Gaining Access by Doing Good: The Effect of Sociopolitical Reputation on Firm Participation in Public Policy Making
研究发现，企业通过履行社会责任建立的社会政治声誉，能显著增加其在国会听证等政策制定过程中的参与机会，且企业既有政治活动和政策制定者的党派倾向会调节这一关系。
This paper examines the role of firms' sociopolitical reputations, as proxied by their perceived engagement in socially responsible practices, in public policy makers' decisions to grant access in the policy-making process. I argue that policy makers' dependencies, motivations, and decision-making processes lead them to evaluate firms by using sociopolitical reputation as a differentiating heuristic. I hypothesize that firms that construct stronger sociopolitical reputations will be granted greater access and that firms' existing political activity and policy makers' partisanship will moderate this relationship. I test these hypotheses using an 11-year panel on congressional testimony, reputation, and political and financial characteristics for the S&P 500 and find support for all three. These findings support the existence of a sociopolitical dimension to firms' reputations that affects how public policy makers evaluate firms, demonstrating that corporate social responsibility pays political benefits. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sørensen, organizations.