Power, Policy and Profit

Edited by Christina Garsten, Professor of Social Anthropology, Department of Social Anthropology and Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (SCORE) and Adrienne Sörbom, Associate Professor of Sociology, Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (SCORE), Stockholm University, Sweden

'An expansive, incisive analysis documenting the sprawling and fast-evolving growth of corporate power in policymaking venues across the globe. Pushing the narrative far beyond a simple money-in-politics storyline, the authors illustrate how corporations exert increasing influence in the public sphere and often gain the upper hand vis-à-vis nation-states. Anyone concerned about democratic standards and accountable governance will find this book a must-read.'--Janine R. Wedel, George Mason University, US'This challenging book revisits the relationships between state and market by accounting for the unexpected development of corporations as policymakers, an emergent, global phenomenon. The authors address this fascinating issue in its multiple dimensions. They describe, examine and analyze the way corporations craftily ''bricole'' political and economic interests; the ambiguous status and roles of international non-state organizations; the permanent duality between doing-good and making money that corporations embrace. They uncover a rather discrete but central transformation of today's definition of public intervention.'--Christine Musselin, SciencesPo, Paris, France'Power, Policy and Profit tackles the important and understudied problem of how firms attempt to shape their environment, especially their political and institutional environments. The essays go well beyond examining well-known activities to shed light on venues, strategies and events to which researchers have previously given scant attention. As such, the volume makes an important contribution and promises to stimulate important new lines of research on corporate power.'--Stephen R. Barley, University of California, Santa Barbara, US

• Contents:Introduction: Political affairs in the global domainChristina Garsten and Adrienne Sörbom. 1. Building an architecture for political influence: Atlas and the transnational institutionalization of the neoliberal think tank Marie-Laure Salles-Djelic2. Global policy bricolage: The role of business in the World Economic ForumChristina Garsten and Adrienne Sörbom3. Policy making as collective bricolage: The role of the electricity sector in the Making of the European carbon marketMélodie Cartel, Eva Boxenbaum, Franck Aggeri and Jean-Yves Caneill4. Lobbying in Practice: An ethnographic field study of public affairs consultancyAnna Tyllström5. Firms’ political strategies in a new public/private environment: The Boeing case Hervé Dumez and Alain Jeunemaître6. Corporate advocacy in the internet domain: Shaping policy through data visualizationsMikkel Flyverbom7. Talking like an institutional investor: On the gentle voices of financial giantsAnette Nyqvist8. Leading the war on epidemics: exploring corporations’ predatory modus operandi and their effects on institutional field dynamicsSébastien Picard, Véronique Steyer, Xavier Philippe and Mar Pérezts9. Political chocolate: Branding it fairtrade Renita Thedvall10. Preventing markets from self-destructionBo RothsteinReflections: Leaving Flatland? Planar discourses and the search for the G-axis. David A. WestbrookIndex