Key questions we will explore include:
• What external factors (e.g., political institutions, media environments) and internal factors (e.g., corporate governance, stakeholder expectations) shape the second-order effects of nonmarket strategies?
• Through what mechanisms-such as competitive spillovers, social movement mobilization, venue shifting, and institutional crowd-out-do these effects unfold?
• How do institutional theory, social movements, stakeholder theory, competitive strategy, and other theoretical perspectives inform our understanding of these second-order effects?
• How does corporate engagement with social and political issues affect whether those issues gain or lose ground in public discourse and policy?
• How do public policies and institutional reforms amplify or constrain the system-level effects of corporate political activity?
We will tackle these questions in conversation with some of the most respected voices in the fields of nonmarket strategy, competitive strategy, social movements, and stakeholder strategy. Join us for a stimulating discussion of the impact of nonmarket strategies beyond the focal firm!
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Zhao Li
Assistant Professor
New York University
New York NY
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