Corporate Political Connections: A Multidisciplinary Review

Abstract

Corporate political connections (CPCs)—ties that firms forge with political actors—directly affect firms, political actors, and various stakeholders in societies. This topic has been studied extensively in multiple disciplines, including management, economics and finance, political science, and sociology. However, this body of research remains rather fragmented within the confines of each discipline or field, and synergies in theoretical and empirical domains remain underexploited. Differences between CPCs and other forms of corporate political activities are also often unclear. This article develops a focused, comprehensive, and theoretically deep review of the rapidly growing but disparate literature on CPCs in multiple disciplines and fields and distinguishes, compares, and connects multiple, heterogeneous theoretical perspectives that have been adopted in these different literatures. By conducting an extensive literature search of the articles published between 1990 and 2020 in 24 leading peer-reviewed journals in management, economics and finance, political science, and sociology, we build our review framework by organizing the reviewed articles into three groups of topics based on their logical connections: the conceptualization of CPCs, the antecedents of CPCs, and the outcomes of CPCs. Within each group, we distinguish two primary angles—the firm and the political actor—that correspond to the two entities joined by CPCs. On the basis of this framework, we identify major gaps and suggest avenues for future research. Our review works together with a companion review on corporate political activity, published in this same issue, to offer a wholistic perspective on the boundary between corporations and political actors.