Conceptualizing Corporate Political Activity for Sustainability Governance—The CPA Cube

ABSTRACT

Sustainability transformations in the economy, and related public policy decisions, are highly contested, attracting business involvement. To better understand how business influence on government impacts the success or failure of sustainability governance efforts, this paper extends the literature on corporate political activity (CPA) by incorporating nuanced forms of business power and multilevel governance settings. We propose the three‐dimensional “CPA Cube” to map and investigate key decisions firms make when engaging governments in multilevel policy environments: at which governance level do they engage? Which type of power do they leverage? Which collaboration strategy do they use? The CPA Cube further aggregates strategies across firms to capture proregulatory and antiregulatory business coalitions and overall outcomes in a specific issue area. We illustrate the potential of the CPA Cube through vignettes on sustainability governance in commodity‐driven deforestation, and identify first patterns of business mobilization and associated sustainability outcomes, which can inform future investigation.