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This book unites the perspective of business ethics with approaches from strategic management, economics, law, political science, and with philosophical reflections on the theory of Corporate Citizenship and New Governance. It examines an innovative topic.

This article builds a conceptual framework to help explain the political behavior of multinational corporations (MNCs). I build on three streams of literature, i.e. heterogenous firms, global value chains, and governance, and provide an overarching framework to help understand firms' political activities undertaken across value chain networks. I put forward a model that outlines MNCs' coordination of political mobilization using their affiliates and subsidiaries in different jurisdictions and demonstrate models of governance they have at their disposal to reach political goals. I argue that the spread of global value chains allows firms to develop legal links with enterprises across borders through which they orchestrate political activity or delegate policy goals. The degree of flexibility between MNCs and associated firms determine the model of governance they undertake with corporations in their network. They engage in such costly coordination either to obtain legal standing in foreign jurisdictions or to cultivate a sort of critical mass that goes after a policy objective. I demonstrate the plausibility of my propositions with anecdotal evidence and identify future lines of research.

A comprehensive analysis of how the large corporation has impacted national and global governance. Wilks has made an important contribution to the literature on the changing political and social role of business in contemporary capitalist polities. David Vogel, University of California, US Observers are increasingly realizing that that the large corporation has become one of the main institutions that govern our lives; the market economy, which in principle prevents corporations from possessing political power, today endows them with that power. Stephen Wilks here traces the extraordinarily important implications of this fact, and makes some sober proposals for tackling the problems it creates for democracy. Others have noted this phenomenon; here at last is a thorough study of it detailed enough to satisfy the standards of social science; worrying enough to command the concern of policy makers; and written in an approachable style to attract the general reader. Colin Crouch, University of Warwick, UK This is a book that needed to be written and Stephen Wilks has the academic understanding and breadth of practical experience to accomplish the task with authority and conviction. This is an important book, not only because it helps to fill a gap in a still under developed literature on the political role of the modern corporation, but because it raises important and disturbing questions about contemporary democracy. Wyn Grant, University of Warwick, UK The large business corporation has become a governing institution in national and global politics. This trail-blazing book offers a critical account of its political dominance and lack of democratic legitimacy. Thanks to successful wealth generation and ideological victories the large business corporation has become an effective political actor and has entered into partnership with government in the design of public policy and delivery of public services. Stephen Wilks argues that governmental and corporate elites have transformed British politics to create a new corporate state with similar patterns in the USA, in competitor economies including China and in global governance. The argument embraces multinational corporations, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance and the inequality generated by corporate dominance. The crucial analysis presented in this ground-breaking book will prove invaluable for academics, researchers and both under- and postgraduate students with an interest in the role of the corporation in politics and society across a wide range of fields including business and management (business ethics), politics, political economy, sociology, corporate governance and strategy.

NEW EDITION, REVISED AND UPDATEDSince the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that the rights of things-money and corporations-matter more than the rights of people, America has faced a crisis of democracy. In this timely and thoroughly updated second edition, Jeff Clements describes the strange history of this bizarre ruling, its ongoing destructive effects, and the growing movement to reverse it. He includes a new chapter, "Do Something!," showing how-state by state and community by community-Americans are using creative strategies and tools to renew democracy and curb unbalanced corporat

Intro -- Preface -- References -- Contents -- List of Figures -- 1: Introduction: What Is at Stake? -- References -- Part I: Remapping the Public Sphere -- 2: Understanding the Public Sphere -- 2.1 Why the Public Sphere Is So Relevant for CPR -- 2.2 The Public Sphere and Its Actors -- 2.2.1 The State: A Declining Capacity to Act -- 2.2.2 Society: Citizens and Consumers Have Ever Higher Expectations -- 2.2.3 Business: Companies Lack a Political Self-Image -- 2.3 Fear of Contact: What Makes Entrepreneurs and What Makes Politicians Tick? -- 2.4 Lobbying Is on the Defensive -- 2.5 The Regulatory Framework: Fundamentals of Democratic Constitutionality -- 2.6 The Mental Parameters: Political Values and An Ethos of Supporting the State -- References -- 3: Revitalizing the Public Sphere -- 3.1 Regaining the Capacity to Act: The Concept of Governance -- 3.2 Democratic Resilience Through Personal and Political Education -- 3.3 Recognizing Debate as the Heart of Democracy -- 3.4 Successful Leadership Needs Elites -- 3.5 Societal Actors and Their Political Role -- 3.6 Lessons Learnt: The Case of Pegida in Saxony -- 3.7 A Call to Action for the Whole Society -- References -- Part II: Taking a Stance: Corporate Political Responsibility (CPR) -- 4: Why Businesses Need a Political Stance -- 4.1 For the State´s Capacity to Act, Businesses Are a Problem and a Promise -- 4.2 Broadening the Concept of the Political: Politics is More Than Party Politics -- 4.3 Broadening the Concept of Investment: Invest Politically -- 4.4 Legitimacy: Respect the Primacy of the Political -- 4.5 Concepts of Social Responsibility -- 4.5.1 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Currently the Leading Concept -- 4.5.2 Other Established Concepts -- 4.5.3 More Recent Concepts: Political Responsibility Is Becoming More Important -- 4.6 CPR: The Next Big Thing.

Corporate political activity is usually operationalized & analyzed as financial contributions to candidates or political parties through political action committees (PACs). Very little attention has been paid to other dimensions, such as lobbying, in a systematic way. On a theoretical level we address the issue of how to conceive of PAC contributions, lobbying, & other corporate activities, such as charitable giving, in terms of the strategic behavior of corporations & the implications of "foreignness" for the different types of corporate political activity. On an empirical level we examine the political activities of Fortune 500 firms, along with an oversampling of US affiliates of large foreign investors for the 1987/88 election cycle. 4 Tables, 2 Appendixes, 67 References. Adapted from the source document.

The Supreme Court spoke clearly this Term on the issue of corporate political speech, concluding in Citizens United v. FEC that the First Amendment protects corporations' freedom to spend corporate funds on indirect support of political candidates. Constitutional law scholars will long debate the wisdom of that holding, as do the authors of the two other Comments in this issue. In contrast, this Comment accepts as given that corporations may not be limited from spending money on politics should they decide to speak. We focus instead on an important question left unanswered by Citizens United: who should have the power to decide whether a corporation will engage in political speech?

Corporate political activity is usually operationalized and analyzed as financial contributions to candidates or political parties through political action committees (PACs). Very little attention has been paid to other dimensions, such as lobbying, in a systematic way. On a theoretical level we address the issue of how to conceive of PAC contributions, lobbying, and other corporate activities, such as charitable giving, in terms of the strategic behavior of corporations and the implications of "foreignness" for the different types of corporate political activity. On an empirical level we examine the political activities of Fortune 500 firms, along with an oversampling of U.S. affiliates of large foreign investors for the 1987–88 election cycle.

Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatment

The aim of this paper is to make a modest contribution toward improved understanding of how the political process actually operates in America. It reports the results of some research on individual citizen participation in political activity and describes a tool that may be used for classifying individuals in terms of the amount of political activity in which they engage. Finally it outlines some differences that are observed when attitudes with respect to some public personalities and issues held by the politically active portion of the citizenry are compared with attitudes of the politically inert.The research study from which the data reported here are derived is one of a long series carried out over the past five years for the Public Relations Department of the Standard Oil Company (N. J.). The primary purpose of these studies has been to find out how the company stands with the American public —to learn what virtues people credit to it and what sins they think it is committing. Research on such topics inevitably involves the question of who among the vast body of American citizens are most articulate in their feelings about big corporations and most concerned to defend or attack them. Since similar questions arise whenever the citizen's role with respect to any public issue comes up, the tools developed for corporation public relations may have much wider applicability and usefulness.