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Corporate Political Power: How Business Actors Define the Rules that Govern their Responsible Behaviour

Project description

Role of business actors in responsible corporate behaviour

Do business actors define the transnational rules that govern a corporation’s responsible behaviour and how? To answer this question, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COPP project will enlarge the scope of actors, activities, and processes explored in political science and management studies. The project will reveal more nuanced ways through which companies exert power over political rules. It will synthesise the existing literature and elucidate three indirect and often neglected types of corporate political power: global production networks (GPNs), big four consultancies, and trade associations. COPP will create an innovative dataset of national and international governmental CSR policies from different countries, international organisations, and regional organisations across major world regions spanning 65 years, by gathering data from different online platforms.

Objective

In this cutting-edge project, I ask the research question: “How do business actors define the transnational rules that govern corporations’ responsible behaviour?”. Extending insights from political science and management studies, the central objective of this research project is to enlarge the scope of actors, activities, and processes being studied, and reveal more nuanced ways through which corporations exert power in and over political rules. This main objective is operationalized into four working packages. WP1 aims to synthesize the existing literature on corporate power in and over rules. The other WPs elucidate three indirect and often overlooked types of corporate political power i.e. power in and through: global production networks (GPNs) [WP2]; big four consultancies [WP3]; and trade associations [WP4]. To this end, I create a novel dataset of national and international governmental CSR policies from different countries, international organizations, and regional organizations in all major world regions spanning a 65-year period by drawing together data from different online platforms. In WP2, I measure the similarities between different governmental CSR policies (based on Cosine similarity) as a result of backward and forward GPN participation. In WP3, I code the authorshipof these CSR policies and the degree of similarities with publications by the big four consultancies. In WP4, I send out a large-scale survey to trade association representatives to ask about their lobbying on the CSR policies within my dataset. To further unpack the causal relations of WP3 and WP4, I also conduct in-depth interviews. By drawing on management theories on how companies govern global markets and political theories on the functioning of governments, I ambitiously move this research agenda forward in an interdisciplinary manner. This helps to overcome the treatment of either business or politics as black-boxes while also bridging the analytical macro-micro divide.

Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01

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Coordinator

COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 230 774,40
Address
SOLBJERG PLADS 3
2000 FREDERIKSBERG
Denmark

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Region
Danmark Hovedstaden Byen København
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

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