Toward a View of Complementarity

Abstract

The extant literature argues that non-market strategies can establish, sustain, or enhance a firm's competitive advantage. Less clear is how and why effective non-market strategies influence a firm's competitiveness. Moreover, the extant literature tends to examine the two building blocks of non-market strategy-corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate political activity (CPA)-separately. In this paper we extend trust to the non-market environment. We analyze how CSR and CPA complement each other to create strong trust between firms and the polity, and how they consequently influence government policy. We show the mediating role of trust in policy influence, and argue that CSR and CPA should be aligned for the successful influence of salient government policy.

Corporate diplomacy and political CSR: Similarities, differences and theoretical implications

“…By addressing both local government and society, corporations can affect stakeholder perceptions 13 while responding to the interests of local communities at the same time. As a result, corporations can enhance their own legitimacy and reputation and benefit the society as well (Liedong, Ghobadian, Rajwani, & O'Regan, 2014;Shirodkar, Beddewela, & Richter, 2016).…”

“…Besides this, both CD and PCSR are described as instruments of stakeholder and reputation management (Asquer, 2012;Henisz, 2014;Liedong et al, 2014;Scherer & Palazzo, 2007;Wickert, 2016). Another commonality of CD and PCSR is that both enhance access to governmental decision-makers and enable the (re-)shaping of the political environment of a company (Fooks et al, 2013;Westermann-Behaylo et al, 2015).…”

Strategic communication concept implemented through the corporate political activities: Suggested strategy modeling

“…Furthermore, CPA significantly contributes toward improvements of the firm's position and overall company strength (Bonardi, Holburn, & Bergh, 2006;Lawton et al, 2013;Schuler, Rehbein & Cramer, 2002). More closely, CPA is recognized as a part of communication strategy for facilitating the development of trust between company and policymakers, mostly government institutions (Liedong, Ghobadian, Rajwani, & O'Regan, 2014). Companies use different tactics for influence on government: through acts of political action committees (PAC) contributions, lobbying, and engaging in political support activism (e.g.…”

The politics of corporate social responsibility in the mining industry in Burkina Faso

“…The non-market environment of a firm is identified as consisting of interactions which are intermediated by the public, stakeholders, the government and public institutions (Liedong et al, 2015). Firms engage in managing their non-market environment by using two main strategies (Doh et al, 2012); corporate political activity (CPA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR).…”

“…However, recent arguments in both fields have focused increasingly on their integrative nature (Hadani and Coombes, 2015;Hond et al, 2014;Moon and Vogel, 2008;Rehbein and Schuler, 2013;Scherer et al, 2014). Firstly, certain areas in CPA such as that of constituency building (Hillman and Hitt, 1999), business diplomacy (Saner et al, 2000) and public affairs management (Baysinger and Woodman, 1982;Berg and Holtbrügge, 2001;Griffin and Dunn, 2004;Meznar and Nigh, 1995), focused on developing long-term relationships with non-market stakeholders, can be supported in a positive manner by a firm's CSR activities (Liedong et al, 2015;Yin and Zhang, 2012). CSR is also effective in building and protecting the reputational capital of firms (Minor and Morgan, 2011;Park et al, 2014), thereby improving their corporate visibility (Hond et al, 2014).…”