Radboud University Nijmegen
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Master Thesis Legitimacy Struggles over Corporate Lobbyism: The discursive (de)legitimation of contested Corporate Political Activities and the alignment of political non-market strategies with the Corporate Political Responsibilities of MNCs The case of the 2017 Dutch cabinet formation Radboud University Nijmegen Nijmegen School of Management Jelte Pieksma s4205111 Supervisor: Dr. J. Luyckx Second examiner: Dr. P. Vaessen Business Administration ▪ Strategic Management Preface ‘’Writing this preface means that an intense period of research under the supervision of dr. Luyckx is near its end. This also means that the end of my studentship at the Nijmegen School of Management is nearby. I leave the School grateful and with the feeling that especially my master’s specialization in Strategic Management helped me develop a strong foundation of useful theoretical and methodological knowledge that allows me to start a new chapter in life with great confidence. While I am ready for new opportunities and excited to move on, I look back on a meaningful period in my life. At the start of the 2017 master’s program, prof. dr. Van Kranenburg lectured us about the importance of (political) non-market strategies as an essential part of contemporary strategic management. Almost simultaneously, when in the fall of 2017 it was revealed that an extensive corporate lobby eventually had resulted in ‘’sudden’’ tax reforms in the Netherlands, it became publically known that leading Dutch multinationals (e.g. Unilever and Shell) had successfully executed such a political non-market strategy during the 2017 Dutch cabinet formation. Although Unilever and Shell were –at first- pleased with the results, the public was left stunned. This marked the start of a highly mediatized dispute that evolved, besides the tax reforms itself, around corporate lobbyism (i.e. corporate political activities) and the ‘’social license’’ of such powerful non-market instruments. During this time not only prof. dr. Van Kranenburg’s lectures had my attention, but also the well documented societal outrage following the tax reforms intrigued me. When a few weeks later dr. Luyckx proposed a research topic that evolved around the legitimacy struggles over corporate lobbyism, the coincide of these events led to the formulation of the present research questions. The proposed discursive perspective of the study, to me a totally new qualitative research approach, made this also a challenging and exciting final project. When it appeared that non- market strategies (such as corporate lobbyism) were still understudied in this discursive stream, my enthusiasm for this type of legitimacy research grew only further. At the same time, I wondered how corporate lobbyism relates to CSR or –more precise- to the more recent theorization on corporate political responsibilities (CPR). I found elaborating on these corporate responsibilities, as important countermeasures against corporate influence, particular interesting. Therefore, I hope that this thesis can play a role in ending the paucity of knowledge around the discursive (de)legitimation of corporate political activities and increases our understanding of the legitimacy of corporate lobbyism in general. Thereby, I 1 hope to inspire others to increase our understanding of the related corporate political responsibilities that firms nowadays should acknowledge. I would like to express my gratitude to some close to this research. First, I want to thank my supervisor dr. Luyckx for his useful and detailed feedback, supervision and our smooth collaboration. Moreover, I want to thank him for giving me the academic freedom that allowed me to conduct this research at my own pace. This allowed me to cover the entire lobby contest around the tax reforms that took place between 10 October 2017 and 18 October 2018. This also provided the opportunity to engage simultaneously in other exiting projects such as my research under supervision of the Radboud Honours Academy1 that resulted in my first publication.2 This also made it possible to engage in four student- internship programs and to finish law school.3 I am thankful that although the current COVID-19 pandemic paused or delayed my last two internships, I was still able to complete them as envisioned. In that light, I also want to thank Remke Friesen (student adviser) for her help and quick response when answering related organizational questions. Also, I sincerely thank dr. Vaessen for his useful feedback in an earlier stage of this research and for being a second examiner during the defense meeting. I also want to use this opportunity to express my gratitude towards the fact that I grew up and was able to write this thesis in a country that has a long tradition of freedom of press. Using a discursive approach, I relied heavily on numerous mass media articles. Without journalists that are safeguarded from any governmental interference or censorship, this kind of research would not have been possible. Furthermore, I would like to thank all my friends that I met during my time at the Radboud University for their support. I also would like to thank my parents and sister for their enduring support throughout my life. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support of my late grandparents. Their encouraging words helped and motivated me tremendously. Yours sincerely, Jelte Pieksma Wassenaar, October 2020 1 See https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/browse?value=Pieksma%2C+Jelte&type=. 2 See https://bmcpalliatcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12904-019-0424-7. 3 Between 2018-2020 I was a student-intern at Hekkelman Advocaten & Notarissen (Nijmegen), Rabobank (Utrecht), NautaDutilh (Amsterdam) and De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek (Amsterdam) and a student at the Radboud University Faculty of Law, department of Corporate and Financial law. 2 Abstract Despite the central role of legitimacy in management research, little is known about the subtle meaning-making processes through which political non-market strategies, such as corporate lobbyism also known as corporate political activities (CPA), are discursively legitimated in contemporary society. In that light, this study adopts a discursive perspective on legitimacy and therefore introduces CPA to this discursive stream of legitimacy research. Based on a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the extensive media coverage of a revelatory case (the aftermath of the 2017 Dutch cabinet formation) that evolved around contested corporate lobby patterns, I distinguished the following argumentation strategies that played a pivotal role in the discursive (de)legitimation of CPA: inverse legalistic authorization, legalistic legitimation attempts based on legalistic authorization, rationalization by referral to the classic or new lobby-premise, anti-capitalistic, nationalistic or humanistic moralization, corporate or political discursive antagonism and (dramatic) democratic or political narrativization. While reflecting on these findings I argue, considering the strong overall disruption of CPA-legitimacy, that the use of this political non-market strategy often conflicts with an underexposed dimension of a firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR): the corporate political responsibility (CPR) of multinational corporations (MNCs). In order to overcome this, I advocate that this missing corporate-sociopolitical alignment between CPA and CPR can be restored by incorporating the input of a corporate political responsibility-movement into corporate practice. Thereby, I argue that CPA can’t go without CPR and that CSR therefore can’t go without CPR. Considering the above, this study adds to our understanding of the discursive (de)legitimation of corporate lobbyism in particular and contributes to the research on discursive legitimation, CPA, CPR, and CSR more generally. Keywords non-market strategizing ▪ corporate political activities ▪ lobbyism ▪ legitimacy ▪ discursive (de)legitimation ▪ critical discourse analysis ▪ corporate social responsibility ▪ social movement ▪ corporate political responsibility 3 Table of Contents I. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 7 I.I. Corporate Political Activities ........................................................................................ 7 I.II. Moving towards the discursive (de)legitimation of CPA .......................................... 8 I.III. Corporate Political Responsibilities ........................................................................ 12 I.IV. Problem statement ..................................................................................................... 14 I.V. Research questions ...................................................................................................... 15 I.VI. Relevance .................................................................................................................... 15 I.VII. Outline of the study ................................................................................................. 17 II. Theoretical Background ................................................................................................... 18 II.I. CPA as political non-market strategy ....................................................................... 18 II.II. Legitimacy .................................................................................................................. 20 II.III. The strategic and institutional approach .............................................................