How company behavior guides activists’ choices, according to this Houston researcher

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Companies that capitulate to protestors may encourage them to protest for more. Companies that win against protestors may catalyze them to join similar movements nearby. Photo by Thirdman from Pexels

It’s been more than 100 years since Pavlov’s dog showed the world that behavior is often guided by forces we don’t comprehend.

The same is true of the interaction between companies and protestors, according to Rice Business professor Alessandro Piazza and Fabrizio Perretti of Bocconi University in Milan. In a recent study, the scholars show that when protestors fight to change a company’s policy, their future choices of where and how much to protest are shaped by the company’s response.

Moreover, the outcome may not be what either group has planned for. Companies that meet protestor demand often inadvertently spur the protestors to demonstrate further; conversely, companies that refuse to give in tend to propel protestors to redirect their energies toward related but different issues.

The researchers based their conclusions on a deep dive into the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 1980s, and a close analysis of protests and company responses in specific locations.

During the time period studied, the researchers found, public sentiment toward nuclear energy changed from mild support to open hostility in the form of an organized protest movement. To quantify this movement’s impact on nuclear power plant construction, the researchers studied the aftermath of protestors’ local victories.

In Massachusetts, for example, the first nuclear power protest in 1974 persuaded Northeast Utilities to postpone, and then permanently cancel, its plant. This reaction, Piazza and Perretti found, catalyzed local protestors. In the years that followed, the region became one of the United States’ strongest bastions of anti-nuclear activism.

In order to quantify how company actions affected protests, the researchers first measured the number of U.S. protest events by geographic location from 1970 to 1995. They then compared this number to the number of nuclear facilities either completed or cancelled over a one-year time period within 100 miles of a given demonstration. They included controls to account for local economic and political differences upon local activism, and for any geographic bias of the newspaper sources used to identify protest events.

The patterns they found were intriguing. Proposing a new plant for construction boosted anti-nuclear protests by 18 percent in a 100-mile radius. Cancelling construction of a plant drove a 27 percent increase in anti-nuclear protests. And when a new nuclear plant was completed and connected to the grid, the researchers witnessed a 2.3 percent increase in the number of protests not directly aimed at nuclear power plants.

The reason for the increase in other protests when a company prevailed and built a power plant? The researchers hypothesize that each time a plant was completed, demoralized activists attached themselves to other movements.

These results raised a related question. Did company decisions on one type of controversy, such as a nuclear power plant, lead to greater support for related protest movements or for unrelated ones? The former, it turns out.

To measure this, the researchers again looked at protests within given regions and categorized them into anti-nuclear weapon protests, environmental protests, public policy protests, anti-war protests and protests against the proximity of a given plant to a specific property, that is, “not in my backyard” protests.

Nuclear power opponents, they found, were most likely to turn to adjacent issues such as protests against nuclear weapons. Protest activities, in other words, have a domino effect.

While most research tracks the effects of activism on companies, Piazza and Perretti’s study shows that the way companies act is also a critical event driver. Company choices can actually drive the evolution of activism, triggering activist mobilization in other causes.

The research represents a challenge to traditional explanations of activism, which usually assume that mobilization and protests are most effective early on then dwindle over time, regardless of the behavior of the organization.

Piazza and Perretti’s findings suggest a valuable lesson for companies, especially those operating in more than one location: Their decisions in one place may actually escalate activism elsewhere. Pacific Gas & Electric successfully acted on this insight in the 1980s. Working with the Sierra Club, the company swapped the cancellation of one site at Bodega Bay, California — the target of frequent protests — for support of a plant at a second site elsewhere in the state at Diablo Canyon.

The findings also offer important insight for activists choosing a company on which to focus. These activists should keep in mind that the companies most likely to capitulate are also the ones most likely to feed a movement going forward — providing, in effect, the possibility of a double win.

Meanwhile, even if they fail in one effort, activists can take heart that their energy isn’t necessarily wasted. Only a little further afield, a similar movement may gain momentum from demoralized protestors looking for a new cause.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom and is based on research from Alessandro Piazza, an assistant professor of strategic management at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

The organizations most likely to benefit from a competitor's scandal are ones that offer similar services, but are seen as having stricter ethical policies. Photo via Getty Images

Houston research: Innovating a way out of corporate scandal

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When scandal tears through an institution, it can hurt innocents in the same field. But even the darkest scandal can sometimes benefit a similar organization ⁠— if, that is, the public sees it as far more ethical, says Rice Business professor Alessandro Piazza.

In a recent paper, Piazza collaborated with Julien Jourdan of the Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL Research University, to study the effects of the sex crimes scandal that embroiled Catholic priests and other clergy on membership in not just the Catholic Church itself, but also 16 other U.S. Christian denominations. The researchers analyzed the 16 denominations between 1971 and 2000 in an attempt to track any flight of Catholics to other churches. The findings offer insights for secular organizations in scandal-stricken fields.

To reach their conclusions, Piazza and Jourdan studied data sets from the Religious Congregations and Membership Study and the Churches and Church Membership Study, maintained by the Association of Religion Data Archives. The data included county-level statistics on congregations of 149 religious bodies.

Using this data, Piazza and his coauthor first tallied county by county church membership, coding for variables such as ethnicity and economic status. Next, they created a model to rate churches on issues such as strictness, mandatory commitment and evangelism. Finally, they compared the changes in membership figures for non-Catholic churches to explore whether former Catholics might have joined other churches as a result of the clergy scandal, and if so, which ones.

Scandal, broadly defined as publicized transgressions of established norms, can indelibly mark the collective imagination. Media amplify the effect with their investigations of the disgraced organizations, whether it be the Catholic Church, Enron, WorldCom or the British Parliament. Research shows that a scandal can tarnish individuals, organizations and, by indirect association, even entire industries.

At the same time, it's possible for members of a scandal-plagued group to prosper. When, for instance, Nike was accused of using slave labor in the developing world to make their products, rival companies that could showcase better labor practices benefited. Past studies, however, have not shown how these consequences occur, or how they affect people on the inside of the implicated organizations.

Piazza and Jourdan found that scandals can improve business for rival organizations under key conditions, the most important one being if they offer close alternatives to the services once supplied by the disgraced organizations. This kind of swap is most likely to happen when a service is still needed. After the Enron scandal, for instance, clients of its disgraced auditor, Arthur Andersen, still required auditing services, so took their business to rival auditing firms.

The researchers also analyzed the responses of people within an organization disrupted by scandal. Unlike investors, who may react to a scandal quickly and coldly, an organization's members are more likely to reflect on options before leaving.

In the case of the Catholic Church, disillusioned members gravitated to denominations that shared certain traits with Catholicism, but were perceived to enforce stricter norms. For these Catholics, religious participation and commitment to religious activity were the most compelling aspects when choosing a new church. Theology mattered less.

Most of the disillusioned Catholics, in fact, moved to Protestant denominations seen as strict and ethically austere, such as the Missouri Synod Lutheran and Southern Baptists. Far fewer turned to more liberal mainline churches such as the Presbyterian or Episcopalian churches, even though the latter is theologically close to Catholicism.

The stricter churches were more likely to draw ex-Catholics who were poorer and less educated, had contributed more money and attended more services, held stronger beliefs and belonged to more church-related groups.

Though the Catholic Church scandals unleashed enormous spiritual anguish, the practical effects also apply to secular organizations, Piazza and Jourdan write. Certain firms, like certain denominations, can gain tangibly from a rival's disgrace. The caveat: They must offer similar services, and appear to be more virtuous.

Surprising as it may sound, in other words, an industry-wide scandal can sometimes mean opportunity. When a large institution falls to rubble, its survivors resolve not to make the same mistake twice. Looking for similar services, they'll choose the most austere organizational culture they can find.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom and is based on research from Alessandro Piazza, an assistant professor of strategic management at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

In business, affiliating with high-status colleagues often gives newcomers a professional boost. But less so in the creative industries. Photo by Jaime Lopes on Unsplash

Networking with high-status colleagues isn't successful across industries, per Rice University research

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In a timeless scene from the mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap," an 80s metal band swaggers in for a performance only to find they're billed second to a puppet show. Though the film is farce, real musicians often come to question the value of playing second fiddle to anyone – even an A-lister.

Now research by Rice Business professor Alessandro Piazza and colleagues Damon J. Phillips and Fabrizio Castellucci confirms those musicians are right to wonder. In fact, they discovered, the only thing worse than performing after a puppet may be opening up for an idol. Bands that consistently open up for groups with higher status, the researchers found, earn less money – and are more likely to break up than those that don't.

"Three cheers," The Economist wrote about the researchers, for confirming "what many people in the music industry have long suspected – that being the opening band for a big star is not a first class ticket to success."

While the findings may be intuitive for seasoned musicians, they fly in the face of existing business research. Most research about affiliations concludes that hobnobbing with high-status colleagues gives lowly newcomers a boost. Because affiliations give access to resources and information, the reasoning goes, it's linked with individual- and firm-level successes such as landing jobs and starting new ventures.

Both individuals and organizations, one influential study notes, benefit from the "sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships."

That's largely because in many fields up and comers must fight to be taken seriously – or noticed at all. This problem is often called "the liability of newness:" In order to succeed, industry newcomers first need to be considered legitimate by the audience they're trying to woo.

Showing off shiny friends is a classic solution. In many fields, after all, linking oneself with a high-status partner is simply good branding: a shorthand signal to audiences or consumers that if a top dog has given their approval, the newcomer must surely have some of the same excellent qualities.

Unfortunately, this doesn't always hold true – especially in the creative world, Piazza's team found. In the frantic world of haute cuisine, for example, a faithful apprentice to a celebrity chef may actually suffer for all those burns and cuts in the star's hectic kitchen. Unless they can create meals that are not just spectacular, but show off a distinct style, consumers may sneer at the newcomer as a knockoff of the true master.

So what determines if reflected glory makes newcomers shine or merely eclipses them? It has to do with how much attention there is to go around, Piazza said. While partnering with a star helps in some fields, it can be a liability when success depends on interaction between audience and performer. That's because our attention – that is, ability to mentally focus on a specific subject – is finite. Consumers can only take in so much at a time.

Marketers are acutely aware of this scarcity. Much of their time, after all, is spent battling for consumer attention in an environment swamped by competitors. The more rivals for advertising attention, research shows, the less a consumer will recall of any one ad. In the world of finance, publicly traded companies also live and die on attention, in the form of analyst coverage of their stocks and angel investors' largesse.

Musicians who perform live, Piazza said, are battling for attention in a field that's gotten progressively more fierce, due to lower album sales and shorter career spans. Performing in the orbit of a major distraction such as Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, however, only reduces the attention the opening act gets, the researchers found. Though performances are just a few hours, the attention drain can do lasting harm both to revenue and career longevity.

To reach these conclusions, the researchers analyzed data about the live performances and careers of 1,385 new bands between 2000 and 2005. Supplementing this with biographical and genre information about each band along with musician interviews, the team then analyzed the concert revenue and artistic survival of each band.

They discovered that in live music, high status affiliation onstage clearly diluted audience attention to newcomers – translating into less revenue and lower chance of survival.

In part, the revenue loss also stems from the fact that even in big stadium performances, performing with superstars rarely enriches the underdogs. According to a 2014 Billboard magazine report, headliners in the U.S. typically absorb 30 to 40 percent of gross event revenues; intermediate acts garner 20 to 30 percent and opening acts for established artists bring as little as $15,000.

The findings were surprising, and perhaps dispiriting, enough for the researchers to carefully spell out their scope. Affiliation's positive effects, they said, are most often found in environments of collaboration and learning – for example academia. In these settings, a superstar not only can bestow a halo effect, but can share actual resources or information. In the music world, however, the fleeting nature of a shared performance makes it hard for a superstar band to share much with a lower-ranked band except, perhaps, some euphoric memories.

Interestingly, in many businesses it's easy for observers to quickly assume affiliations between disparate groups. In the investment banking industry, for instance, research shows that audiences infer status hierarchies among banks merely by reading "tombstone advertisements," the announcements of security offerings in major business publications. Readers assume underwriting banks to be affiliated with each other when they're listed as being part of the same syndicate – even if the banks actually have little to do with each other beyond pooling capital in the same deal.

In the music business, star affiliations mainly help an opening act a) if the audience understands there's an affiliation and b) if they believe the link is intentional. But that's not always the case because promoters and others in Big Music often line up opening bands. When possible, though, A-listers can do their opening acts a solid by making it clear that they've chosen them to perform there.

Otherwise, Piazza and his colleagues concluded, the light shed by musical supernovas typically gets lost in the darkened stadium. For the long term, business-minded bands may do best by working with peers in more modest venues – places where the attention they do get, like in Spinal Tap's classic metric, goes all the way up to 11.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom and is based on research from Alessandro Piazza, an assistant professor of strategic management at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

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Houston researchers develop dissolvable implant for targeted cancer drug delivery

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Researchers at Houston Methodist have developed a biodegradable implant that can be used to safely and consistently deliver drug treatments to tumors and then dissolve without the need for further surgery.

The implant is only the size of a grain of rice, but its potential is staggering. The biodegradable nanofibrous drug-eluting seed (b-NDES) works as a reservoir parked inside a soft tumor, where it can slowly release immune-stimulating drugs over time. This overcomes a consistent problem with drugs such as immune checkpoint inhibitors. Normal systemic administration sees comparatively little of the drug making its way to the tumor, with most of it circulating throughout the body. The b-NDES is like deploying a small guerrilla fighting force embedded in enemy territory, doing maximum damage to the entrenched tumor.

"To improve cancer treatment, we're trying to start a fire inside the tumor itself," Corrine Chua, associate professor in the Center for BioNanoengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute, said in a news release. "By activating immune cells directly within the tumor microenvironment, those cells can then travel throughout the body and seek out cancer wherever it exists. The b-NDES platform was developed to help keep therapeutic drugs concentrated inside tumors while minimizing exposure to healthy tissues.”

Chua co-led the study with Alessandro Grattoni, chair and director of the Center for BioNanoengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute.

The study included support from the Nancy Owens Breast Cancer Foundation and the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute.

Chau and Grattoni used preclinical models of triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of cancer that is estrogen receptor-negative, progesterone receptor-negative and HER2-negative. Because of the receptor negativity, some popular treatments like tamoxifen and trastuzumab are ineffective. Chemotherapy has been shown to be the best course of action.

The b-NDES implant is deployed alongside radiation drugs. It keeps the drugs focused on the tumor, reducing the amount of harmful side effects typically seen when drugs are circulated more widely in the body. In 60 percent of the models, tumors were eliminated and did not cause side effects beyond the tumor site. Once the drugs have been deployed, the implant breaks down naturally.

While promising, more research will have to be done to expand use to other tumor types.

"Although the study focused on triple-negative breast cancer models, the approach could have broader applications for solid tumors," Grattoni added in the release. "It could potentially be used in cancers where there is a tumor lesion accessible for placement, including pancreatic or lung cancers."

New Houston platform Same Day Reels launches for on-demand content creation

In The Moment

If an event doesn't happen on Instagram, did it even really happen? In today's social media-driven age of branding and audience engagement, the answer increasingly is no.

Houston entrepreneur Karen De Amat is looking to fill the online content creation needs of companies with her new venture, Same Day Reels, which launched in early August. It will serve as a platform to connect companies and brands with talent that can help turn an event into a viral moment as it is happening.

"Events move quickly, and social media moves even faster,” said De Amat. “Same Day Reels was built to help brands capture the moment while it still matters. We are creating a more efficient way for businesses and creators to work together. Brands need content faster, and creators need more opportunities to turn their talent into real work. Same Day Reels brings those needs together.”

The company is focused on adding livestreams and concurrent short video content to "activations, launches, fundraisers, grand openings, conferences, hospitality experiences, and private celebrations." Such content can significantly increase the visibility of a product or brand according to digital marketing brands like Wyzowl, whose data found 63 percent of people in 2026 prefer to learn about new products via short video.

Packages offered by Same Day Reels will include filming, editing, and publishing content within hours of the targeted event.

De Amat says that her content creation platform will be a way to preserve the excitement of events and launches by enshrining them with immediate social media-driven memories.

“Event content is no longer just something you post after the fact,” De Amat said. “It is part of how people experience, remember and share the moment.”

Previously, De Amat is also the founder and CEO of Social Behavior, an influencer marketing company she launched from her home in 2014. It quickly garnered an array of clients and thrust De Amat into the spotlight, including numerous appearances on Fox 26's The Isiah Factor. Influencer Marketing Hub named her one of the top CEOs of influencer marketing companies in Houston in 2025.

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Bristol Myers Squibb to build $2.3B Houston pharma manufacturing campus

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New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb Co. has officially named Houston as the home of its new state-of-the-art manufacturing site.

The 60,000-square-foot facility represents a $2.3 billion investment, according to a news release. It is expected to create 500 skilled jobs and will be located in Houston's Generation Park.

BMS first announced that it was considering Houston among 16 other cities for the facility in May. The new hub will manufacture small molecule, biologic and antibody-drug conjugates and is part of a $40 billion commitment to invest in the United States over five years. Construction is slated to begin next year, with the facility coming online in 2030.

"We're building the domestic manufacturing capabilities needed to deliver the next generation of medicines and support future scientific breakthroughs. Houston and the state of Texas offer the talent, infrastructure, and partnership needed to help bring that vision to life," Christopher Boerner, CEO and board chair of BMS, said in the release.

The new facility will feature a modular, multi-modal design, which will allow the company to reconfigure and add to its manufacturing capabilities over time. BMS says it expects the facility to "(grow) in scale and capability well beyond its opening configuration."

"Our decision to build this state-of-the-art manufacturing campus in Houston, Texas, reflects our confidence in the region’s ability to support a world-class, digitally advanced supply operation,” Karin Shanahan, EVP and chief supply chain and operations officer of BMS, added in the release. “This facility is designed to deliver the speed, quality, and reliability that patients depend on, combining flexible, modular manufacturing with advanced digital capabilities to ensure consistent supply across multiple modalities. It strengthens our ability to operate with resilience and positions us to reliably deliver medicines to patients today while adapting future demands.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shared that the state has granted BMS a $4.89 million Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) grant for the project. TEF grants, administered by the Texas Economic Development & Tourism Office, support business relocation or expansion projects that create "new, good-paying jobs in the community and attract significant new capital investment to the state." The development is also a qualified project under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation (JETI) program.

“Texas is a global hub for life sciences, where today’s innovations shape the future of healthcare,” Abbott said in a news release. “This $2.3 billion investment by Bristol Myers Squibb in the dynamic biotech ecosystem in Houston is a testament to the depth of our skilled workforce and the pipeline of talent coming through our nation-leading technical colleges and research universities. With lower operating costs and easy access to markets across the U.S. and the world, Texas drives affordability for consumers.”

"Bristol Myers Squibb’s announcement is a tremendous win for Texas and the Houston region, further reinforcing our position as a premier destination for life sciences and advanced manufacturing,” added Greater Houston Partnership President and CEO Steve Kean.

Last fall, Eli Lilly and Co. selected Generation Park, a 4,300-acre, master-planned commercial district near Lake Houston, for its $6.5 billion manufacturing plant. More than 300 locations in the U.S. competed for the factory. Read more here.

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