City Research Online

Abstract

In this dissertation, I investigate how power dynamics shape mutual dependencies between corporate agency and public authority, and how their interplay produces distinct structures and outcomes within hybrid governance arrangements. Across three papers, comprising a critical literature review, a conceptual theory development paper, and an empirical longitudinal case study, I examine the conditions under which business and government navigate, negotiate, and reconfigure their respective roles in sustainability governance.

The first paper, “Disambiguating Political Corporate Social Responsibility: A Meta-Theoretical Review”, confronts conceptual ambiguity in Political Corporate Social Responsibility (PCSR) scholarship by reviewing three core areas of contestations in 197 articles: power dynamics and motivations for corporate political agency, the governance scope of corporate political action, and the socio-political outcomes of PCSR through a meta-theoretical lens. I organise debates within and across structural, anti-structural, and post-structural paradigms, showing how underlying ontological and epistemological commitments generate theoretical divergence, leading to sustained conceptual ambiguity. This study offers a cross-paradigmatic learning platform for dialogue and extends a power-centric, context-aware research agenda that can support PCSR theory-building in disciplines interested in business ethics, corporate power, governance, socio-political change, and sustainability.

The second paper, “Governing For Sustainability in the Regulatory Capitalism Era”, engages with the ongoing scholarly debate about the efficacy of different governance approaches in addressing socio-environmental challenges. I focus on Political Corporate Social Responsibility, a business-centred approach, and Collaborative Governance, a government-oriented approach. Accounting for the characteristics of governance practices in interactive governance systems, I critically examine the central assumptions of these two approaches vis-à-vis the regulatory capitalism’s normative principles. The analysis offers insights for extending these theories by integrating elements of regulatory capitalism into their analytical frameworks, thereby enhancing their explanatory and normative capacities as sustainability governance approaches. The paper also outlines a future research agenda for further empirical analysis of the suggested integrative framework.

The third paper, “Intra-Coalitional Dynamics and Formation of Collective Agency”, examines why the U.S. federal efforts to regulate carbon emissions repeatedly failed between 2007 and 2010 despite favourable structural conditions. Through a longitudinal process analysis of five legislative efforts in Congress, I trace how cross-sectoral advocacy coalitions configured intra‑coalitional dynamics along structural, interactional, temporal, and resource‑based dimensions. The analysis reveals that pro-regulation coalitions shifted between configurations, undermining their capacity for coordinated action, while anti‑regulation coalitions consistently enacted a networked‑orchestrated‑stable configuration sustaining resilient collective agency. Findings extend coalition work and agency scholarships by reconceptualising collective agency as a relational accomplishment contingent on specific configurations of intra-coalitional dynamics.

Keywords: Agency, Public Authority, Power, Cross-Sector collaboration, Advocacy Coalition, Sustainability, Climate Policy, Regulatory Capitalism, Governance, Political Corporate Social Responsibility.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Bayes Business School Doctoral Theses Bayes Business School > Faculty of Management Doctoral Theses

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