About

Christopher Poliquin joined the UCLA Anderson faculty in 2018 as an Assistant Professor of Strategy. His research examines public policy and corporate strategy, with a focus on CEO political engagement, corporate political activity, organizational design, and how firms redeploy resources for competitive advantage. A major component of his recent work studies how firms and executives engage with political and social issues unrelated to their core business activities, analyzing how these stances influence consumers, policymakers, and political participation. His research has been published in leading journals such as PNAS, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategy Science, and the Journal of Business Ethics, and has been covered by prominent media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, NPR, The Atlantic, Slate, and Bloomberg. Poliquin earned his doctorate in business administration from Harvard Business School and teaches Business Strategy in UCLA Anderson’s MBA programs.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Business
• Economics
• Law
• Computer Science
• Political economy
• Demographic economics
• Engineering
• Marketing
• Knowledge management
• Accounting
• Finance
• Monetary economics
• Market economy

Selected publications

• CEO Activism and Political Participation

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-05-20

  otherSenior author
  Publisher

• CEO Activism and Signaling

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-05-20

  otherSenior author

  CEOs and companies often take positions on controversial issues such as gun control, abortion, and LGBTQ rights. These positions, in turn, have the potential to affect consumer behavior. Specifically, consumers may avoid or seek out products for ideological reasons or to signal their political beliefs to others.

  Publisher

• CEO Activism and Policymaker Preferences

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-05-20

  otherSenior author

  Does CEO support for police reform affect policymakers' preferences? Do politicians punish CEOs who take controversial positions on social issues?

  Publisher

• Values and visibility: How <scp>CEO</scp> activism influences private and public consumer choices

  Strategic Management Journal · 2026-01-25 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Research Summary Firms' and executives' stances on controversial issues affect consumer behavior. This “political consumerism” might be motivated by ideology and a desire to signal to peers, and thus vary for private and public purchases. We conduct an experiment with 1198 consumers to study how purchase visibility affects responses to CEO activism. Participants are randomly shown either generic product information or that plus a CEO statement supporting gun rights. They then choose between receiving the product or receiving cash, with half assigned to a condition where their choice is visible to someone they know. We find that CEO activism reduces demand among people who disagree with the CEO regardless of purchase visibility, indicating minimal signaling motives. Our results have implications for firms using politics to differentiate products. Managerial Summary Business leaders who speak out on controversial social and political issues may attract or repel consumers who agree or disagree with their stance. Consumers may react more intensely when others can observe their purchases or boycotts, allowing them to “signal” their beliefs. We experimentally manipulate whether the decision to purchase a product from a firm whose CEO vocally supports gun rights is observable and whether consumers are aware of the CEO's stance. We find that consumers change their behavior in response to CEO political activism regardless of whether their choices are visible to others. This suggests that CEO activism can impel boycotts and that firms can differentiate themselves by taking political positions even when their products are less known or consumed privately.

  PublisherDOI

• Policymaker Responses to CEO Activism

  Organization Science · 2025-07-03 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  CEOs increasingly engage in activism on controversial social and political issues, such as police reform, LGBTQ+ rights, and gun control, to influence the behavior of policymakers. We run an experiment on 514 local elected politicians to examine how revealing information about CEO activism on police reform affects the views of policymakers. Additionally, we examine how CEOs’ controversial positions on social issues affect politicians’ willingness to privately meet with CEOs or publicly advocate for their businesses. We do not find that revealing CEO support for specific police reform policies affects policymakers’ opinions. Policymakers, however, are much less willing to engage—either privately or publicly—with CEOs who take controversial positions on social issues. These results do not vary with local economic conditions or the salience of police reform, but they appear to be driven by policymakers’ personal ideological commitments. Our results suggest that CEO activism may have limited influence on local politicians, at least on the topic of police reform, and they underscore the business costs of CEOs taking political positions. We discuss the implications for CEOs and the activist groups that often pressure them to take public positions on controversial issues. Funding: This work was funded by the UCLA Anderson School of Management and University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.18282 .

  PublisherDOI

• Go Woke, Go Broke? Implications of Corporate Woke Washing for Employee Misconduct

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  articleSenior author

  Employee misconduct presents a significant challenge for companies worldwide, with global losses estimated at 5% of annual revenues due to internal fraud. According to agency theory, employee misconduct arises from misaligned interests of employees with the organization. Traditional solutions to align interests, such as monetary incentives, have shown limited effectiveness in preventing misconduct, which is why recently scholars have proposed relationship-based measures instead. Drawing from agency theory and the stakeholder alignment model, we propose that corporate activism, especially authentic activism, can serve as another effective relationship-based governance tool to align employee interests with organizational goals and reduce misconduct. We examine its effectiveness in a natural field experiment, but in contrast to theory, find that employees are indifferent to authentic activism. Yet, employees penalize inauthentic efforts, leading to reduced job satisfaction and increased misconduct. We find evidence that this negative effect is reduced when employees have a strong identification with the organization prior to being exposed to inauthentic corporate activism. Contrary to expectations from corporate activism literature and theory, employees’ political orientation does not influence their reactions to such activism. Our findings contribute to the stakeholder model of CEO activism by demonstrating that political alignment or misalignment is not always the determining factor in driving positive or negative stakeholder responses. Instead, the organizational identification prior to the activist event as well as the type of stakeholder group may also play a significant role.

  PublisherDOI

• Using Smartphone Location Data for Strategy Research

  Strategy Science · 2025-08-06 · 2 citations

  article

  Smartphones regularly track the precise locations of millions of people worldwide. These data are increasingly used in industry and academic settings to measure firm performance, workplace behavior, social interactions, and other metrics. We demystify this rich data source and explain how these data are constructed, how researchers can obtain access, and best practices when making inferences. Furthermore, we examine mobility data’s coverage of business locations against a popular business listing data source (Data Axle) and provide guidelines on matching mobility data to firm financials (Compustat). Finally, we provide sample data, code for illustration, and a website for data exploration ( https://www.mobilitydataresearch.com/ ) and highlight opportunities and limitations of using these data for management and strategy research. Funding: This work was funded by the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2024.0317 .

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond the Issues: Inferring CEO Ideology and Workplace Policies from CEO Activism

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Political Consumerism: Ideology or Signaling?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Using Smartphone Location Data for Strategy Research

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Luca

  William Carey University

  15 shared

• Deepak Malhotra

  Harvard University

  12 shared

• Young Hou

  9 shared

• Jasmina Chauvin

  Georgetown University

  6 shared

• Jordan I. Siegel

  Ross School

  6 shared

• Amir N. Licht

  5 shared

• Megan Lawrence

  Vanderbilt Health

  4 shared

• Carlos Inoue

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  3 shared