Why Do Corporations Engage in LGBT Rights Activism? LGBT Employee Groups as Internal Pressure Groups

Maks-Solomon, Cory, and Josiah Mark Drewry. “Why Do Corporations Engage in LGBT Rights Activism? LGBT Employee Groups as Internal Pressure Groups.” Business and Politics. Accepted with minor revisions, September 16, 2019.

  • This research was presented at the 2018 APSA annual conference, the winter 2019 NCAPSA workshop, and the 2019 AOM annual conference.
  • In the Social Issues in Management section of the 2019 Academy of Management Annual Meeting, this paper received the Best Student Paper Award.
  • Most recent draft of the paper is available here. And the appendix is available here.
Companies with an LGBT employee resource group (ERG) are more likely to engage in corporate activism in support of LGBT rights, ceteris paribus. Yet this relationship is strongly conditional upon employee skill-level: LGBT employee groups only predict activism for companies in industries with highly-educated employees. In order for ERGs to be effective at convincing their employers to engage in activism, they must have bargaining power.