Dare to Fight? How Activist Hedge Funds’ Hostile Tactics Influence Target Firm Resistance

Hedge fund activism has become an integral part of publicly traded firms, and our paper adopts a behavioral lens to examine how the hostility of tactics employed by activist hedge funds may influence the response of target firms. Drawing on cognitive mechanisms and insights from interviews with investment professionals, we propose that activists’ use of hostile tactics may paradoxically trigger greater resistance from target firms. Specifically, we argue that management and the board may seek greater desire for control, and experience ego threat and heightened anxiety in the face of hostility, which increases target firm resistance. Using a sample of 731 activist hedge fund campaigns from 2002 to 2015, we find that target firms are more likely to resist when the activist hedge fund uses more hostile tactics. Further, our findings indicate that resistance towards hostile tactics increases when activist demands challenge the position of management or the board, but is mitigated by a firm’s prior activism experience or boards with more directors that have experienced hostile campaigns.