Brayden King

About

Brayden King is the Max McGraw Chair of Management and the Environment and a professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He is also affiliated with the Department of Sociology. His research focuses on how social movement activists influence corporate social responsibility, organizational change, and legislative policymaking. Professor King is an expert on the impact of boycotts and the consequences of employee and shareholder activism, with recent studies examining the change processes leading to improved corporate environmental and social sustainability. He is an international research fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation and has published research in prominent scholarly journals. His academic background includes a PhD in sociology from the University of Arizona, and he has held various faculty positions at Northwestern University and Brigham Young University. His work encompasses social movements, corporate policymaking, economic sociology, corporate reputation and identity, and sustainability.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Public relations
• Marketing
• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Business
• Political economy
• Development economics

Selected publications

• When ideologies align: Progressive corporate activism and within‐firm ideological alignment

  Strategic Management Journal · 2024-07-03 · 33 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Research Summary This article examines the association between ideology and firm participation in sociopolitical activism. In particular, it focuses on the ideological alignment between a firm's upper echelons and its general employees. We theorize that participation in progressive corporate activism reflects the ideological views of both the top management team and general employees. By examining firm participation in letter campaigns supporting progressive causes, our findings indicat…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Great Successes and Great Failures: The Impact of Project Leader Status on Project Performance and Performance Extremeness

  Journal of Management Studies · 2020 · 27 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Research supporting the Matthew effect demonstrates that high‐status actors experience performance benefits due to increased recognition of their work and greater opportunities and resources, but recent research also indicates that high‐status actors face a greater risk of negative performance evaluations. In this paper, we seek to contribute to the status literature by reconciling these findings and ask: To what extent does status influence heterogeneity in performance evaluations? We…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social Movements, Collective Identity, and Workplace Allies: The Labeling of Gender Equity Policy Changes

  Organization Science · 2021-10-21 · 26 citations

  article

  Social movements seek allies as they campaign for social, political, and organizational changes. How do activists gain allies in the targeted institutions they hope to change? Despite recognition of the importance of ally support in theories about institutional change and social movements, these theories are largely silent on the microdynamics of ally mobilization. We examine how the labeling of organizational policies that benefit women influences potential workplace allies’ support for these p…

  PublisherDOI

• Movements, Societal Crisis, and Organizational Theory

  Journal of Management Studies · 2020 · 24 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Public health crises test the robustness of institutions, and the current COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. The spread of the virus and subsequent hospitalizations and deaths have laid bare the fragility of governments’ capacities to protect their citizens, and it has strained otherwise normally functioning institutions like higher education. The pandemic has exposed dramatic economic and racial inequalities, especially in countries without strong welfare infrastructure. Grievances that were on…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• From Movements to Managers: Crossing Organizational Boundaries in the Field of Sustainability

  Work and Occupations · 2022-12-06 · 21 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study investigates a route to occupational activism whereby individuals with significant experience in a social movement enter organizational positions that have been established to address those same movement's concerns. Utilizing data on the career pathways of 800 individuals from the field of sustainability in higher education, we formulate and test hypotheses related to whether or not individuals with more experience in the environmental movement gain access to sustainability manager po…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sarah A. Soule

  15 shared

• Mary‐Hunter McDonnell

  William P. Wharton Trust

  14 shared

• Forrest Briscoe

  Cornell University

  12 shared

• Klaus Weber

  11 shared

• Jocelyn M. Leitzinger

  University of Illinois Chicago

  10 shared

• Frank G. A. de Bakker

  Université de Lille

  9 shared

• Frank den Hond

  9 shared

• R. Mark Greenwood

  7 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Public Policy

  University of Chicago

  2005

• M.A., Public Policy

  University of Chicago

  2001

• B.A., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1998

Awards & honors

• Best Annual Paper Award, Centre for Corporate Reputation at…
• International Research Fellow, Centre for Corporate Reputati…
• Elected member of Sociological Research Association
• Affiliate Research Scholar, Rutgers Institute for Corporate…

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