Going local corporations and localities' pressing issues Christopher C Bruno

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Bruno, Christopher C., author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Management., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social psychology.

0454.

0501.

0451.

Local Subjects:

Social psychology.

0454.

0501.

0451.

Genre:

Academic theses

Physical Description:

1 online resource (255 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-12B

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2026

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Research connecting business, society, and strategy often ignores that organizations operate within localities, instead studying social and environmental engagement at organizational or country levels. Yet the issues stakeholders face - and thus local risks and opportunities - vary substantially across and within organizations' geographic footprints. Whereas some localities face pressing challenges in education, healthcare, and public safety, others face increasing climate risk from rising sea levels. Focusing on large corporations, this dissertation explains why local variation is important to management scholarship, asking how corporate actions shape local issues like poverty, how local issue variation affects stakeholder strategy, and when alignment with local issues improves performance. Chapter 1 examines how corporate strategy choices - such as headquarters relocations for tax purposes - have downstream effects on localities left behind, including reduced resources for local welfare nonprofits and increasing demand for welfare services. I leverage theory on nonprofit sector growth and cohesion to argue when headquarters departures most impact specific cities. I test these arguments with a novel panel dataset and shift-share instrumental variable approach. Recognizing that corporate strategic choices affect local issues, Chapter 2 leverages a large-scale dataset of corporate media co-mentions on specific issues (e.g., climate versus poverty) in U.S. cities to explore when variation in those issues affects corporate returns to social and environmental engagement. I find that corporations' alignment to the specific distribution of issues localities face is associated with more positive sentiment and higher sales. Recognizing the costs to localized approaches, theory and findings suggest that alignment to local variation may be more worthwhile when corporations operate across cities with distinctive issue distributions where such alignment is more likely to distinguish firms from peers. Chapter 3 unpacks how local engagement is challenged when issues are politically polarized. My co-authors and I theorize which corporations are expected to engage on polarizing local issues - such as those with a history of responding to related issues and a strong local presence - and what consequences they face depending on when they engage. We test our arguments with a novel dataset of corporate engagement and social media response around a controversial local voting law

Notes:

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-12, Section: B.

Advisors: Henisz, Witold; Wry, Tyler Committee members: Gatignon, Aline; Pongeluppe, Leandro

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2026

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798247981091

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license