This paper introduces a special issue of the British Journal of Management on social and political strategies in the non‐market environment. On the one hand, it reviews the extant research on the possible forms of interaction between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies and Corporate Political Activity (CPA): CSR‐CPA complementarity, CSR‐CPA substitution and mutual exclusion between CPA and CSR. On the other hand, the paper provides an overview of the recent contributions of non‐business disciplines – psychology, sociology, economics, politics and history – to nonmarket scholarship and, above all, the potential future scholarly contributions of these disciplines.

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Changes in the competitive performance of 201 UK firms acquired by foreign investors are examined. Performance improvement was found to be associated with the introduction of changes to management practice rather than with contextual factors such as acquirer nationality, size, date of acquisition, profitability of subsidiary at acquisition or sector. The changes having most impact were increased efforts to improve the market image of the acquired company, the development of new products and services, and moves towards involving and developing staff. There appears to be more than one path towards post‐acquisition performance improvement, with distinctions emerging between Anglo‐American, Japanese and, to a lesser extent, French approaches. The successful Anglo‐American approach involves a product innovation strategy, increased decentralization and improved training. High‐performing Japanese acquisitions tend to emphasize a price‐competitive strategy, to increase centralization and to adopt a longer‐term HRM policy. The French path towards good post‐acquisition performance includes increased cost control, more open communication and decentralization. The general conclusion of the investigation is that foreign acquisition can harness the assets and competencies of UK companies to good effect, but that there is more than one way of achieving this result.