The Dick’s
Sporting Goods chain store stopped selling military-style semiautomatic rifles
after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting. No wonder: the Stoneman
terrorist had bought a gun from one of their stores. Even though he didn’t
use it in the attack, the store was one decision away from becoming an
accessory to a mass shooting of school children.
Gun control
is an issue that provokes significant anger from people on both sides. People who
advocate for stricter controls express anger over the lives lost and the
failure to quell domestic terrorism. People on the side of no gun control
express anger over losing their right to buy any weapon they like.
Not all social
movements provoke the degree of anger gun control does, but we have more to
learn about those that do. A recent article by Katherine A. DeCelles, Scott Sonenshein, and Brayden G. King in Administrative Science Quarterly shows us
something new about social movements that provoke anger and how organizations
respond to them. The authors find that anger related to a social movement
affects the response of organizational insiders who agree with the social
movement, but not in the way we might expect. In the case of Dick’s Sporting
Goods, the organizational insiders would be employees who agree that gun
control is necessary and that the store should limit its gun sales and/or have
stricter background checks.
Employees’
reaction to a social movement they agree with would seem fairly simple to
predict: they would express their support of the social movement and try to
influence the organization to agree to its demands. This is often the case, and
employees are often successful: organizational insiders who agree with a social
movement make organizations much more likely to change. In other words, a social
movement often creates an opportunity to push an organization for change.
But this
article points out that social movements invoking anger are different. Anger
leads to a feeling of being under siege, so employees agreeing with the
movement face a dilemma. They are angry too and would like to express it. Yet they
also depend on the organization for work and pay, and they have reasons to fear
that involvement in an angry social movement will lead to negative repercussions,
whether from coworkers who disagree or from management. In other words, they
have to decide whether an angry social movement is a good opportunity to punch
for change.
The
research showed that this conflict between anger and fear was resolved in favor
of fear. While people outside the organization were more likely to act in
response to the social movement when they were angry, organizational insiders
were less likely to act. This was because greater anger also led them to fear
negative consequences of acting. Employees often did not act on their anger but
instead sought to protect themselves. In other words, they decided that the
best response to an angry social movement was to block punches that might come
from management, not to punch for change.
In Dick’s
Sporting Goods, change happened. Not only did they stop selling the
semi-automatic rifles that are favored by mass shooters, but they also
destroyed them. They are considering stopping sales of guns of all types in
their stores. Why did this happen? The decisive factor was that, angry or not,
the CEO got on the side of the social movement. Management does matter,
especially when there is controversy and anger.
DeCelles, K. A., Sonenshein, S., & King, B. G. 2019. Examining Anger’s Immobilizing Effect on Institutional Insiders’ Action Intentions in Social Movements. Administrative Science Quarterly, Forthcoming.
