Corporate political activity agents: Understanding how firms use expert consultants to transmit information to regulators of risky products

Abstract

This thesis contributes to understanding how firms use expert consultants to transmit information with regulators of risky products. This topic has been extensively investigated regarding the tobacco industry but is not as well-understood in relation to the alcohol industry. Alcohol shares similarities with tobacco as a legal, widely-consumed yet disease-bearing product that is regulated to influence the incidence of harms. Submissions to Australian government regulators reveal that liquor retailers have used expert consultants to resist harm prevention policies that restrict alcohol availability and promotion. Three analyses were performed to explore this topic. First, an extensive literature review examines current knowledge on the corporate political activities (CPA) of industries who are specially regulated to mitigate health risks. Second, a taxonomy was developed to define how the tobacco industry used expert consultants for CPA purposes. Third, this taxonomy was applied to three cases where an Australian alcohol retailer used CPA expert consultants. This thesis found that firms use expert consultants as CPA agents when there is an "information threat" that may pose an existential threat to the firm. CPA expert consultants were used to transmit information in a manner that achieves special perlocutionary speech effects in the policy arena. This thesis found 23 characteristics of how expert consultants are used by firms as CPA agents; of which, 15 were newly-identified, distinct characteristics of this practice. The 23 characteristics can be grouped among four thematic dimensions: distinct motivating factors (motivators), strategic and tactical CPA approaches to using expert consultants, and the distinct attributes of CPA expert consultants. Each characteristic is supported by between six and 22 of the 24 source articles. This thesis also found significant parallels between the tobacco and alcohol industries in their use of CPA expert consultants. This thesis concludes that Industrial expert consultants are not disinterested authorities on the subjects for which their services are commissioned. Rather, they are agents of their industrial sponsor's political interests. Consequently, any information they produce and submit to regulators should be understood in the context of pursuing the industries interests and made publicly-available to support transparent policy-making. Show more