Linking Corporate Community Programs and Political Strategies

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between an aspect of a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate community programs (CCPs), and the effectiveness of its corporate political activity (CPA). Developing a conceptual model based on resource-based view of the firm, the authors argue that the mechanism linking a firm's CCP to CPA mechanism is the effect of CCPs on the development of firm level resources. Specifically, the intensity of a firm's CCPs enhances a firm's human capital, organizational capital, and geographic resources, which in turn improve the effectiveness of two key aspects of CPA: information and constituency-building political strategies. This linkage of CCPs to CPA effectiveness may be particularly relevant when the firm faces unfavorable political markets.

Non‐market Social and Political Strategies – New Integrative Approaches and Interdisciplinary Borrowings

“…Furthermore, Liedong, Mellahi and Rajwani show that the effect of MPTs on risk exposure is moderated by public affairs functions, but contrary to the extant literature there is no corroborative evidence of complementarity between MPTs and CSR – contrary to the assumptions of previous scholars such as den Hond et al . () and Rehbein and Schuler ().…”

“…The important conceptual papers by den Hond et al . () and Rehbein and Schuler () outlined the various possible ways in which CSR can strengthen CPA, and vice versa.…”

“…Indeed, recent empirical research suggested that CSR weakens the potentially negative impact of CPA Sun, Mellahi and Wright, 2012), that CSR helps to gain and to maintain political access (Gao and Hafsi, 2017;Wang and Qian, 2011) and, alternatively, that CPA offsets negative CSR records (Alakent and Ozer, 2014). The important conceptual papers by den Hond et al (2014) and Rehbein and Schuler (2015) outlined the various possible ways in which CSR can strengthen CPA, and vice versa.…”

Playing on Two Chessboards: Reputation Effects between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Political Activity (CPA)

“…Consequently, the final impact on the firm's reputation depends on the separate evaluations of the firm's CSR and CPA.

Proposition 1 : For firms whose CSR and CPA are non‐aligned, the reputational effects from CSR and CPA are additive.

A final remark on non‐alignment and resource complementarities should be made here: there may be instances when firms whose CSR and CPA are non‐aligned may still benefit from CSR and CPA complementarities. A firm's CSR can lead to contacts with non‐traditional stakeholders, information about their preferences, specialized knowledge, and expertise (Rehbein and Schuler, ; Yaziji, ). Alternatively, a firm's CPA can lead to the development of resources that can be useful for its CSR such as sophisticated government affairs operations and potential for building political coalitions (Peterson and Pfitzer, ).…”

Integration of Non‐market and Market Activities in Cross‐border Mergers and Acquisitions

“…The resource-based view (RBV) has emerged as the main theoretical perspective for illuminating the integration of market and non-market strategies, as scholars have postulated that valuable firm-specific resources for integrating activities across the market and the non-market arenas (Clougherty, 2003;McWilliams, van Fleet and Cory, 2002) and for integrating CSR and CPA activities (den Hond et al, 2014;Rehbein and Schuler, 2015) can lead to valuable complementarities and competitive advantages for the firm (cf. Mellahi et al, 2016).…”