Institutional Conflict and Organizational Proxy Wars

In this paper I develop the idea of institutional conflict carried out in proxy by organizations representing the institutions. In the organizational proxy battles studied here, social movement organizations attempt to simultaneously delegitimize the targeted corporation as well as the institution which it is taken to represent. I further our understanding of institutional change by identifying two institutional variables that provide political opportunities for institutional change and describing how social movement organizations strategically leverage these variables in their proxy campaigns against corporations. The first of these variables is the degree of heterogeneity of institutionally-circumscribed resourcedependence niches. The second set of variables is individual moral cognitive dissonance and emotional ambivalence.