Motivations for Corporate Political Activity

Corporate Political Strategy in Contested Regulatory Environments

“…The average value is 7.4 intervenors (with a standard deviation of 6.2) though there is considerable variation among firms: for instance, UNS Electric in Arizona confronted five or fewer intervenors during its rate reviews, but Commonwealth Edison in Illinois faced up to 60 intervenors contesting its rate applications, ranging from public consumer advocates to industrial 8 Prior research on corporate political campaign contribution strategy has typically included only PAC contributions. Here we additionally include contributions by the top management team since recent studies have found they complement PAC contributions (Fremeth et al 2013(Fremeth et al , 2016. In addition, some states limit PAC contributions but not individual contributions, while other states limit the latter but not the former.…”

How and Why? A Review of Corporate Political Activity Predictors and Actions

“…Campaign contributions are payments from individuals or PACs. Both individuals and PAC giving can be tied back to the corporations they originated from (Fremeth et al, 2016).…”

“…Financial contribution strategies are usually identified with the US context because organizations can contribute through Political Action Committees (PACs). The Federal Election Commission (FEC) made PAC summary data available (Fremeth et al, 2016; Milyo, Primo & Groseclose, 2000) to the public from the early 1980s. This enabled researchers to analyze campaign contributions by firms.…”

“…CPA research has typically considered CPA as an attempt to improve firm performance or achieve objectives of the executives (Fremeth et al, 2016). CPA has been viewed as an attempt to be strategic in that its ultimate goal is to improve firm performance, and meta-analytic research supports this view (Lux, Crook, & Woehr, 2011).…”

Into the Dark: Shifts in Corporate Political Activity after Social Movement Challenges

“…Several recent studies provide support for this view. For example, Richter and Werner (2017) find that CEOs increase their contributions on behalf of their firms when Congressional candidates adopt bans on contributions to their campaigns from corporate PACs, and Fremeth, Richter, and Schaufele (2015) demonstrate that in those instances in which corporate PACs max out their contributions to strategically important members of Congress, CEOs are more likely to contribute additional funds of their own to these candidates. Due to this potential for an executive, specifically a CEO, to respond on behalf of her firm, we suggest: H3: The CEOs of firms that are targeted by an activist challenge will increase their overall level of personal political campaign donations, relative to other firms.…”