The primary purpose of this study is to examine how nearby precipitating events and protest events of social movements can affect the self-regulation of non-targeted organizations. By self-regulation we refer to the tendency of organizations to proactively adopt policies, practices, or standards to address concerns raised by the movement. We consider that organizations do this self-regulation either through communicating alignment or by committing to invest in alignment with the social movement. Drawing on political economics and old institutional theory, we develop a novel view of self-regulation, where self-regulation is forward looking evoked by the threat of movement pressures but also anchored in the past as reflected in an organization’s institutionalized values and practices. From this novel view of self-regulation, we develop theory about whether and how non-targeted organizations respond to nearby precipitating events underlying the activism, and to the activism itself in the form of nearby protest events. We test our hypotheses during a foundational period of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) social movement and examine the responses of U.S. colleges and universities to the threat of the emerging movement targeting criminal justice reform during the 2015-2016 academic year and find strong support for the theory.
