Authors: Firouze Pourmand
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates how small firms develop political strategies in response to coercive
political initiatives emanating from political organizations. Extant literature has mainly
focused on large firms and has assumed that SMEs are passive adopters of coercive political
initiatives. This paper is based on business network theory, where business-government
relationships have been studied in relation to small firms and influenced by corporate political
strategy. A framework of firm’s prerequisites built around three concepts: political
commitments, political knowledge, and business-political legitimacy have been developed.
This analytical framework is used to explain how small firms take strategic political actions to
change coercive initiatives into support for their businesses, which is illustrated empirically
with a case study. Instead of passive adaptive behavior, the paper shows how small firms can
influence coercive political initiatives and what kinds of decisions are made to actualize the
proposed political strategy.
Key words: small firms, political strategy, network, political knowledge, political
commitments and business-political legitimacy
Journal: ( – )
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Conference: Glasgow, Scotland (2011)