Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth? Organising Boundary-Spanning Government Affairs Units during Times of Crisis

摘要

Recent developments - including the COVID-19 crisis, or the UK's departure from the EU - demonstrate that business is vulnerable to unpredictable political developments. How can firms respond to such challenges? For us, the answer lies in how they organise their political actions. Applying insights from the information processing view of organisation design theory to original survey data, we investigate how firms configure boundary-spanning government affairs (GA) activities in response to Brexit. Contrary to conventional organisation design thinking, we find the ability of GA units to monitor and influence Brexit-related developments improves when firms concentrate GA decision-making at clearly defined organisational levels, and coordinate GA units with the rest of the business. Of interest to scholars of organisation design and boundary spanning, our research contributes primarily to corporate political activity (CPA) research by providing practical and theoretical insights into the management and organisation of firms' political actions in times of crisis.