scholarly journals How do firms compete in the non-market? The process of political capability building

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard S. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Corporate Structure ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Resource Based View ◽  
Capability Building ◽  
Political Access ◽  
Theory Research ◽  
Political Actions

This paper contributes to both corporate political activity (CPA) research and capabilities theory research by offering models that better describe the process that managers undertake to nurture a political capability. This is done through the interplay of four factors inherent in political actions, namely (i) corporate structure, (ii) firm-government linkages, (iii) political access and (iv) public policy pressure. Additionally, recognizing that political capability attainment is not a binary endeavor, I offer a political capability continuum to better categorize the magnitude by which differing firms allocate resources toward molding public policy. This paper adds to the scant literature on management-focused CPA research that integrates the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and political action research.

Disaggregating and Explaining Corporate Political Activity: Domestic and Foreign Corporations in National Politics

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (4) ◽  
pp. 891-903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy L. Hansen ◽  
Neil J. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Political Action Committees ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Empirical Level ◽  
Foreign Corporations

Corporate political activity is usually operationalized and analyzed as financial contributions to candidates or political parties through political action committees (PACs). Very little attention has been paid to other dimensions, such as lobbying, in a systematic way. On a theoretical level we address the issue of how to conceive of PAC contributions, lobbying, and other corporate activities, such as charitable giving, in terms of the strategic behavior of corporations and the implications of “foreignness” for the different types of corporate political activity. On an empirical level we examine the political activities of Fortune 500 firms, along with an oversampling of U.S. affiliates of large foreign investors for the 1987–88 election cycle.

Corporate Political Strategies

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham K. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Political Action Committees ◽  
Political Contributions ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Corporate Political Strategies ◽  
Ready Availability ◽  
Politically Active

With one partial exception, political scientists have carried out little empirical research on corporate political activity. That one exception is political action committees, PACs. Perhaps because of the ready availability of apparently reliable data on corporate political contributions, most empirical studies of business political activity have concentrated on PACs. The study of PACs is not, however, synonymous with the study of corporate political behaviour. Indeed, not all corporations have PACs; Sabato estimated that almost half the largest manufacturing corporations did not. At least one politically active corporation, Du Pont, refused for many years to establish a PAC.

The Corporate Context of Lobbying Activity

2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Brasher ◽  
David Lowery
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Political Action Committees ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Business Context ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Corporate Context ◽  
Size Matter

Despite extensive research on political activity on the part of corporations, clear and consistent findings remain elusive. We identify three reasons for this failure. First, most of the empirical literature on corporate political activity simply studies the wrong phenomena by examining political action committees rather than lobbying more generally. Second, the literature studies an excessively narrow sample of organizations that might engage in lobbying, focusing almost always on extremely large corporations, which inevitably attenuates variance on many of the variables hypothesized to influence engagement in political activity. And third, prior work is rarely attentive to the diversity of corporate activities, narrowly conceptualizing vital aspects of the business context that might influence decisions to engage in political activity. Based on this critique, we develop and test new models of corporate political activity, finding that the diversity of the economic context within which firms work and firm size matter a great deal, if in ways somewhat different from those reported in prior work.

scholarly journals CSR Needs CPR: Corporate Sustainability and Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas P. Lyon ◽  
Magali A. Delmas ◽  
John W. Maxwell ◽  
Pratima (Tima) Bansal ◽  
Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Corporate Sustainability ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Corporate Environmental Responsibility ◽  
Rating Systems ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
Political Actions

Corporate sustainability has gone mainstream, and many companies have taken meaningful steps to improve their own environmental performance. But while corporate political actions such as lobbying can have a greater impact on environmental quality, they are ignored in most current sustainability metrics. It is time for these metrics to be expanded to critically assess firms based on the sustainability impacts of their public policy positions. To enable such assessments, firms must become as transparent about their corporate political responsibility (CPR) as their corporate social responsibility (CSR). For their part, rating systems must demand such information from firms and include evaluations of corporate political activity in their assessments of corporate environmental responsibility.

Corporate politicking, together: trade association ties, lobbying, and campaign giving

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Kowal
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Trade Association ◽  
Citizens United ◽  
American Elections ◽  
Corporate Lobbying

AbstractScholars and politicians in recent years have become concerned with rising levels of inequality among Americans, heightened in the aftermath of the 2010 Supreme Court decision inCitizens United v. F.E.C.The suspicion over an ever larger influence of corporate and elite interest over public policy has brought about significant public backlash, even becoming a key platform of reformist candidates such as Sen. Bernie Sanders. In large part, these fears have yet to be realized, as many corporations have chosen to remain on the sidelines in American elections and have not fully taken advantage of their newfound rights. At the same time, we have observed a stark rise in corporate lobbying expenditures in recent decades. What explains the puzzle of how corporations choose to engage in new or expanded forms of political activity, and even what drives the spread of corporate norms? This study investigates the conditions under which corporations may come to embrace political action.

Do Negatively Framed Messages Motivate Political Participation? Evidence From Four Field Experiments

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Mann ◽  
Kevin Arceneaux ◽  
David W. Nickerson
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Phone Calls ◽  
Intention To Participate ◽  
Policy Proposals

A multitude of laboratory experiments show that subtle shifts in framing can induce individuals to participate in political activity. Using four randomized field experiments, we tested whether exposure to messages framing public policy proposals negatively increased political action relative to exposure to messages framing the proposal positively. Three experiments use a type of political participation novel to the field experiments literature: phone calls recruiting people to contact elected officials. Contrary to expectations from prior laboratory experiments on intention to participate in collective action in politics, we find scant evidence that messages framed negatively about the policy returns from participation are more effective than messages framed positively about the policy returns from participation at motivating real-world political behavior.

scholarly journals Is Corporate Political Activity an Investment or Agency? An Application of System GMM Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Woon Leong Lin
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Reputation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Generalized Method Of Moments ◽  
Dynamic Panel Data ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Political Contributions ◽  
Corporate Political Activity ◽  
System Gmm ◽  
Method Of Moments Estimator ◽  
The Relationship

Corporate political activity (CPA) has been recognized as bearing a significant impact on financial performance (FP). Nevertheless, there has been a lack of considerable research to date. The results of the research regarding the relationship between CPA and FP have been contradictory and this has necessitated further investigation of this relationship. Nonetheless, rather than examining the relationship between CPA and FP, research scholars have revealed that a contingency perspective must be employed for revealing the conditions and the context which enhance the relationship between these two constructs. This study offers a quite distinctive viewpoint with respect to the link between CPA and FP as regards the corporate reputation perspective. For this reason, the study obtained data from the Fortune list of top 100 World Most Admired Companies (WMAC) for the period of 2007 and 2016. This data was utilized to examine the relationship between CPA and FP using the dynamic panel data system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) estimator. This study finds virtually no support for the hypothesis that lobbying and PACs (political action committees) represent an investment in political capital. Instead, CPA is symptomatic of agency problems within firms. This study also argues that corporate reputation moderates the effect of CPA on the FP and the analysis supports the argument. Our results are particularly useful in light of the reputable corporation, which is greatly to likely increase the use of corporate funds for political contributions.

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