Critical perspectives on Corporate Political Activities (CPA): Emergence, importance, and future directions

Despite the growing influence of Corporate Political Activities (CPA) and the rising concern over its societal impact, mainstream CPA research has largely focused on the instrumental value of CPA. In other words, a focus on the firm as the sole beneficiary of CPA and thereby ignoring, for the most part, ethical and normative analyses of CPA, as well as the risks and social costs it may engender. There is a significant gap between mainstream CPA research focused on political strategies and their effect on corporate performance on one hand, and normative ethics research focused on what CPA ought to be on the other. In this special issue editorial essay about critical views of CPA we situate within extant CPA literature the contributions of three novel articles exploring the negative aspects of CPA. We also discuss how the future of CPA research can include a robust critical/normative perspective in order to generate socially relevant and practically useful research.

Automated summary

Despite the focus on the instrumental value of Corporate Political Activities (CPA), mainstream research has neglected the ethical and normative analyses as well as the risks and social costs of CPA. There is a gap between research on political strategies and their effect on corporate performance and normative ethics research on what CPA ought to be. In this special issue editorial essay, the negative aspects of CPA are explored, and the importance of including a critical/normative perspective in future CPA research is discussed.