Exploring how firms and their leaders manage heterogeneous stakeholder demands arising from internationalization, polarization and geopolitical risks is what fascinates me.
How can managers navigate a polarized environment to win hearts and minds of both sides of the political spectrum?
How can firms manage different contexts (e.g., democratic vs autocratic countries)?
Research topics
Nonmarket strategies
I explore how firms strategically navigate the intersection of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Political Activity (CPA) to maintain legitimacy (i.e., social acceptance)–especially in shifting political and social landscapes. In a recent published study, we developed a contextualized CSR-CPA framework, which examines how these strategies vary across different contexts such as democratic vs autocratic countries.
Currently, we investigate empirically how tech giants like Google and Amazon responded to the challenges posed by Donald Trump’s first presidency–an era marked by rising populism and political polarization.
Our work aims to shed light on how firms adapt their public positioning and political engagement to balance stakeholder expectations, legitimacy, and long-term strategy in complex environments.
CEO activism
I examine how firms navigate ideologically diverse stakeholder demands in an increasingly polarized world. When facing pressure from both ends of the political spectrum, how can companies maintain legitimacy without alienating key audiences?
Together with co-authors, we explore the role of ideologically flexible communication strategies, particularly forms of robust CEO activism, as tools to engage with polarized stakeholders and media environments. These adaptive approaches help firms respond credibly to complex issues while preserving trust and legitimacy across ideological divides.
We analyzed Elon Musk's Twitter ("X") communication over 10 years consisting of 20,000+ tweets to investigate, how the polarized US newsmedia lanscape perceives his communication. We find different types of CEO activism that enabled him to become "friends" with boths sids in the past, while he made provocative polarizing turn in the recent past.
Publications
Winkler, D. M., & Krzeminska, A. (2024). How Context Matters in Non‐market Strategies: Exploring Variations in Corporate Social Responsibility‐Political Activity Relationships. Journal of Management Studies, 61(7), 3358-3388.
Winkler, D. (2022). Nonmarket Strategies in an Ideologically Polarized World: Essays on Corporate Legitimacy vis-à-vis Media, Politics, and Society (Doctoral dissertation, University of Zurich).
Winkler, D., Ueberbacher, F. & Scherer, A. G. (2020). Organizational Legitimation in a Polarized Media Landscape: The Role of Robust Organizational Impression Management. Academy of Management Proceedings, (1).