AIB 2012 Conference Proceedings - Academy of International ...

TUESDAY
the various individual and simultaneous links among brokerage, innovation and knowledge outflows. In this
way, we decompose some of the ways in which brokerage simultaneously affects knowledge outflows and
innovation to map out the private and common benefits of brokering within the MNE network. We find that
brokerage is indeed positively related to innovation but negatively to knowledge outflows, given also that, as
expected, innovation is positively related to outflows. The reason that existing literature has ignored the
knowledge outflow patterns of the broker, and as such its value-added to the network, may be that the total
effect of knowledge outflow is indeed positive, although the direct effect of brokerage on knowledge outflow is
negative. (For more information, please contact: Lisa Katarina Gaerber, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark:
lg.smg@cbs.dk)
Session: 3.3.7 - Competitive
Track: 1 - Institutions, Governance, and CSR
Social Movements and International Business
Presented On: July 3, 2012 - 13:00-14:15
Chair: Andrew Spicer, University of South Carolina
Torts and Tickers: The Impact of Human Rights Lawsuits on Multinational Stock Performance
David Adam Wernick, Florida International University
William Schneper, Florida International University
Activist groups have filed dozens of civil lawsuits in U.S. federal courts against multinational enterprises in
recent years over alleged human rights abuses in developing countries, many in Latin America. Multinational
business leaders complain that these lawsuits add to their cost of doing business and hamper their global
competiveness. Anecdotal evidence suggests that their concerns may be justified. But does the empirical
evidence bear this out To answer this question we conducted an event study of lawsuits filed against
multinational enterprises between 1993 and 2010 under the U.S. Alien Tort Statute, a law that gives U.S.
federal courts extraterritorial jurisdiction for cases involving allegations of serious offenses committed against
foreign citizens. Our analysis shows that target firms experienced a significant decline in share price upon filing
and that both industry and nature of the lawsuit had a significant and negative relationship to shareholder
wealth. We offer conclusions and implications for practice. (For more information, please contact: David Adam
Wernick, Florida International University, USA: wernick@gmail.com)
Profits and Prophets: The Religious Determination of Corporate Legitimacy
Matthew C. Mitchell, Drake University
The broad and complex relationship between religion and global businesses is investigated using the theoretical
lens of institutional theory and qualitative methodological techniques of cultural analysis of discourse.
Specifically, I examine the relationship between the corporation and the religio-institutional environments in
which they transact by mapping the cognitive schematic elements of religious actors in three countries: Egypt
(Islam), Israel (Judaism), and Sweden (Secular Humanism). Semi-structured participant interviews of 78
religious clerics and business executives are used to generate and analyze a focused discursive corpus. The
result of this analysis is (1) a thick description of the cognitive and discursive relationship between religion and
business for each national environment, (2) an identification of critical constructs and themes in the religious
cognition of corporate legitimacy, and (3) proposed maps for the normative evaluation of corporate legitimacy
in each national context (the Egyptian case is highlighted in this paper). (For more information, please contact:
Matthew C. Mitchell, Drake University, USA: matthew.mitchell@drake.edu)
AIB 2012 Conference Proceedings
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