The Role of the State Agenda and Politicians Around the World

Abstract

The fact that state-firm interactions matter for both public and private sectors is well accepted in multiple disciplines. Yet the mechanisms through which the state affects firms’ strategies and how firms respond to the state’s influence have been narrowly defined. Existing literatures have analyzed the role of the state to supply various institutions to regulate firms’ economic activities. Accordingly, the main research focus in non-market strategy has been examining how firms lobby or participate in the political processes to influence regulations and legislations. However, most of this research tends to treat the state as the background while not providing a formal analysis on the internal process of the state and its autonomous agenda. At the same time, most of the non-market strategy studies tend to adopt a firm-centric perspective, while the success and the effectiveness of such non-market strategy highly depends on the politicians and officials who are making and implementing state policies. Given these two important gaps, this symposium aims to address two research questions in the context of France, China, Ukraine, etc.: 1) how does the state engage firms to achieve its social and political agenda? 2) How do the characteristics of the elected politicians or appointed government officials influence firms’ non-market strategies? By doing this, this symposium contributes to literatures on state-firm interactions, non- market strategies, as well as institutional theory by highlighting the role of state agencies. State Capacity as a Structural Determinant of Political Risk Presenter: Stanislav Markus; Darla Moore School of Business, U. of South Carolina Under the Radar: Legitimacy Concerns in the Internationalization of State-Owned Multinationals Presenter: Sharon Leona Poczter; Cornell U. Presenter: Aldo Musacchio; Brandeis U. The Impact of Regulatory Agency Discretion and Capacity on the Effectiveness of Nonmarket Strategies Presenter: Shon R. Hiatt; U. of Southern California Presenter: Jake B. Grandy; U. of Arkansas Political Connections and Speed of Financing in Investment Projects Around the World Presenter: Joao Albino Pimentel; Copenhagen Business School Presenter: Paul M Vaaler; U. of Minnesota Running out of Steam? A Political Incentive Perspective of FDI Inflows in China Presenter: Danqing Wang; Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology Presenter: Zhitao Zhu; Chinese U. of Hong Kong Presenter: Shuo Chen; Fudan U. Presenter: Xiaowei Luo; INSEAD