Business Interest Associations Research Articles

Victory through conquest in 1960’s Brazil: Business interest associations, moral panic, and policymaking

We analyse the impact of business interest associations (BIAs) on policymaking through coordinated efforts. We focus on short films produced in the early 1960s by the influential Brazilian think tank, Institute for Research and Social Studies (IPES; 1961–1972). Founded, funded, and managed by the business elite, IPES aimed to counter the alleged ‘advance of Soviet communism’ by shaping public opinion and destabilising the political landscape, ultimately paving the way for the 1964 businessmen-military coup, prioritising business interests over workers’ welfare. These short films were widely disseminated through various channels, serving as a means to propagate moral panic. Exploring the historical engagement of BIAs sheds light on the complex relationships among the State, governments, and business, showcasing diverse voice strategies employed by BIAs. The article also delves into the contemporary use of videos and partisanship among executives, highlighting the films’ significance as historical documents for crafting new management histories.

Business interest associations in the USA and Europe: evaluation of digital marketing techniques applied on their websites and social networks

Purpose This study aims to develop a proprietary indicator to measure the digital presence of the institutions: the digital presence index. Design/methodology/approach This research delves into how nonprofit institutions, specifically business interest associations (BIAs), have developed their internet presence by applying essential digital marketing techniques. To this end, and using big data mining tools, this study analyzes the tracking by internet users of 102 BIAs, with their respective websites in 36 countries in Europe and the USA. In addition, the presence and activity of the institutions included in this study on social networks are considered. Findings This research serves as a basis for discussing the current gap between social reality and the digitalization of institutions. In this sense, conclusions are drawn on the importance of managerial profiles in decision-making on digitization and the necessary knowledge that, together with Web and social network managers, they must have to articulate the means and techniques that promote the internet presence of the organizations they manage. Originality/value Conclusions are drawn according to the geographical scope of the BIAs, and an argument is made about the difficulties of connection and loss of prominence of this type of institutions among their different target audiences, especially among the youngest and most digitized.

Forging new meanings of Europe. The cross-ideological logic of Western Business Interest Associations (BIAs) promoting trade with Mao’s China

This paper explores the role of BIAs in the promotion of trade across the Cold War divide during the 1950s, when the creation of a new political and economic ensemble in Western Europe intertwined with the re-elaboration of imperialist entanglements and the emergence of Socialist economies. The focus on everyday business practice allows us to identify the nature and the purpose of these BIAs, revealing a great variety of logics, but a unifying interest: creating a new role for their national economies in China’s nascent economic progress. In the absence of full diplomatic relations, these organisations were identified in many cases as main reference points by the Chinese authorities and were, thus, in a privileged position to change the image of West European countries from colonisers into viable partners at a time when the PRC was shaping a new national narrative.

The brokers of globalization: Towards a history of business associations in the international arena

This article is the introduction to the special issue looking at organised business in the international arena to gain better understanding of the role of this group of actors. The international strategies of national business interest associations and transnational business interest associations have largely been overlooked by business historians with a focus on multinational enterprise and global historians studying international organisations and international non-governmental organisations. The article explores in broad terms the historical development of these actors, their representation in the existing literature – historical as well as political and social scientific – before turning to some new research perspectives and the contributions of the articles in the special issue to this research agenda.

Liberalisation or protectionism for the single market? European automakers and Japanese competition, 1985–1999

In 1991, in the midst of the program to create a liberal Single European Market and in the context of a new Joint Declaration for cooperation with Japan, the European Commission brokered a private deal to restrict Japanese imports into the European Community for nearly a decade (1993–1999). These ‘Elements of Consensus’ developed from the collective efforts of European automakers and their business interest associations – the CCMC and ACEA – to shape the Community’s Common Commercial Policy and insulate themselves from the threat of Japanese competition. Drawing evidence from archival documents, this article reconstructs how European automakers lobbied the Commission for protections and how the Commission used these protections as a means for regional market liberalisation. As a result, it contributes new dimensions to scholarship on the influence of corporations in politics in general and the relationship between business and European integration in particular.

Let’s coordinate! The reinforcement of a ‘liberal bastion’ within European Industrial Federations, 1978-1987

This article focuses on the establishment in the 1970s of a new international private governance forum, the so-called ‘Interlaken Conferences’, which gathered together the leading figures of the Industrial Federations of the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. It therefore contributes to the literature dealing with business interest associations’ (BIAs) international alliances, and to the growing corpus analysing BIAs’ political strategies in tackling the 1970s social unrest and economic crisis. Thanks to archival sources from the Swiss Federation of Commerce and Industry, this article examines the calculated efforts by Interlaken participants to secure a ‘liberal bastion’ of European industrial federations that could impose its views within other official international BIAs. By improving coordination, the participants sought to defend common liberal economic principles and to fight against adverse economic policies such as protectionism and state intervention in the economy.

Why Digital Marketing Matters for Nonprofit Institutions:The Business Interest Associations in Europe and Us

Why Digital Marketing Matters for Nonprofit Institutions:The Business Interest Associations in Europe and Us

Fashion and Institutions: The AIIA and the Ready-to-Wear Industry in Italy (1945–1975)

The Italian Clothing Industry Association (AIIA) was the first employers’ association founded to protect the interests of the nascent Italian ready-to-wear industry. According to the literature on the subject, there were three factors that allowed business interest associations (BIAs) to operate effectively at a meso-organizational level: their internal organizational structure, the activities of bureaucratic support of companies and lobbying in defense of entrepreneurs’ interests, as well as the ability to adapt to the more general context in which they worked. Based on a detailed empirical analysis, this article examines what the AIIA accomplished in each of these three areas. There are two objectives: (1) analyzing the circumstances that led the AIIA to fail in its purposes of representing the Italian ready-to-wear industry, and (2) investigating, in a typical creative industry, the hidden costs in terms of competitiveness of BIAs’ planning efforts and their consequences for the creation of an efficient and internationally competitive fashion system.

Hybrid, public and private environmental governance: the case of sustainable coastal zone management in Quintana Roo, Mexico

ABSTRACT Coastal zones (CZ) are social-ecological systems where rapid forms of economic development are disrupting the existing patterns of relationships, raising challenges for governance. Institutional flexibility, broad participation, multilevel governance, and adaptability have been identified as critical conditions for the governance of social-ecological systems. While the importance of agency, through the substantive participation of private actors in rulemaking, has been researched, there is a need to examine the dynamics involved in, and consequence of, hybrid governance arrangements. An empirical study is presented of hybrid governance, involving federal and local government and locally based private actors from civil society organizations, environmental non-government organizations and local business interest associations, in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The CZ of Quintana Roo is facing pressures from economic development, mainly tourism, with consequences for water pollution and fisheries. Through qualitative, mixed methods, we found that a thick network of private actors has mobilized to play an important role in environmental management and to act in collaboration with the State. Multiple rationales account for this development, including high levels of environmental awareness, particularly with respect to water pollution, while the lack of institutional capacity also motivates state actors to seek partnerships. While private governance is emerging, our data reveal a complex case, where private actor mobilization seeks to promote better regulations, to share data and resources, and to improve implementation capacity within the public administration. Hybrid governance contributes to effective environmental governance of the CZ. However, this can also risk state retreat from its public responsibilities.

No borders, no bias? Comparing advocacy group populations at the national and transnational levels

Why are some advocacy group populations biased towards business interest representatives? In this paper, we assess an underexplored source of variation in advocacy populations, namely the governance level at which advocacy populations are located. More precisely, we analyse whether national advocacy group populations are more likely to contain relatively large proportions of business interest associations compared to transnational advocacy group populations. We examine three competing hypotheses: (1) biases are stronger at the national level than the global level, (2) biases are more pronounced at the global level than the national level and (3) no differences emerge in business mobilization across the national and transnational levels. We test our hypotheses based on a novel dataset of national, European Union (EU) and global advocacy group populations. Our results indicate that the global level is different from the EU and national levels, in that it contains relatively low proportions of business interest representatives.

Managing institutional complexity through strategy and structure: the experience of Sri Lanka’s peak business interest associations

This study seeks to better understand the way, in which business interest associations in a developing country address issues associated with the plurality of logics and interest among their members. The dilemma that business associations face, when it comes to representing the various interests of their constituents under a single banner, is adequately documented. But there is a gap in empirical literature on the way that associations successfully address this dilemma from the top down, especially in a developing country like Sri Lanka. We present a case study of the four most prominent peak national business associations in Sri Lanka – and their attempts at reconciling the diverse voices and interests of their members. We find that insights from contemporary institutional logics literature are particularly helpful in explaining the strategic and structural means, by which Sri Lankan business associations address the issue of presenting a united front for the very diverse groups of firms and industries that make up their membership. Specifically, our observation shows that Sri Lanka’s peak business associations respond to the diverse, and at times competing, interests of their members in ways that are consistent with Kraatz and Block’s characterisation of organisational responses to institutional complexity, namely through: elimination/marginalisation, mediation, compartmentalisation and detachment.

Dealing with brain drain: the contributions of Sri Lanka’s peak business interest associations

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the way in which Sri Lankan business associations contribute to addressing such issues and the motivation behind their contributions.Design/methodology/approachData, in this study, came from publicly available sources (online news articles, newspaper articles, reports, etc.) and a series of unstructured elite interviews with leaders of Sri Lanka’s most prominent peak business associations.FindingsSri Lankan associations contribute to addressing problems associated with human capital flight because doing so, ultimately, benefits their members and secretariat organisations. Peak bodies make their contributions by easing the push factors that catalyse the outflow of skilled migrants from the island nation and helping to replenish skills in the country by engaging in initiatives aimed at training and developing workers, young people and entrepreneurs.Research limitations/implicationsThe behaviours of Sri Lanka’s business interest associations and the logics that drive their actions are similar to those of their counterparts in other countries (as per academic literature in the area), where association membership is not state-mandated. Rational actions of business associations have the potential to produce socially beneficial positive externalities (as in the present case issues around the brain drain).Social implicationsFindings from this research can assist government bodies, non-government organisations and other civil society organisations develop a better collaborative relationship with the private sector in developing nations to tackle problems associated with human capital flight.Originality/valueWhile there has been a lively debate, among philosophers and scholars of public policy, on how governments should help address issues associated with this phenomenon, very little attention has been given to the real and potential contributions of non-governmental, non-charity-based civil society groups such as unions and business chambers. This paper seeks to address this gap.

The paradox of collective action: Linking interest aggregation and interest articulation in EU legislative lobbying

Olson's logic of collective action predicts that business interest associations face fewer collective action problems than citizen action groups. This article challenges this assumption by arguing that forming an organization comes with different collective action problems than voicing a joint policy position. This leads us to examine an important paradox: Citizen groups face challenges in establishing themselves as organizations but find it relatively easy to position themselves on policy issues, whereas the reverse is true for business associations. We study this paradox empirically based on interviews with spokespersons of interest organizations active in the European Union and find support for our hypotheses. Our findings demonstrate that citizen groups position themselves on policy issues more easily than business interests and that this competitive advantage is amplified when policy issues attract the attention of the media.

THE ALTERNATIVE

Information agencies set up for business-friendly opinion moulding in Sweden worked actively with similar organizations in the Nordic countries to formulate a pro-business ideological programme after the Second World War. The intent of this so called ‘Alternative’ was to counteract social democratic ideas of a more state-planned economy. This article contributes to earlier research on how business interest associations in corporatist countries responded to the development of the welfare state in the Keynesian era. Over time, the programme became less about taking an ideological stance in defence of free enterprise and more about dealing with the economic consequences of record growth. Business involvement in cartelization proved difficult to combine with arguments for free competition, free markets, and non-regulated prices. Collaboration as well as new institutions for both formal and informal discussions between labour and capital during the 1950s and 1960s, at least in Sweden, seems to have reduced the sense of urgency for an ideological programme for business. In the end, no Nordic business programme was ever realized.

Central and Eastern European business interest associations and EU policy making

The interactions between Central and Eastern European (CEE) business interest associations (BIAs) and their EU trade associations have not yet attracted much attention in academic research. This paper has two main objectives. The first is to assess quantitatively the participation level of CEE BIAs in EU trade associations. The second is to assess qualitatively the nature of the relationships between them by surveying Bulgarian BIAs as a case study. This article stresses the fact that EU enlargement has decreased the representativeness of EU trade associations due to the weak level of membership of CEE BIAs. It also highlights the importance of membership in EU trade associations in terms of both Europeanization and socialization, even though CEE national BIAs, such as Bulgarian ones, are still very much anchored in their domestic interactions and lobbying.

The multilevel interest representation of national business associations

The role of interest groups in EU policy-making has been widely researched, but findings are still inconclusive. With regard to national business interest associations (BIAs), it is generally acknowledged that they have adopted a multilevel strategy in the course of EU integration. Yet there is little empirical knowledge as to how much attention they devote to national compared to EU institutions, how this varies between different levels of responsibility and which features of BIAs allow for access. Based on a large new dataset of BIAs from France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom, this article tests hypotheses derived from an exchange model of interest intermediation. The analysis shows that BIAs with high financial resources, BIAs with a high level of representativeness and multisectoral BIAs have the highest probability of access, whereas the economic importance of the represented sector has no relevance, not even for access to elected political actors, be they national or European.

Is the EU different? Comparing the diversity of national and EU-level systems of interest organisations

The European Union interest group population is often characterised as being biased towards business and detached from its constituency base. Many scholars attribute this to institutional factors unique to the EU. Yet, assessing whether or not the EU is indeed unique in this regard requires a comparative research design. We compare the EU interest group population with those in four member states: France, Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. We differentiate system, policy domain and organisational factors and examine their effects on interest group diversity. Our results show that the EU interest system is not more biased towards the representation of business interests than the other systems. Moreover, EU interest organisations are not more detached from their constituents than those in the studied countries. Everywhere, business interest associations seem to be better capable of representing their members’ interests than civil society groups. These findings suggest that the EU is less of a sui generis system than commonly assumed and imply the need for more fine-grained analyses of interest group diversity.

Trade Associations Matter as Units of Selection, as Actors Within Comparative and Historical Institutional Frameworks, and as Potential Impediments to Societal Wide Collective Action

The papers in this special section highlight three important questions in organization and management theory. First, evolutionary theorists studying organizations have an opportunity to address issues of organizations as units of selection. Trade associations focus their members’ attention on collective interests, creating shared understandings about issues and a collective identity that unifies an association and justifies calls for action by the association on the members’ behalf. Second, for scholars using historical and comparative frameworks, the study of trade associations presents an opportunity to study similar kinds of organizations in very different institutional settings. Many things that trade associations do are driven not because they are business interest associations but because they have to follow many of the same paths as other interest associations in the same institutional environment. Across nations, political systems differ substantially in the way interests can be pursued, with important contingencies including the difference between pluralist versus corporatist systems, the extent to which political institutions depend upon the information provided by interest groups, and the extent to which political institutions are actually open to lobbying. Third, trade associations represent powerful actors with the potential to undermine the pursuit of collective action for achieving public goods. For example, in the United States, to the extent that the decline of elite class cohesion and moderate business peak associations has weakened the forces of conciliation and compromise, strong trade associations may step into the void and make matters worse.

The Significance of Business Interest Associations in Economic Policy Reform: The Case of Australian Taxation Policy

Taxation reform has dominated Australian politics over the past twenty-five years. Despite this prominence on the political agenda, until recently Australian governments have lacked the capacity to consolidate key elements of this tax reform agenda. While the problematic nature of Australian tax reform can be explained in part by macro-level variables, this protracted policy deadlock has also influenced historical patterns of business-government intermediation. The article argues that the evolution of the Australian tax policy network over the study period was prompted by both associational and state actors reassessing their strategies in the context of the political failure of tax reform proposals. These developments provide empirical insights into the ongoing debate relating to the factors which lead to the formation and evolution of sectoral level policy networks. The article concludes that while the increasing levels of business mobilization experienced over the study period enhanced the electoral via...

‘Si vis pacem, para bellum’—the construction of business cooperation in the Swiss machinery industry

This article addresses the historical emergence of business cooperation. We resort to Hopner’s (2007) concepts of organization and coordination in order to analyze how firms progressively engaged in Business Interest Associations (BIAs) and interlocking directorates during the first part of the 20th century. Our inquiry is based on a network analysis on large firms of the Swiss machine, electrotechnical and metallurgy (MEM) sector. Our results show that before the First World War, only major firms were promoting coordination and organization through, respectively, interlocking directorates and BIAs. Although many firms were reluctant to cooperate in the first place, interests beyond the firm level (organization) and the economic needs of firms (coordination) had cumulative effects, and most firms progressively engaged in both mechanisms of cooperation from the interwar period. We argue that differentiating between organization and coordination contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the emergence of non-liberal capitalism.