Nicole (Niki) West

Niki West is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Texas Dallas. Niki’s research focuses on the non-market strategies used by different types of organizations in contexts related to public health and civil rights. Her work touches on the impact of business on society, stakeholder theory, corporate political activity, and social activism. 

In a world overloaded with information that is difficult to verify and subject to individuals’ cognitive biases, understanding how an organization produces, uses, and disseminates information to achieve its goals is of critical importance. Niki’s research seeks to address these questions in the context of firms’ efforts to influence their political environments.

Currently, Niki's research examines how different types of organizations engage in scientific discourse to influence regulatory policy, and how engagement in scientific discourse relates to use of other political influence tactics. Engagement in scientific discourse is defined as efforts to shape scientists' beliefs on answers to scientific questions. Using nearly 30,000 public comments submitted during the creation of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and taking a quantitative abductive approach, Niki explores both who attempts to influence regulatory policy (e.g. firms, trade associations, astroturf groups, non-profits) and how (e.g. engagement in scientific discourse versus lobbying, good faith versus biased contributions to scientific discourse, scientific versus cultural persuasion tactics). Her findings help shed light on how science can become politicized through organizational engagement in political processes and may also help regulators better identify when firms are making biased versus good faith contributions to scientific discourse. Her research has been awarded a grant from the Strategic Management Society’s Strategy Research Foundation (SMS SRF). 

Another stream of research focuses on the ways stakeholders attempt to hold firms accountable for their negative externalities, and in turn, how firms attempt to evade accountability. Findings from this stream of research on the opioid crisis show how attempts to hold a focal firm responsible for misconduct via litigation may fail in the presence of competition. Indeed, this may have spurred the mass litigation against all firms in the opioid industry by thousands of local governments. This stream of research seeks to understand how local governments are combining elements of social activism with their limited institutional authority in their attempts at “regulation through litigation.” This research has important implications for understanding stakeholder strategies in the presence of regulatory failures and political polarization. Niki's research is published at the Strategic Management Journal.

Niki teaches strategic management to undergraduates. She uses the case method and covers topics such as network effects, economic logics, competitive advantage, competitive dynamics, scope of the firm, Blue Ocean strategy, corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability, and stakeholder strategy.

Prior to her doctoral studies, Niki worked in the fields of environmental policy and research for development in Peru, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Canada. Niki holds a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Washington, as well as a Master of Environmental Management in Environmental Economics and Policy from Duke University and a Bachelor of Commerce in Business Economics and Law from the University of Alberta.