Business Lobbying in the European Union

At a time when Europe and business stand at crossroads, this study provides a perspective into how business representation in the EU has evolved and valuable insights into how to organize lobbying strategies and influence policy-making. Uniquely, the study analyses business lobbying in Brussels by drawing on insights from political science, public management, and business studies. At the macro-level, we explore over thirty years of increasing business lobbying and explore the emergence of a distinct European business-government relations style. At the meso-level, we assess how the role of EU institutions, policy types, and the policy cycle shape the density and diversity of business activity. Finally, at the micro-level we seek to explore how firms organize their political affairs functions and mobilized strategic political responses. The study utilizes a variety of methods to analyse business-government relations drawing on unique company and policy-maker surveys; in-depth case studies and elite interviews; large statistical analysis of lobbying registers to examine business the density and diversity; and managerial career path and organizational analyses to assess corporate political capabilities. In doing so, this study contributes to discussions on corporate political strategy and interest groups activity. This monograph should be of interest to public policy scholars, policy-makers, and businesses managers seeking to understand EU government affair and political representation.

Political Strategies of subsidiaries of multinational Enterprises

This chapter analyzes the political strategies of subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs). In doing so, I review the literature at the crossroads of corporate political strategy and international business (IB) strategy and identify four relevant themes. First, the types of political strategies deployed by subsidiaries dichotomize into engaged and non-engaged; and into legal and illegal. Second, the responses of subsidiaries to host political contexts, involve exercising voice, exit, or loyalty through different types of political strategies. Third, the determinants that explain the choice, approach (transactional or relational), level of participation (individual or collective), intensity, or dissimilarity of the political strategies of subsidiaries, can be clustered into five levels of analysis: home country, host country, multinational, subsidiary, and managerial. Fourth, the main outcomes of subsidiary political strategies are legitimacy in the host country and performance. The chapter concludes with promising opportunities for future research on political strategies from a subsidiary perspective, a growing area of study in IB strategy.

Alcohol policy, multi-level governance and corporate political strategy: The campaign for Scotland’s minimum unit pricing in Edinburgh, London and Brussels

The Scottish government’s plans for a minimum unit price for alcohol were vehemently opposed by the alcohol industry leading to a 6-year delay in implementation after legislation was passed. This article seeks to explain the consequences of devolution and European Union membership for the development of minimum unit price in Scotland through the concepts of multi-level governance, veto points and venue shifting. Systems of multi-level governance create policy interdependencies between settings, an increased number of veto points at which policies can be blocked, and the potential for policy actors to shift decision-making to forums where favourable outcomes are more likely to be attained. In the minimum unit price debates, the alcohol industry engaged in multiple forms of venue shifting and used regulatory compliance procedures and legal challenges at the EU level to try to prevent and delay the policy. This has led to a ‘chilling effect’ on subsequent alcohol policy developments across the United Kingdom.

Ties That Bind and Grind? Investor Reactions to Politician Appointments to Corporate Boards

Although the appointment of politicians to corporate boards is a highly prevalent corporate political strategy, empirical evidence remains inconclusive as to whether and how such appointments create value for firms and their shareholders. Drawing on the director role literature, we argue that politician-directors are likely to serve as valuable resource providers but are less likely to serve as guardians of shareholder interests. In light of this trade-off, investors will infer the expected value of politician appointments on the basis of the director role that they perceive as most needed by a particular firm within the specific institutional context in which it is embedded. We test our predictions using an extensive data set of 345 separate appointment events across 14 countries over a period of 10 years. Our findings show that politician appointments are associated with both resource-provisionary benefits and governance-based costs but that the perceived level of corruption in a country critically conditions both. Specifically, perceived corruption can be seen to function as a double-edged sword that increases both the expected benefits and the expected costs of politician appointments.