Gaining Access by Doing Good: The Effect of Sociopolitical Reputation on Firm Participation in Public Policy Making

Timothy Werner ()
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Timothy Werner: Department of Business, Government and Society, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

Management Science, 2015, vol. 61, issue 8, 1989-2011

Abstract: This paper examines the role of firms' sociopolitical reputations, as proxied by their perceived engagement in socially responsible practices, in public policy makers' decisions to grant access in the policy-making process. I argue that policy makers' dependencies, motivations, and decision-making processes lead them to evaluate firms by using sociopolitical reputation as a differentiating heuristic. I hypothesize that firms that construct stronger sociopolitical reputations will be granted greater access and that firms' existing political activity and policy makers' partisanship will moderate this relationship. I test these hypotheses using an 11-year panel on congressional testimony, reputation, and political and financial characteristics for the S&P 500 and find support for all three. These findings support the existence of a sociopolitical dimension to firms' reputations that affects how public policy makers evaluate firms, demonstrating that corporate social responsibility pays political benefits. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sørensen, organizations .

Keywords: reputation; resource dependency; nonmarket strategy; corporate social responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (44)

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