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The purpose of this research is to assess whether differences occurred between directors and staff in community tobacco use prevention coalitions in Mississippi. Community coalitions, which are organizations working together for a common purpose involve representatives of diverse institutions focusing on issues in a local community. Because of their different roles, directors and support staff may view their coalition differently.

Thirty directors and 14 support staff of tobacco use prevention coalitions anonymously answered a lengthy questionnaire about their coalition personnel and functioning.

Both coalition directors and support staff agreed that their coalition had formal rules and effective management, reduced tobacco use, and benefited their region. In addition, directors and support staff reported high ownership, and positive opinions of member and personnel expertise. Further, directors and support staff favored taking tobacco industry money for themselves or their coalition. However, directors and support staff were neutral in satisfaction and in difficulty managing their coalition, and slightly negative in ratings of member‐member and member‐personnel communication, directors more negative than support staff on member‐personnel communication.

Strengthening communication seems to be a place where there is room for improvement in the present tobacco use prevention coalitions.

Presently, those actually working in a tobacco use prevention coalition were still idealistic about their efforts, but continued frustrations with communication may dampen their enthusiasm in the future.

Reviews theory on coalition formation and what it might mean to a manager in an organization. Defines coalition, for the purpose of the discussion, as a means‐oriented alliance among groups or individuals who differ in goals. Proposes that a theoretic understanding of coalitions, coupled with communications network analysis, would be a useful tool for discerning particular types of organizational coalitions and a guide to who might coalesce with whom for a detrimental result.

This article applies the theory of coalition formation in triads to channels of distribution. The theory explains alternative power strategies of weaker (smaller) channel members to dominance by more powerful channel entities. Six pre‐coalition situations are examined to aid in predicting the possible conditions that may form, given an uneven distribution of power in the channel system. This type of analysis could be used to predict disadvantageous power combinations in the channels of distribution to the overall macro effectiveness of the channel system.

At a time when the US federal government failed to act on climate change, California's success as a subnational climate policy leader has been widely celebrated. However, California's landmark climate law drove a wedge between two segments of the state's environmental community. On one side was a coalition of “market-oriented” environmental social movement organizations (SMOs), who allied with private corporations to advance market-friendly climate policy. On the other side was a coalition of “justice-oriented” environmental SMOs, who viewed capitalist markets as the problem and sought climate policy that would mitigate the uneven distribution of environmental harms within the state. The social movement literature is not well equipped to understand this case, in which coalitional politics helped one environmental social movement succeed in its policy objectives at the expense of another. In this chapter, we draw on legislative and regulatory texts, archival material, and interviews with relevant political actors to compare the policymaking influence of each of these coalitions, and we argue that the composition of the two coalitions is the key to understanding why one was more successful than the other. At the same time, we point out the justice-oriented coalition's growing power, as market-oriented SMOs seek to preserve their legitimacy.

In many developing countries and some developed countries, government by coalition is the rule. In the Indian central government for the last two or three decades, there was a coalition of the left or right: on the right, the BJP and like-minded party; and on the left, the secular Congress party, like-minded parties, and the Communist party. This coalition of government politics is very much guided by both domestic and international situations. For example, Congress, the major party in the ruling coalition, is in favour of the USA–India nuclear deal. It was not finalized due to the opposition of its coalition partners, particularly the Communist party. As a result, the deal is almost dead. There are many examples in economic policies that are greatly influenced by coalition politics. The same situation exists in state politics. There is considerable scope in using the material in coalition theory literature to determine when and what type of coalition will form and break the pay off, etc. The subject discussed below of such a situation is based on a grossly outdated scenario. We hope a more up-to-date and sophisticated study will be available not only for India, but also for other countries.

Social movements are made up of organized groups and individuals working together to accomplish shared objectives. Under what circumstances do active groups build and break their coalitions? Five conditions have been identified in the literature as influencing coalition formation: common identity, resources, organizational structure, historical connection, and institutional setting. Whereas coalition dynamics within a movement wave are best understood in terms of institutional opportunities and threats, further research is needed to determine how and to what extent these contextual elements influence coalitions. This chapter examines how threats posed by indiscriminate and selective repression affect the shape and structure of interorganizational coalitions during the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) protests in Hong Kong. The analysis relies on an original political event dataset and an organization-event network dataset. These datasets were produced utilizing syntactic event coding techniques based on Telegram posts, which Hong Kong protesters used to distribute information, plan future actions, and crowdsource news. Furthermore, Telegram provides detailed information about state activities, event-level coalitions, and violent groups, which is difficult to access from other sources. This study investigates the coalition networks across the movement's four stages, each of which was marked by a particular type and degree of repression. The findings indicate that indiscriminate and selective repression have varied effects on coalition networks. A wide coalition disintegrates as a result of indiscriminate repression. Selective repression, however, leads to the formation of coalitions around activist groups targeted by repression.

Coalition formation and dissolution are integral parts of social movement politics. This article addresses two questions about the effect of coalition politics on organizational processes within social movements. First, how does coalition leadership influence who attends mass demonstrations? Second, how does the dissolution of a coalition affect the locations of organizations in activist networks? The case of schism between United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) in the contemporary American antiwar movement (2001–2007) is examined. Survey results demonstrate that variations in coalition leadership do not significantly affect protest demographics, though they do attract supporters with different political attitudes, levels of commitment, and organizational affiliations. Further, network analysis establishes that coalition dissolution weakens the ties between previous coalition partners and creates opportunities for actors uninvolved in the split to reaffirm and improve brokerage opportunities. The end result is that preexisting network structures serve to mitigate the effects of coalition dissolution on social movements.

Social movement scholarship convincingly highlights the importance of threats, political opportunities, prior social ties, ideological compatibility, and resources for coalition formation. Based on interviews with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists involved in two transnational coalitions in Israel/Palestine, this chapter illustrates the emergence of transnational coalitions, particularly those that cross polarized ethno-national divides, depends not only on such facilitators, but also, and critically, on the belief that such diverse cooperation is strategic. I argue these unique coalitions intentionally formed with individuals and organizations situated in different national communities out of a strategic decision by the Palestinian initiators, given the closed political opportunity structure they faced domestically, to enlarge the scope of conflict by drawing in new people and communities who may have some leverage on the Israeli government. Consequently, this chapter also makes clear that partners in the Global South make intentional choices about who to partner with, and that the agency is not solely linked with their more privileged partners in the Global North (cf., Bob, 2001; Widener, 2007). Finally, it illustrates that coalition partners are recruited not only because of social ties, prior histories of interaction, ideological similarity, and shared organizational framing, but also due to key considerations including perceptions of what the ethno-national diversity, varying networks, and differing privileges make available.

This chapter presents a personal research journey starting from my interest in firms’ decision-making within the tradition of the behavioral theory of the firm to discovering mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as an ideal decision context to advance the theory. Using my two articles published in the Academy of Management Journal as examples, I showcase how to leverage the specific attributes of M&A together with the institutional context in which they occur to develop and test new theories. Each paper addresses a distinctive research question and provides a unique angle of theoretical insights to the theory of decision-making. In particular, I was able to dig deeper into the mechanisms of institutional logic, power, and coalition building for explaining how firms make strategic decisions, all owing to the significance and versatility of M&A.

This paper analyzes the stability and the welfare properties of R&D cooperations in an oligopolistic market with n firms. It is shown that the sizes of stable coalitions vary significantly with the kind and the actual value of spillovers, the institutional arrangement of cooperation between the firms and the underlying stability concept. Moreover, the welfare maximizing coalition is rarely a stable equilibrium outcome, hence there is scope for political intervention. However, the informational requirements on part of the policy makers are high, and they are at risk to adopt inappropriate measures that are detrimental to social welfare.