Bell, S. and Hindmoor, A. orcid.org/0000-0002-0335-2509 (2024) Business politics is usually about attempts to exert influence rather than power. Business and Politics, 26 (1). ISSN 1469-3569
Abstract
We argue that the everyday language distinction drawn between power and influence is meaningful and significant. There is good reason to believe that much corporate lobbying activity which is currently described under the heading of business power is better understood as attempts to secure negotiated agreements based on exerting influence rather than power and that the latter is usually used only when attempts to use influence have failed. We develop an analytical distinction between influence, understood as successful efforts at persuasion, and power using Keith Dowding’s work on power. Drawing upon findings from interviews with corporate professionals operating at the coalface of business and government interaction in Australia, we show that lobbyists generally seek ‘quiet’ behind the scenes accommodations with governments via attempts to exert influence rather than power.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Business and Politics is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Australian Research Council DP160100432 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 27 Oct 2023 10:38 |
Last Modified: | 10 Jan 2025 15:17 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/bap.2023.32 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:204481 |