How Organizations Engage in Scientific Discourse to Influence Stakeholders and Regulatory Policy

Abstract

A fundamental question in the non-market strategy literature is how firms attempt to shape the political environment to favor their interests. While prior literature has focused on how firms use informational, financial incentive, or constituency-building strategies to influence policymakers or public opinion, it has neglected how firms also attempt to influence scientists and scientific discourse. This omission is meaningful given that scientific discourse often underpins policymaking and shapes public perception of issue salience. In this dissertation, I conduct an empirical examination of when and how organizations contribute to scientific discourse in order to influence regulation. I follow these empirical studies with a theoretical exploration of how firms use empirical evidence to influence stakeholder perception of issue salience and demands on the firm. I use data from the nearly 30,000 comments submitted by organizations during the creation of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, as well as data from quarterly lobbying reports, IRS Form 990s, Web of Science, and PubMed. In my first chapter, I ask: what is the relationship between scientific discourse and organizations’ decisions to engage in political activity? I find patterns suggesting that organizations are more likely to lobby when they first attempt to influence scientific discourse but are dissatisfied with the results. My second chapter builds on the first to ask how industry-affiliated organizations contribute to scientific discourse. Specifically, I investigate whether industry-affiliated organizations contribute high quality or biased expertise. I find that whether industry-affiliated organizations contribute high quality or biased scientific expertise depends on the way in which they contribute. Simply citing studies is indicative of contributing high quality scientific expertise, whereas citing studies the industry-affiliated organization has funded itself is indicative of contributing biased expertise. Finally, I broaden my focus to theoretically explore how firms engage with empirical evidence to influence stakeholder perception of issue salience and demands on the firm. I develop a theoretical model where firms indirectly influence stakeholder demands by weakening issue salience for stakeholders. Stakeholders formulate demands on the firm based on the salience of an issue. Thus, firm efforts to weaken issue salience will also affect what, if any demands, stakeholders make on the firm. I introduce two empirically-based resistance strategies that act on issue salience and stakeholder demands: validity disputing and validity promoting. I describe how validity disputing is used to weaken issue salience and sow doubt on the justifications for stakeholder demands, while validity promoting is used to deter stakeholders from making demands on the firm.