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Using interview material from senior government relations executives in large firms in Australia and other sources, this paper argues for the need to bring the ‘public back in’ to improve our understanding of business government relations in terms of business influence and power. It argues that the role of the public and policy-relevant notions of the public interest can often play a central role here. This is important in ‘noisy’ business politics where voters and the public can be decisive in either supporting or constraining business. Moreover, even in ‘quiet’ business politics away from the immediate public gaze, and contrary to existing theory, the paper argues that business must be attentive to public interest agendas if its quiet lobbying is to appeal to government electoral incentives and be successful. Hence, in both arenas business has strong incentives to be attentive to what might be called the ‘public interest requirement’ or the PIR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To mitigate the impact of legitimacy concerns, firms often depend on strategic partnerships that enable them to navigate both complex political landscapes and regulatory environments. In this paper, the authors expand research into the dynamics of indirect and collective forms of corporate political activities (CPA), particularly focusing on multinational enterprises (MNEs) originating from countries with low political affinity with the host country and its allies. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample consisting of 2,173 friendly acquisitions in the USA made by 1,612 foreign acquirers originating from 66 countries, the authors used Tobit regression analysis to test the direct and moderating hypotheses. Findings: The empirical evidence shows that acquiring MNEs grappling with heightened legitimacy issues due to low political affinity between the involved countries are more inclined to leverage target firms for effective lobbying resources. This tendency is amplified when the multilateral political affinity between the home and the host country's allies is also considered. Originality/value: The evolving nature of global politics and the increasing scrutiny of corporate-political interactions necessitate a deeper understanding of indirect CPA strategies. The findings of this research shed light on how bilateral and multilateral political relations affect MNEs' corporate political activities, specifically in the form of indirect, collective lobbying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to clarify the influence of different CEO's political orientation (liberal/conservative) and corporate political activity on ESG performance, considering contingencies related to CEO attributes and corporate governance mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of 131 companies from the Standard and Poor's 500 index, this study employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) to analyze combinations of conditions (i.e. configurations) that lead to greater ESG (i.e. environmental, social, and governance) performance. Findings: Drawing on the upper echelon theory and the theory of social exchange, the findings show that different CEO's political orientation (liberal/conservative) can contribute to ESG performance, depending on the combination of conditions. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of corporate political activity as a core condition to enhance ESG performance. Originality/value: Taking a configurational approach, this study explores combinations of conditions that explain ESG performance, including CEO's political orientation and corporate political activities as antecedent conditions. Unlike past research, this study examines possible complementarities between these two conditions and assumes that different CEO's political orientation can have a positive influence on ESG performance, depending on the combination of conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs) engage in corporate political activity, using diverse practices, including intimidatory tactics, to thwart, delay and dilute regulations that threaten their businesses. While examples of such intimidation exist across multiple sectors, no attempt has been made to synthesize these. Furthermore, much of the literature focuses on intimidation of policy-makers. Less is known about the types of intimidation experienced by advocates and researchers and their responses to this intimidation. This scoping review explores the literature across the tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food spaces for instances of intimidation and categorizes them inductively and deductively based on a framework of intimidation types. Similarly, responses to intimidation were mapped onto a pre-existing framework. We found intimidatory tactics towards advocates and researchers in every sector. Public discreditation, followed by legal threats and action, complaints and freedom of information requests were most frequently mentioned and often attributed to UCIs or their third parties. Surveillance, threats of violence, violence, burglary and bribery were less prevalent in the literature and their perpetrators were unknown. Those intimidated reported carrying on as normal, defensive action (changing/adapting work, taking security precautions) or, as was most reported, offensive action (exposing intimidation, correcting misinformation, taking legal action). The similarity of intimidation across sectors suggests that UCIs engage in similar intimidatory tactics regardless of sector. Understanding more about the scale of intimidation and how it impacts the work and wellbeing of those affected is essential, as is learning more about the ways researchers and advocates can effectively pre-empt and respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs) such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling, ultra-processed food and beverage producers are known to influence policy-making to advance their interests, often to the detriment of public health goals. This study mapped the complex system underpinning UCI's influence on public health policy formulation in the UK and identified potential interventions to shift the system towards being able to better attain public health goals. We conducted a participatory systems mapping workshop with ten experts to build a causal loop diagram (CLD) and identify potential interventions to address UCI's influence on public health policy development. The resulting CLD depicts a highly interconnected and reinforcing system driving UCI's involvement in public health policy formulation across five thematic areas. Among the most connected elements were the 'dominance of market mechanisms', 'perception of partnership as good governance principle', 'industry involvement lending perceived legitimacy to the policy formulation process', 'industry is seen as part of the solution' and 'industry ties to policy-makers'. Participants identified a total of 22 interventions within this system. Analysis of the CLD and interventions identified the potential for two key paradigmatic changes in this complex system: de-normalizing the perception of unhealthy commodity industry actors as legitimate stakeholders in policy formulation; and prioritizing public health and wellbeing objectives over profit and economic gain. In order to shift the system towards better attaining public health goals, interventions should reinforce each other and be supportive of these two key paradigmatic shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has documented a significant and rising presence of corporations in politics. In this letter, we ask to what extent corporations in Denmark have increased their political activity and access to political arenas during the last two decades. The analysis draws on two surveys among large corporations conducted in 2001 and 2022. This allows us to compare the extent to which corporations use tactics such as targeting the news media as well as their reported levels of contact to public authorities. We find that corporations today are engaged in broader questions and use a wider set of strategies than around the turn of the century, but also that their contacts to public administrative authorities have decreased and that a larger share of corporations are only active through collective organisations. This provides an important corrective to the existing image of a uniform rise in the political activities of private corporations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Business Studies is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research has found that entrepreneur foreign-study experience can have either positive significant effects on firm innovation, or nonsignificant effects. The question, then, is when such experience benefits firm innovation, and when it does not. Adopting a resource-substitution perspective, we posit that the difference occurs because certain local resources can play a significant moderating role. Specifically, a private entrepreneur's foreign-study-enabled human capital becomes less influential in driving firm innovation when the foreign-educated entrepreneurs participate strongly in the political system, or when the firm has a high level of guanxi––each of which enables the firm to achieve a local resource advantage over other firms, without the need for enhanced innovation. In contrast, foreign-study-enabled human capital becomes significantly influential in the context of high local marketization. We used the data from a series of nationwide surveys of privately owned firms in China to test these ideas. Regression results based on negative binomial regression models showed that returnee entrepreneurs' participation in the political system, and firms' guanxi, each substituted for the role of the returnee entrepreneurs' foreign study experience in fostering firm innovation, thus rendering such experience no longer significant for firm innovation in the presence of strong political participation or guanxi. In contrast, entrepreneur foreign-study experience led to advantageous firm innovation in the context of higher local marketization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporations are primary emitters of greenhouse gases yet are also portrayed as key agents in responding to climate change. This overview article explains corporate responses to the climate crisis at three levels of analysis: (i) political (shaping the climate debate and influencing climate policy); (ii) organizational (enacting strategies and practices to address climate change); and (iii) individual (managers and employees caring about and acting on climate change in their personal and professional lives). Our synthesis of the burgeoning literature on corporations and climate change in the fields of management and organization studies, human geography, and political economy highlights how and why particular corporate responses have been enacted, encompassing managerial as well as more critical and radical understandings of business activities. This article is categorized under:Climate, History, Society, Culture > Disciplinary PerspectivesClimate Economics > Economics and Climate ChangeThe Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Decarbonizing Energy and/or Reducing DemandVulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States and other countries, large private firms are increasingly more likely to take public political stances on controversial issues. Firms behave as ideological actors when they take sides in large public debates on social and economic issues. These stances may involve public speech, changes in the terms of service, or in internal reorganization and intrafirm actions. Despite the increase in firms' political actions, firms' ideological orientations remain unexamined. To answer this question, we collect corporate social responsibility statements from Fortune 1000 firms. Using semisupervised topic models, we identify topics that reflect stances on environmental and social issues. We then examine if firms are more likely to take stances on political issues due to pragmatic or ideological factors. We find that while pragmatic considerations play a role, firms' political stances are more driven by the ideological orientation of employees and managers. This research contributes a novel measure of firm ideology and sheds new light on the determinants of corporate political activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: How much variance in firm performance can be attributed to firms' corporate political activities (CPA)? Under what conditions does CPA contribute to firm performance? To theorize and empirically tackle these questions, we build on the resource-based view (RBV) to theorize how CPA might improve or hinder firm performance, and specifically examine the direct relationship between firms' investments in lobbying activities and their performance. We also expect firm growth rate to moderate the relationship between lobbying and performance. Design/methodology/approach: We empirically test our hypotheses using large-scale longitudinal panel data from publicly traded US firms from 2008 to 2018. Findings: Our analyses support our predictions of the double-edged sword effect of lobbying on firm performance. Moreover, our results show that this effect is steeper for firms with higher growth rates. Originality/value: Our study contributes meaningful insights to strategy scholarship on the influence of nonmarket strategies, highlighting the relevance of firm-specific conditions in shaping the performance outcomes of such strategies. In particular, we make a contribution by identifying a nonlinear relationship between lobbying and firm performance, which is amplified in fast-growing firms compared to stagnant ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many multinational corporations develop business operations in Europe. The current research attempts to fill the gap on how corporations can increase their political influence in this geography by exploring the joint effect of corporate political activity (CPA) and social responsibility (CSR) on political embeddedness and financial performance. Based on institutional theory and on a sample of autochthonous (European Union [EU]) and allochthonous (non‐EU) firms with declared EU lobbying (from 2008 to 2019) we conducted two studies. Based on a multi‐level model, Study 1 finds strong and robust evidence that boardroom gender diversity and EU lobbyists interactively increase EU political embeddedness. Complementarily, Study 2, which relies on general linear Modeling, suggests that allochthonous corporations are more profitable when they display high‐level political embeddedness and lobbying expenditures, combined with adoption of United Nations (UN) guidelines. Overall, findings show that lobbying in Europe pays off, especially when corporations strive to be aligned with EU ethical values and aspirations. Hiring lobbyists to be based in Brussels and promoting gender equality help establish EU political connections. Subsequently, findings highlight the role that EU political embeddedness, lobbying expenditures, and UN guidelines play in leveraging financial performance, especially across non‐EU corporations. Regarding EU corporations, results show that a firm‐level investment on CPA‐CSR is particularly important. Overall, findings from this research support corporations that are growing businesses in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A widely accepted benefit of corporate political activities (CPA) is lowering a firm's overall level of uncertainty. Yet CPA is fundamentally an exchange: something is given for the benefit received. The exchange concept is important, as how a firm is strategically oriented will influence whether it deems the exchange worthwhile. We unpack one of the things given up in the CPA exchange – the loss of strategic flexibility, which occurs because CPA binds firms to the government, tends to be sticky in nature, and costs finite resources that firms could otherwise use to pursue different opportunities. In other words, CPA is a creative constraint, and this is too hefty a burden for entrepreneurially oriented (EO) firms, which are less offput by uncertainty and prioritize experimentation with market opportunities relative to their low EO counterparts. We also examine how the calculus of CPA changes based on two major ways the government treats rival firms: the provision of subsidies or the imposition of regulatory sanctions. We test our hypotheses on a sample of S&P 1500 firms and find support for our theorized model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politically connected firms critically rely on their sociopolitical capital to compete; however, a policy-induced loss of board political connections may pose a serious challenge for focal firms and prompt them to develop compensatory moves. Drawing upon resource dependence theory and the nonmarket strategy literature, we examine if and how focal firms may address this challenge through intensifying their bribery activities. Following a year 2013 policy shock that closed the revolving door between former government officials and connected firms in China, we identify a substantial increase of bribery expenditure in a sample of public corporations whose political independent directors were forced by the central government to resign in the subsequent years. Furthermore, we investigate how the strength of this response varies with a host of firm-level contingencies that capture dependence scope and dependence asymmetry in the business-government dyad at the time of the policy announcement. Our study contributes to strategy and governance literatures by demonstrating how firms restructure power relationships after the loss of board political capital. It also sheds light on the regulation of revolving doors under weak institutions by revealing the irony of a well-intentioned "anticorruption" government policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on lobbying has predominantly focused on its material returns, such as equity returns, stock prices, and government contracts while overlooking its informational impact. This paper addresses this gap by investigating to what extent and under what conditions policymakers assimilate information delivered through corporate lobbying. Drawing on an informational perspective, it proposes that the informational effect of lobbying is moderated by the information asymmetry between policymakers and firms. Focusing on the U.S. ride-hailing industry, this study utilizes a unique dataset on U.S. state legislatures' adoption of the model policy lobbied by ride-hailing companies. The results reveal that the informational impact of corporate lobbying is highly contingent upon the presence of information asymmetry between policymakers and firms, which can be attributed to policymakers' resources for independent information gathering, information deliberation through public hearings or media discussions, and countervailing lobbying efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law-abiding firms often attempt to conceal their corporate political activity (CPA), yet the concealment of CPA has not been matched by our understanding of the phenomenon. We develop a theoretical framework consisting of three components to analyze firms' CPA concealment strategies. First, we provide a detailed conceptual background on CPA concealment, including what CPA concealment is and how it can occur. Second, we develop an in-depth analysis of the key benefits and costs of concealing CPA for firms. Finally, we integrate this analysis with positive political theory to place our firm-level calculus in the context of policymaking by identifying the public policymakers whom firms are most likely to influence via CPA concealment. Based on this framework, we generate additional empirically testable propositions on how CPA concealment changes with factors at the country, institution, issue, and firm levels. This study is the first to generate systematic theory on firms' CPA concealment strategies. Moreover, this research context highlights the particular importance of theory for investigating consequential phenomena that yield scarce data; it is theory which guides data discovery ex ante, helps assess bias ex post, and uncovers key insights that empirical analysis alone cannot generate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the occurrence and outcomes of corporate tax-related political activity through bribery. Specifically, it examines the extent to which firms bribe government officials through gift-giving, banqueting, and entertaining activities and the extent of payoffs that firms gain from these bribery practices. Using a large hand-collected dataset of Chinese listed firms for the period from 2009 to 2014, I find that firms that spend more on consumption bribery exhibit a significantly lower tax burden. This negative association is mainly driven by small firms, non-state-owned firms, state-owned firms with weak political connections, and firms in competitive industries. Further evidence shows that the tax benefits from bribery are more apparent in more corrupt, less economically developed, and less liberalized regions. Furthermore, the payoffs of tax bribery are mitigated by 45.4% after the implementation of China's anti-corruption campaign in 2012. These findings have policy implications for governments to optimize investment environments and increase tax revenue by curbing power-for-money deals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We cross-fertilize insights from corporate political activity and open-strategy literature to propose a research agenda on open political strategy—or greater participation and visibility in firms' actions aimed at shaping public policy. Incorporating ideas from open-strategy research, corporate political activity scholars can upgrade knowledge about firms' political actions, and ensure their theorizing keeps pace with contemporary practice. Considering the specificities of corporate political activity, open-strategy scholars can extend the boundaries of their field, and generate fresh insights into how firms open up strategy in contexts previously unexplored. Through a more critical reading of open political strategy, we also raise broader questions—addressing its repercussions for broader society—that should chime more generally with scholars of strategy and organization, especially those interested in firms' strategic responses to institutional pressures, and the "dark sides" of strategizing and organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in political economy suggests that autocratic regimes have been moving from an approach of mass repression based on violence, towards one of manipulation of information, where highlighting regime performance is a strategy used to boost regime popularity and maintain control. While the evolving strategies autocratic governments use to legitimise their rule have been the subject of much analysis, the role of third parties in adding to such strategies is less examined. This paper argues that corporations confer legitimacy on autocratic governments through a number of material and symbolic activities, including by praising their economic performance. We trace out the implications of adopting legitimation as a key concept in the analysis of corporate relations to autocratic regimes. We identify the ethically problematic aspects of legitimation, present new quantitative evidence suggesting that corporate legitimation of regimes matters empirically and outline a research agenda on legitimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should new ventures with limited resources invest in corporate environmental responsibility (CER)? Considering the significance of entrepreneurship's considerable social and economic influences, this question is critical for both researchers and practitioners. Drawing on signaling theory, we argue that CER is an effective strategy for new ventures to overcome the liability of newness by shaping accountability and professionalism perceived by stakeholders, which in turn enhances their financial performance. Furthermore, this positive impact is reinforced by new ventures' corporate political activity, whereas institutional pressure weakens such an impact. Using a nationally representative sample of 2,147 Chinese new ventures, these hypotheses are largely found supported. This research makes important theoretical contributions to the entrepreneurship literature by shedding new light on how new ventures overcome the liability of newness, and also extends the environmental management literature by providing a novel and entrepreneurship-based explanation regarding the performance implications of CER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1980, the telecom industry rapidly changed. Several new technologies were introduced, and telecom sectors in many countries opened for competition. The new technologies were available to all operators, but not all technologies assumed the same risks. Drawing upon rich archival sources from the Swedish telecom operator Televerket (after 1993, Telia), we examine the investment in and management of one new technology – ISDN. By exploring the choices and rationales for initiating and ending a technology project, we find that they may be pursued for political reasons – what we call 'investment as corporate political activity', and that many years of losses are sometimes not enough to abandon these projects. We also identify a monopolist logic in which projects can be maintained for use as bargaining chips in negotiations over deregulation or options to expand in markets after deregulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on corporate political activity (CPA) generally views nonmarket actions aimed at influencing political actors (e.g., lobbying or campaign contributions) as related but separate activities from market actions. This study demonstrates how firms' core market actions (e.g., market entry or geographic expansion) can function as CPA. We theorize two mechanisms through which firms leverage market actions as CPA: "pork" (i.e., ones that primarily benefit a politician's constituents) and "perk" (i.e., ones that directly benefit the politician). We document these mechanisms through an empirical analysis of data from the U.S. airline industry in 1990–2019. Specifically, we find that airlines increase the supply of flights from the airports in the home district of the chair of the Transportation Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives (pork). We also find that the airlines increase the supply of nonstop flights to Washington, DC. from the Chair's district (perk). We use counterfactual estimation methods and exogenous turnovers in committee leadership to provide causal evidence. Moreover, the observed increase in flight supplies is negatively associated with formal policy changes in Congress, and with text mining techniques, we find that this effect is stronger for bills related to aviation safety and security. We contribute to the literature on CPA by demonstrating a blurred boundary between market and nonmarket actions, which helps explain firms' competitive actions that cannot be explained by market considerations alone. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.17026. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Corruption exists at all levels of our global society and is a potential threat to food security, food safety, equity, and social justice. However, there is a knowledge gap in the role and impact of corruption within the context of the global food system. We aimed to systematically review empirical literature focused on corruption in the global food system to examine how it is characterized, the actors involved, its potential impacts, and the solutions that have been proposed to address corruption in the food system. Methods: We used a systematic scoping review methodology. Terms combining corruption and the food system were searched in Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, PsycInfo and Econlit, in October 2021. Two screeners applied a priori selection criteria to screen the articles at the title and abstract and full-text levels. Data was extracted into a charting form and thematically synthesized to describe the types of corruption in the food system, the actors involved, how corruption impacts the food system, and potential solutions. Sankey diagrams and narrative summaries were developed to summarize the included studies and findings. Results: From the 238 included records, five main types of corruption were identified in the global food system: bureaucratic corruption, fraud, bribery, organized crime, and corporate political activity. These different types of corruption spanned across various food system areas, from policy and governance structures to food environments, and involved a wide range of actors. More powerful actors like those in public and private sectors tended to instigate corruption in the food system, while community members and primary producers tended to be impacted by it. The impacts of corruption were mostly negative and corruption was found to undermine food system governance and regulatory structures; threaten health, safety, and food security; and lead or contribute to environmental degradation, economic loss, erosion of trust, social inequities, and decreased agricultural productivity. While solution-oriented literature was limited, the essential role of strong governance, use of technology and predictive modelling methods to improve detection of corruption, and organizational approaches to problem solving were identified. Conclusion: Our review findings provide researchers and policymakers with a comprehensive overview of corruption in the global food system, providing insights to inform a more holistic approach to addressing the issue. Addressing corruption in the food system is an essential element of supporting the transition to a more healthy, equitable and sustainable global food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lobbying strategies of the food industry, which seek to undermine the development of regulatory measures intended to improve public health, are increasingly well documented and associated with slow progress in addressing diet-related diseases at national, regional and global levels. These strategies include the creation and dissemination of biased research findings in order to skew evidence in the favour of the industry, and to cast doubt about the harms stemming from its products and practices. Front-of-pack nutrition labelling (FoPNL) provides fertile ground for industry opposition, which we discuss in this commentary.

Firms spend a substantial amount on lobbying—devoting financial resources on teams of lobbyists to further their interests among regulatory stakeholders. Previous research acknowledges that lobbying positively influences firm value, but no studies have examined the parallel effects for customers. Building on the attention-based view (ABV) of the firm, the authors examine these customer effects. Findings reveal that lobbying negatively affects customer satisfaction such that the positive relationship between lobbying and firm value is mediated by losses to customer satisfaction. These findings suggest a dark side of lobbying and challenge current thinking. However, several customer-focused moderators attenuate the negative effect of lobbying on customer satisfaction, predicted by ABV theory, including the chief executive officer's background (marketing vs. other functional area) and the firm's strategic use of resources (advertising spending, research-and-development spending, or lobbying for product market issues). These moderators ensure consistency between lobbying and customer priorities or direct firm attention toward customers even while firms continue to lobby. Finally, the authors verify that lobbying reduces the firm's customer focus by measuring this focus directly using text analysis of firm communications with shareholders. Collectively, the research provides managerial implications for navigating both lobbying activities and customer priorities, and public policy implications for lobbying disclosure requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research suggests that (1) politically active firms have an information advantage over firms that do not engage in the political process but also that (2) politically active firms are more likely to disclose policy-related information. We examine whether there are externalities associated with the processing of political information by politically active firms. We study this question in the setting of intraindustry information transfers around earnings announcements. Measuring firms' political activism using campaign contributions, we find stronger intraindustry information transfers from politically active firms to their industry peers. These information transfers are stronger when there is more discussion during conference calls of political topics that have industry- or market-wide implications. Similarly, these information transfers are also stronger when there is greater political uncertainty. Our paper highlights an important information externality related to politically active firms' disclosures and improves our understanding of how politically active firms affect their industries' information environment. Data Availability: The data used in this study are publicly available from the sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: D72; M41; M48. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Journal of Business Ethics is the property of Economic Enterprise & Business Ethics Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Corporate social irresponsibility continues despite institutional pressures for socially responsible behavior, resulting in disasters like the Kalamazoo River Oil Spill and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. We conduct an in-depth abductive analysis of the Kalamazoo River Oil Spill to explain factors that enable corporate forgetting work projects. Specifically, we illustrate how a corporation's political activities allow it to gain the power to suppress its mnemonic community's voices, thereby attenuating an irresponsible event's memory from the minds of its stakeholders, protecting its image, and maintaining legitimacy in the shareholder and state's eyes. We also highlight how the remembrance and forgetting of an irresponsible incident diverges between stakeholders based on their characteristics, future goals, and aspirations and whether they directly suffered from the disaster. Our research makes notable contributions to forgetting work literature by highlighting the importance of corporate political activities and context on the success of corporate forgetting work projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a neo-Aristotelian approach to PCSR aimed at enabling us to more systematically ascertain which sorts of corporate political activities, if any, might be politically acceptable. Part 1 sketches Aristotle's account of the "political." Aristotelian politics have at least four key dimensions. When we speak of PCSR, we should, from this Aristotelian perspective, evaluate how specific behaviors accord with or undermine these four aspects of political life. Part 2 of the paper explores which forms of activity by corporations qualify as genuinely (and thus acceptably) political within a neo-Aristotelian framework. Part 3 highlights strengths and limitations of this approach to PCSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk perception is a pertinent issue in the situation of constant risks associated with the biological, climatic, or technological factors that affect citizens' lives today. The context in which a risk-generating situation arises can influence the way citizens perceive it. Among other factors, it is important to take the political context into account in risk perception research. In this vein, a wide variety of firms try to influence political decisions made by public authorities through the implementation of corporate political activity (CPA) strategies. In the case of polluting industrial complexes, residents who live close to them may perceive higher health risks when they become aware of the implementation of CPA strategies by firms. However, this reality has been neglected in the academic literature. To help fill this gap our research is based on institutional and attribution theories and the social risk perspective. The aim of the paper is to provide empirical evidence on the relationships between perceived CPA strategies, namely information and financial incentives, and health risk perception. For this purpose, the study focuses on residents who live near a polluting industrial complex. The results are obtained using structural equation models, and they show that each CPA strategy influences citizens' health risk perception in a different way. Finally, we offer theoretical and practical implications of citizens' health risk perception in a context with corporate political involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy PointsOur research reveals the similarities and differences among the lobbying activities of tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and ultraprocessed food industries, which are often a barrier to the implementation of public health policies.Over 23 years, we found that just six organizations dominated lobbying expenses in the tobacco and alcohol sectors, whereas the gambling sector outsourced most of their lobbying to professional firms.Databases like OpenSecrets are a useful resource to monitor the commercial determinants of health. Context: Commercial lobbying is often a barrier to the development and implementation of public health policies. Yet, little is known about the similarities and differences in the lobbying practices of different industry sectors or types of commercial actors. This study compares the lobbying practices of four industry sectors that have been the focus of much public health research and advocacy: tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and ultraprocessed foods. Methods: Data on lobbying expenditures and lobbyist backgrounds were sourced from the OpenSecrets database, which monitors lobbying in the United States. Lobbying expenditure data were analyzed for the 1998–2020 period. We classified commercial actors as companies or trade associations. We used Power BI software to link, analyze, and visualize data sets. Findings: We found that the ultraprocessed food industry spent the most on lobbying ($1.15 billion), followed by gambling ($817 million), tobacco ($755 million), and alcohol ($541 million). Overall, companies were more active than trade associations, with associations being least active in the tobacco industry. Spending was often highly concentrated, with two organizations accounting for almost 60% of tobacco spending and four organizations accounting for more than half of alcohol spending. Lobbyists that had formerly worked in government were mainly employed by third‐party lobby firms. Conclusions: Our study shows how comparing the lobbying practices of different industry sectors offers a deeper appreciation of the diversity and similarities of commercial actors. Understanding these patterns can help public health actors to develop effective counterstrategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxes on sugary drinks are often used to encourage companies to reformulate their products to reduce the sugar content. This comment discusses how product reformulation can strengthen the market and political power of the food industry, and questions whether these political risks outweigh the public health benefits. It proposes the term ‘corporate harm minimisation’ to describe the strategic adaptation of a public health harm reduction strategy to align with company or industry goals. It concludes by reflecting on the other ways that corporations influence health beyond the production and marketing of ‘unhealthy commodities,’ and why public health actors must explore other strategies to challenge powerful corporations.

Background: A major challenge to transforming food systems to promote human health and sustainable development is the global rise in the manufacture and consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). A key driver of this dietary transition is the globalization of UPF corporations, and their organized corporate political activity (CPA) intended to counter opposition and block government regulation. UPF industry CPA and the corporate interest groups who lobby on their behalf have been well described at the national level, however, at the global level, this network has not been systematically characterized. This study aims to map, analyse, and describe this network, and discuss the implications for global food policy action on UPFs, global food governance (GFG), and food systems transformation. Methods: We conducted a network analysis of the declared interest group memberships of the world's leading UPF corporations, extracted from web sources, company reports, and relevant academic and grey literature. Data on the characteristics of these interest groups were further extracted for analysis, including year founded, level, type, and headquarter location. Results: We identified 268 interest groups affiliated with the UPF industry. The UPF manufacturers Nestlé (n = 171), The Coca-Cola Company (n = 147), Unilever (n = 142), PepsiCo (n = 138), and Danone (n = 113) had the greatest number of memberships, indicating strong centrality in coordinating the network. We found that this network operates at all levels, yet key actors now predominantly coordinate globally through multistakeholder channels in GFG. The most common interest group types were sustainability/corporate social responsibility/multistakeholder initiatives, followed by branding and advertising, and food manufacturing and retail. Most corporate interest groups are headquartered where they can access powerful government and GFG decision-makers, nearly one-third in Washington DC and Brussels, and the rest in capital cities of major national markets for UPFs. Conclusions: The UPF industry, and especially its leading corporations, coordinate a global network of interest groups spanning multiple levels, jurisdictions, and governance spaces. This represents a major structural feature of global food and health governance systems, which arguably poses major challenges for actions to attenuate the harms of UPFs, and to realising of healthy and sustainable food systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The exploitative marketing of commercial milk formula (CMF) reduces breastfeeding, and harms child and maternal health globally. Yet forty years after the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes (The Code) was adopted by WHO member states, many countries are still to fully implement its provisions into national law. Furthermore, despite The Code, worldwide CMF markets have markedly expanded. In this paper, we adopt Brazil as a case study to understand the power of the baby food industry's marketing and corporate political activity, and how this influences the country's 'first-food system' in ways that promote and sustain CMF consumption. Methods: We used a case study design, drawing data from from documents and key informant interviews (N = 10). Results: Breastfeeding rates plummeted in Brazil to a historic low in the 1970s. A resurgence in breastfeeding from the mid-1980s onwards reflected strengthening political commitment for a national policy framework and breastfeeding protection law, resulting in-turn, from collective actions by breastfeeding coalitions, advocates, and mothers. Yet more recently, improvements in breastfeeding have plateaued in Brazil, while the industry grew CMF sales in Brazil by 750% between 2006 and 20. As regulations tightened, the industry has more aggressively promoted CMF for older infants and young children, as well as specialised formulas. The baby food industry is empowered through association with powerful industry groups, and employs lobbyists with good access to policymakers. The industry has captured the pediatric profession in Brazil through its long-standing association with the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics. Conclusion: Brazil illustrates how the baby food industry uses marketing and political activity to promote and sustain CMF markets, to the detriment of breastfeeding. Our results demonstrate that this industry requires much greater scrutiny by regulators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While anyone can lobby governments, most lobbying is driven by commercial interests. Due to limited government disclosures, it is often challenging to get a clear picture of who is lobbying whom or why. To help make lobbying more visible to the public, we set out to develop a framework of key criteria for best practice government lobbying disclosures. Methods: We undertook a systematic scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature to identify frameworks for measuring or evaluating lobbying transparency. We screened the titles and abstracts of 1727 peer-reviewed and 184 grey literature articles, assessing 230 articles for eligibility. Following screening, we included 15 frameworks from six peerreviewed and nine grey literature articles in our review. To create our framework of lobbying disclosures, we thematically coded the 15 included frameworks and used an iterative process to synthesise categories. Results: The 15 frameworks covered more than only lobbying disclosures, with the most common other theme about enforcement and compliance. Most frameworks were developed to evaluate lobbying transparency in particular jurisdictions, with the United States the most common. Of the 15 frameworks analysed, those developed by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) focused mainly on improving lobbying regulations, while most peer-reviewed studies developed frameworks to measure, compare and evaluate lobbying regulations. We developed a Framework fOr Comprehensive and Accessible Lobbying (FOCAL). It comprised eight primary categories (scope, timeliness, openness, descriptors, revolving door, relationships, financials, and contact log) covering 50 total indicators. Conclusion: Government transparency plays a crucial role in facilitating access to information about commercial political activities like lobbying. Our framework (FOCAL) offers a template for policy-makers to develop or strengthen regulations to improve lobbying transparency so commercial political influence strategies are more visible and subject to public scrutiny. This is an important step towards rebalancing influence toward the public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a new concept, entrepreneurial political activity based on corporate political activity to understand when an entrepreneur, representing both the firm and the individual simultaneously, will engage in political activity. The case of petty traders in Kumasi, Ghana generates grounded theory of entrepreneurial political activity. Faced with an existential threat, informal entrepreneurs had to decide whether to try to influence government policy by engaging in political activity. Findings from over 200 interviews demonstrated entrepreneurs carefully considered the state's willingness to allow for the extra-legal economic activity in the informal economy to continue, and if they had trust in the leadership of the collective action before engaging in political action. Policy saliency motivating action was determined by growth orientation and dependency on the venture for household survival, both driven by the entrepreneur's social role in the social system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their covert and often dubious nature, corporate political activities may encourage or facilitate opportunistic behaviors. Yet, they also subject firms to heightened visibility, which brings greater public and regulatory scrutiny. Using a hand‐collected data set of politically connected US initial public offerings (IPOs), we investigate how this tension shapes the financial reporting incentives of firms going public and the accompanying direct compliance costs. Consistent with the agency view of corporate political activism (CPA), politically active IPO issuers have worse financial reporting quality, more litigation risk and eventually pay 28% more accounting fees than their peers. Additional analysis exploiting the US Supreme Court's landmark ruling on Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission suggests that the link between CPA and IPO accounting fees is likely to be causal. Finally, our evidence indicates that the involvement of specialized financial intermediaries in the political process has implications for the IPO financial reporting quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the exchange of employees between regulatory agencies and regulated firms (i.e., the firm-government revolving door) affect firm regulatory outcomes? Existing work has mostly found a positive impact of revolving door hiring on firm outcomes, but it has overlooked potential limitations of this corporate political activity (CPA) tactic. We argue that the advantages firms can gain from hiring former regulators are bound by the timing of revolving door employment relative to the regulatory process. Within the context of agribiotechnology and its main regulator, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we study regulators who move to in-house and contract lobbying positions (i.e., exit revolving door). We find that firms receive better regulatory outcomes (i.e., faster regulatory approval for new crops) only prior to the regulators' move to in-house lobbying, consistent with the regulatory capture perspective. Moreover, this revolving door was only valuable in the time period immediately before the mobility event. Additionally, contrary to the belief that former regulators provide firms with expertise and social capital as lobbyists, we find that firms did not gain any advantage after regulators became lobbyists. Taken together, our results suggest that revolving doors can be an effective business political mobilization strategy, albeit one that has limited success in shaping firm government outcomes, much like other types of CPA. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1669. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]