Social Forces Visiting Scholar Sarah Soule, Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

Social Movement Organizational Collaboration: Networks of Learning and the Diffusion of Protest Tactics, 1960-1995

Abstract: This paper examines the diffusion of protest tactics between social movement organizations (SMOs). Drawing on organizational learning theory, we argue that knowledge about specific tactics diffuses between social movement organizations via their co-engagement in protest events. Using a longitudinal network dataset of organizations and their participation in protest events between 1960 and 1995, we adapt novel methodological techniques for dealing with sample selection bias in networks, which comes in two forms—1) the mechanism that renders some organizations more likely to select into collaborations than others, and 2) the notion that tactical diffusion is not a result of collaboration, but rather is an artifact of homophily or some form of indirect learning.  We find that coalitions are indeed an important channel of tactical diffusion. We also find that SMOs with broader tactical repertoires are more likely to adopt additional tactics as a result of their collaborations with other SMOs, but only up to the point beyond which such SMOs are spread too thin. Engaging in more collaborations also makes SMOs both more active transmitters and adopters of novel tactics. Finally, achieving some initial overlap in their respective tactical repertoires facilitates the diffusion of tactics between collaborating SMOs.

Sarah A. Soule’s research examines state and organizational-level policy change and diffusion, and the role social movements have on these processes. Current projects include an NSF-funded analysis of advocacy group effects on environmental legislation in the US; an analysis of how protest impacts multi-national firm-level decisions regarding divestment in Burma; a study of how protest affects the outcomes of shareholder resolutions; and an analysis of how protest affects stock prices of targeted firms. She has just finished a book with Cambridge University Press, entitled Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility. And, she recently completed a book (with David Snow) called, A Primer on Social Movements. Recent published work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and the Annual Review of Sociology.