License for conflict multinational investment, social resistance, and the limits of governance Doron Tadmor

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Tadmor, Doron, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Management., degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

0454.

0601.

Local Subjects:

0454.

0601.

Genre:

Academic theses

Physical Description:

1 online resource (438 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 87-12A

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2026

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This dissertation explores how multinational investment in sensitive socio-political contexts generates conflict, imposes financial costs, and challenges the effectiveness of institutional governance. In doing so, I develop a more embedded understanding of nonmarket strategy in marginalized communities. The first chapter examines how foreign direct investment (FDI) proximate to Indigenous land claims can activate mobilization, increasing the likelihood of armed conflict events. Building on social movement theory's identification of injustice frames and political opportunity structures as drivers of mobilization, and drawing on a novel dataset on the global location of Indigenous land claims and a corpus of over four billion news articles, we find that when locations with Indigenous land claims are treated with FDI, armed conflict events increase, often driven by rebels acting on behalf of Indigenous peoples. The second chapter turns to the firm-level consequences of such conflict, analyzing extractive projects on Indigenous lands in Peru. Using a novel dataset of 28 cases and over 920 publicly available documents, this chapter quantifies conflict-related costs (e.g., lost productivity and redress), totaling over $31.9 billion across cases. Building on the cost typology developed by Franks and others (2014), we code financial costs and introduce new dimensions, including proactive investment and categorization by business function. We find that firms investing more in proactive engagement tended to experience fewer and less severe disruptions, yet conflict-related costs often span multiple business functions, making them difficult to manage. The final chapter evaluates whether industry self-regulation, through the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), can reduce conflict around mine sites by partially substituting for weak state provision of equal protections. Using a global panel of over 38,000 mines, we find that locations dominated by ICMM mines are associated with a modest reduction in violent conflict relative to locations dominated by non-member mines. However, this effect is conditional on host-country equal protection, such that ICMM's negative association with conflict is strongest where equal protection is weaker and attenuates as protections strengthen - indicating that the effectiveness of transnational private governance is conditional rather than universal. Together, these three chapters provide a multi-level view of how corporate investment in sensitive socio-political contexts can generate conflict, impose costs, and invite institutional governance responses

Notes:

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

Advisors: Henisz, Witold Committee members: Carlson, Natalie; Spencer Jamison, Anne

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2026

Vendor supplied data

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798247979005

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license