Shaping the Rules of Engagement: Discursive Corporate Political Strategies in Nascent Markets

Abstract

We explore how strategic actors in a nascent market shape the competitive regulation of the market in their favor. Our qualitative longitudinal study follows the competing discursive strategies of entrepreneurial Electric Vehicle Service Providers (EVSPs) and established Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) in California, as they sought to influence three sequential decisions by a regulatory agency to shape the competitive structure of the nascent electric vehicle (EV) charging market. We find that actors seek to influence market regulation through a confluence of three distinct yet mutually enabling discursive strategies: framing the shared environment, constructing a problem of competition, and situating regulation in time, which respectively seek to construct shared meanings, shape the attention and priorities of the regulatory agency, and appeal to the procedural legitimacy of the regulatory agency. The core output of our study is a framework of discursive corporate political strategies for shaping regulat...