Corporate political activity (CPA) has been recognized as a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Its proponents, mostly nonmarket strategy researchers, argue that political capital enables firms to influence their regulatory and policy environments, shape their competitive space, and improve their performance. Consequently, there is a widely held view that the performance of firms depends not only on the ability of managers to exploit economic markets but also on their ability to succeed in political markets. To test the value of political activism, recent scholarship has probed the relationship between CPA and firm performance. However, random mixed findings and the fragmented nature of the field raise more questions than provide answers to the nature of this relationship. This systematic review examines scholarly articles for evidence of the impact of CPA on firm value. Drawing on 56 articles contributing to the topic and applying the CIMO-logic method of synthesis, this study discusses the findings within a framework of four elements. First, it examines the contexts within which CPA has been investigated. Second, it presents findings on the strategies that are studied. Third, it investigates the performance outcomes of CPA. Fourth, it explores the mechanisms that underpin the performance outcomes of CPA. The findings suggest that CPA is positively related to firm performance, an indication that there is value in political activism. However, counter evidence is reported by a few studies. The evidence also reveals that institutional contexts impact the political strategies used by firms or studied by researchers. Even though most of the studies lack theoretical grounding, social capital, cronyism and agency relationships are the popularly cited or implied mechanisms underlying the CPA-firm performance relationship. Following from the discussion, two propositions linking contexts, interventions, and outcomes are developed. The study suggests future research directions based on the gaps/limitations identified in the literature.

This dissertation consists of three papers that are linked through the topic of organizational capabilities. The first paper, entitled "Organizational Core Capabilities, Strategic Intent and Performance: A Study of the Pharmaceutical Industry," looks at the association between capabilities, strategic intent and performance. Employing capabilities theory and the strategic intent literature, I model (i) the association of firm-level capabilities and rigidities on performance, (ii) the association of strategic intent and performance and (iii) the interaction effects of capabilities and strategic intent upon performance. Our sample consists of pharmaceutical firms during the years 1993 to 2003 and I find that both capabilities and strategic intent are negatively associated with firm performance. The interaction of the two main effects is positively related to performance conditional on firms having high strategic intent. The findings point to potential evidence of core rigidities theory as well as strategic intent theory, which has yet to be empirically tested by scholars. The second paper is entitled "The Impact of Political Capabilities on Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation." In this paper, I integrate capabilities theory with the literature on corporate political activity (CPA). The CPA literature has been robust in addressing the determinants of a firm's choice to engage in political activities but has been less robust in modeling the CPA-performance link. I address this by first integrating capabilities theory and political action and then by testing a number of constructs on a sample of Fortune 500 firms from varying industries. Specifically, I find that political action committee (PAC) intensity and lobbying intensity is associated with higher firm performance. I then interact PAC intensity with lobbying intensity and also find positive association between this interaction and performance, denoting that these two activities are complements and not substitutes. Finally, I moderate these relationships with industry concentration and find that performance increases for politically active firms as industries become more concentrated. The third paper is titled "Political Capabilities and Rigidities: The Case of AT&T's Acquisition Attempt of T-Mobile USA." This paper studies, in an in-depth case study, the political capabilities of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), focusing on the years 1984-2011. Using capabilities and rigidities theory from management, I provide detailed evidence of (i) AT&T's intent to compete on political capabilities, (ii) the success derived from these political capabilities and (iii) situational failure resulting from an over-reliance on these political capabilities. In the empirical section, I show how the firm failed to assess external information that it needed to adjust its competitive strategy and, as a result, failed to acquire a key competitor. This paper makes contributions to capabilities research, rigidities research and corporate political activity. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

This thesis takes a corporate political strategy perspective of antidumping and countervailing duty cases to understand why some firms are more successful at the prosecution of these trade remedy measures. Trade remedy measures are long standing tools of US trade policy and their use has continued to grow globally amongst member countries of the World Trade Organisation. Between 1980 and 2007 a total of 1606 of these trade remedy cases were investigated by the Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission, an average of 41 antidumping and 17 countervailing duty cases a year, with a value of around US$ 63 billion or 0.3% of all US imports. Thirty-seven percent of the cases by number and 54% by value resulted in duties being imposed on the subject imports. This study uses archival material for five recent trade remedy investigations and forty-five semistructured interviews with business interests, trade attorneys and economic consultants that have experience of prosecuting these cases to understand why some firms may be more successful than others at achieving their preferred policy outcome. The imposition of duties is found to be only the simplest measure of success for US firms that file a case and does not capture the range of potential outcomes for foreign firms that face the duties. Successful prosecution of a trade case has been found to be firm specific, as the DOC determination of individual firm duty rates significantly affects what the outcome of case means for each firm in the US and foreign industries. The successful prosecution of US trade remedy cases is argued to be an informational corporate political strategy that is affected by statutory and administrative biases in the execution of the agency investigations, and creates the potential for indirect rent-seeking bias in the outcomes of cases. This informational corporate political strategy is based on three capabilities that firms need to develop, the capability to gather information, the capability to build and shape the administrative record at the agencies to reflect a firm’s policy preferences and the capability to align business practices with the US trade remedy institutions. These three capabilities are enabled by the bundling of corporate political expertise resources, organisational resources, financial resources and reputational resources. Some of these resources are internal to the firms, including staff, money and information, while other resources are external, such as the trade attorneys and economic consultants.

By pursuing private and collective political action in the nonmarket environment, businesses attempt to influence public policy that shapes their operating environment. This dissertation considers how a firm’s market-based experience and its accumulation of political resources affect how the firm combines private and collective political tactics. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) I investigate how a firm’s alliance experience, political resources and prior collective political experience influence the autonomy of its Corporate Political Activity (CPA). I use fixed effects GLS regression with clustered standard errors to test my model on a panel of 21,329 firm/year observations of 2,779 U.S. property casualty insurance companies over the ten-year period between 2005 and 2014. I find support for the influence of state-level political resources, equity alliances, and the interaction of prior collective CPA experience with regulatory complexity and learning capacity on autonomy. My findings contribute to the growing literature connecting market and non-market strategies by linking collaboration in the political arena to the related market activity of alliance experience. Findings also contribute to our understanding of how participation in a collective provides opportunities for learning, and reveals that taking advantage of this opportunity depends on a firm’s learning capacity and the complexity of its regulatory environment. These findings add insight to the literatures on CPA, inter-organizational learning, collective action and trade associations.

Firms require policies that are supportive to their operating environment and competiveness. Few firms, however, interact with policy makers and it is suggested in the literature that they do so in a self-interested manner. Policy makers are faced with the challenge of ensuring positive sum outcomes in a highly politicised process. Innovative firms could possible request more value creating policies with noninnovative firms requesting value capturing policies. A firm that is more networked is more innovative, but this also increases the management complexity of the firm. The purpose of this study was to enable policy makers to make more informed political decisions in the public policy process. A secondary dataset focused on firms in the innovation context. Groups of firms were categorised by their innovativeness, involvement with policy and network richness through Chi-square tests, Exploratory Factor Analysis and Cluster Analysis. The policy requests of these firms were analysed through the Kruskal-Wallis test, with post hoc analyses using Mann-Whitney U tests. The study found that firms could be categorised based on their innovativeness and involvement, but that network richness played an important role in increasing both. Innovative and non-innovative firms had similar needs in policies. It is suggested that richly networked firms are not independently rent seeking as they request policies that are to the benefit of the broader innovation network in order to sustain and grow the collaborative relationships. Policy makers are advised to ensure the inclusion of network rich firms in the policy process. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

In political philosophy, power and responsibility are known to be two sides of the same coin. Yet surprisingly, corporate political power has not been strongly featured in the long-standing debate surrounding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), despite the parallel debate on the influence of business in policy-making. The political dimension of CSR and its intrinsic relationship with Corporate Political Power (CPP) has been under-researched. This thesis adds to the CSR debate by investigating the processes and mechanisms by which CSR activities contribute to the power of the firm in the political arena, in the context of the British construction industry. Drawing on the literature on power, political activity and extended corporate citizenship, a conceptual model of the relationship between CSR and CPP was developed. The model was underpinned by insights from the Institutional Theory, the Resource Dependence Theory, and the Resource-Based View of the firm. Using a hybrid constructivist-realism epistemology and a processbased analysis, three exploratory case studies were carried out in construction companies operating in the UK. Data were collected through archival research and semi-structured interviews, and analysed by means of within and cross-case analyses. The results revealed that the political environment of the firm was analogous to a marketplace where companies traded political goods with policy-makers. CSR activities produced four political goods, namely public image, technical expertise, social capital and indebtedness, which were identified as the mechanisms by which CSR contributed to CPP. The impacts of CSR activities on CPP were three-fold: CSR strengthened the privileged structural position of companies; helped them gain easier access to policy-makers; and this privileged access gave companies more opportunities to influence regulatory outcomes. The key theoretical contribution of the thesis is a processual model that illustrates how CSR contributes to CPP. There are also implications for practice. CSR activities are velvet curtains that hide the operationalisation of political power. The social and political implications call for the attention of government officials who favour a neoliberal doctrine for the promotion of CSR to business.

Submitted by ANA GRAZIELE L TOLEDO (anagraziele@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-03-31T19:49:23Z No. of bitstreams: 1 AÇÕES POLÍTICAS OU ESTRATÉGIAS POLÍTICAS -- VERSÃO FINAL.pdf: 1161302 bytes, checksum: f0128c0e493ca8d55f6d8c40335e57fe (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Pamela Beltran Tonsa (pamela.tonsa@fgv.br) on 2016-03-31T20:01:28Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 AÇÕES POLÍTICAS OU ESTRATÉGIAS POLÍTICAS -- VERSÃO FINAL.pdf: 1161302 bytes, checksum: f0128c0e493ca8d55f6d8c40335e57fe (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-31T21:42:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 AÇÕES POLÍTICAS OU ESTRATÉGIAS POLÍTICAS -- VERSÃO FINAL.pdf: 1161302 bytes, checksum: f0128c0e493ca8d55f6d8c40335e57fe (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-14 / The political market is one in which buyers and suppliers negotiate public policies in the similar way to what happens in economic markets: using political strategies. Are notable advances the literature to discuss the effectiveness of these strategies and their relationship to the performance of companies that use them. However, the development of the structure and attractiveness of the political market is still incipient, especially, to explain if the political strategies have the same nature as the market strategies: they represent the company's position in the political market (CAVES; Porter, 1977; Porter, 1980b; HILLMAN; Keim, 1995; HILLMAN; HITT, 1999; BONARDI; HILLMAN; KEIM, 2005). Thus, the objective of this study is to analyze the nature of the actions taken by companies in order to find out if these actions are configured as actual strategies. For this, we used an experimental methodology that modeled the light of game theory, tested determining causal relationships positioning companies in political markets. These relationships were based on the concepts of mobility barriers and isolation mechanisms and were observed in relation to the boss of the political issue and organizational routines. The variables were tested in two different experimental treatments in which subjects were students of the Management degree course, which randomly composed the experimental groups. The results of the experimental sessions showed the existence of positioning of the companies in relation to political strategies according to two variables tested: companies do not change the political strategy in the presence of established organizational routines nor do when there is political issue salience. These findings allow us to advance the discussion of the structure and attractiveness of political markets since proved that even in markets with outcome not differentiated as public policy, companies seek to model and protect unique strategies in the search for better performance. / O mercado político é aquele no qual demandantes e fornecedores negociam políticas públicas de forma semelhante ao que ocorre em mercados econômicos, ou seja, utilizando-se de estratégias políticas. São notáveis os avanços da literatura em discutir a eficiência destas estratégias e sua relação com o desempenho das empresas que as utilizam. No entanto, o desenvolvimento da estrutura e atratividade dos mercados políticos ainda é insipiente, principalmente no sentido de explicar se as estratégias políticas possuem a mesma natureza que as estratégias de mercado, ou seja, se representam o posicionamento da empresa no mercado político (CAVES; PORTER, 1977; PORTER, 1980b; HILLMAN; KEIM, 1995; HILLMAN; HITT, 1999; BONARDI; HILLMAN; KEIM, 2005). Desta forma, o objetivo deste trabalho é analisar a natureza das ações realizadas pelas empresas com a finalidade de descobrir se estas ações se configuram como estratégias propriamente ditas. Para isso, utilizou-se de uma metodologia experimental que, modelada à luz da teoria dos jogos, testou relações causais determinantes do posicionamento de empresas em mercados políticos. Estas relações basearam-se nos conceitos de barreiras de mobilidade e mecanismos de isolamento e foram observadas em relação à saliência da political issue e rotinas organizacionais. As variáveis foram testadas em dois tratamentos experimentais distintos nos quais os sujeitos foram alunos do curso de graduação de Administração, que aleatoriamente compuseram os grupos experimentais. Os resultados das sessões experimentais evidenciaram a existência de posicionamento das empresas em relação às estratégias políticas de acordo com as duas variáveis testadas: as empresas não mudam a estratégia política na presença de rotinas organizacionais estabelecidas e tampouco o fazem quando há saliência da political issue. Estes achados permitem avançar a discussão da estrutura e atratividade dos mercados políticos uma vez que comprovam que mesmo em mercados com outcome não diferenciado como as políticas públicas, as empresas buscam modelar e proteger estratégias únicas na busca pela melhor performance.

Submitted by Carlos Afonso Caldeira Filho (carlos_caldeira@yahoo.com) on 2016-08-19T15:03:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis CC 99.pdf: 2586051 bytes, checksum: f279ca81d08829e2a7d5acabdda5c921 (MD5) / Rejected by Pamela Beltran Tonsa (pamela.tonsa@fgv.br), reason: Boa tarde Carlos, Para que possamos aprovar seu trabalho são necessários alguns ajustes conforme norma ABNT/APA. * Seu titulo esta diferente da ATA, caso realmente exista essa alteração é preciso o professor orientador vir até a secretaria para fazer a alteração no verso da ATA com o titulo atual. Caso contrário não poderei aprovar. ( ata - CONFIGURAÇÃO DAS CAPACIDADES DE LOBBY DAS SUBSIDIÁRIAS DE MULTINACIONAIS OPERANDO NO BRASIL ) FORMATAÇÃO ESTRUTURA Capa (obrigatório)- Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 FUNDAÇÃO GETULIO VARGAS – ESCOLA DE ADMINISTRAÇÃO DE EMPRESAS DE SÃO PAULO Contra Capa - Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 FUNDAÇÃO GETULIO VARGAS – ESCOLA DE ADMINISTRAÇÃO DE EMPRESAS DE SÃO PAULO Ficha catalográfica/ Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 Folha de aprovação - Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 - nesta folha não tem São Paulo 2016 - DEDICATÓRIA Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 ( A PALAVRA DEDICATÓRIA DEVE SER MAIUSCULO/NEGRITO E CENTRALIZADO ) - Opcional - AGRADECIMENTOS - Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 (A PALAVRA AGRADECIMENTO DEVE SER MAIUSCULO/NEGRITO E CENTRALIZADO ) - RESUMO (A PALAVRA RESUMO DEVE SER MAIUSCULO/NEGRITO E CENTRALIZADO): espaçamento simples (150 a 500 palavras), com palavras-chave (obrigatório). - ABSTRACT ( A PALAVRA ABSTRACT DEVE SER MAIUSCULO/NEGRITO E CENTRALIZADO ) em língua estrangeira . Após os ajustes você deve submete-lo novamente para analise e aprovação. Qualquer duvida estamos a disposição, Att. Pâmela Tonsa on 2016-08-19T16:32:46Z (GMT) / Submitted by Carlos Afonso Caldeira Filho (carlos_caldeira@yahoo.com) on 2016-08-22T13:35:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis CC 100.pdf: 2766750 bytes, checksum: ea8ac316dcb809ac8a2ac561023fe386 (MD5) / Rejected by Pamela Beltran Tonsa (pamela.tonsa@fgv.br), reason: Bom dia Carlos, Para que possamos aprovar seu trabalho são necessários alguns ajustes conforme norma ABNT/APA. * Seu titulo esta diferente da ATA, caso realmente exista essa alteração é preciso o professor orientador vir até a secretaria para fazer a alteração no verso da ATA com o titulo atual. Caso contrário não poderei aprovar. ( ata - CONFIGURAÇÃO DAS CAPACIDADES DE LOBBY DAS SUBSIDIÁRIAS DE MULTINACIONAIS OPERANDO NO BRASIL ) - Professor deve vir até a secretaria para fazer a alteração no verso da ATA. FORMATAÇÃO ESTRUTURA Capa (obrigatório)- Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 FUNDAÇÃO GETULIO VARGAS – ESCOLA DE ADMINISTRAÇÃO DE EMPRESAS DE SÃO PAULO - SÃO PAULO -2016 é maiúsculo Contra Capa - Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 FUNDAÇÃO GETULIO VARGAS – ESCOLA DE ADMINISTRAÇÃO DE EMPRESAS DE SÃO PAULO - SÃO PAULO -2016 é maiúsculo Ficha catalográfica/ Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 Folha de aprovação - Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 - nesta folha não tem São Paulo 2016 - DEDICATÓRIA Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 ( A PALAVRA DEDICATÓRIA DEVE SER MAIUSCULO/NEGRITO E CENTRALIZADO ) - Opcional - AGRADECIMENTOS - Fonte: Arial / Tamanho da fonte: 12 (A PALAVRA AGRADECIMENTO DEVE SER MAIUSCULO/NEGRITO E CENTRALIZADO ) - RESUMO (A PALAVRA RESUMO DEVE SER MAIUSCULO/NEGRITO E CENTRALIZADO): espaçamento simples (150 a 500 palavras), com palavras-chave (obrigatório). - ABSTRACT ( A PALAVRA ABSTRACT DEVE SER MAIUSCULO/NEGRITO E CENTRALIZADO ) em língua estrangeira . Após os ajustes você deve submete-lo novamente para analise e aprovação. Qualquer duvida estamos a disposição, Att. Pâmela Tonsa on 2016-08-22T13:51:08Z (GMT) / Submitted by Carlos Afonso Caldeira Filho (carlos_caldeira@yahoo.com) on 2016-08-22T14:31:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis CC 101.pdf: 2767923 bytes, checksum: a2cf0505149abcd57f465e128a2b56e4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Pamela Beltran Tonsa (pamela.tonsa@fgv.br) on 2016-08-22T14:32:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis CC 101.pdf: 2767923 bytes, checksum: a2cf0505149abcd57f465e128a2b56e4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-22T14:38:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis CC 101.pdf: 2767923 bytes, checksum: a2cf0505149abcd57f465e128a2b56e4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-07-24 / This study focuses on the phenomenon of the design of political capabilities by subsidiaries of multinationals operating in Brazil. The subsidiaries of MNE's operating in developing countries have the challenge of using political actions while suffering conformity pressures, both from the MNE´s headquarters and from local actors. The Brazil served as a natural laboratory to achieve the objectives of this research. The county qualifies as a good setting for the research because there are evidence of strong political activity by the MNE's in the country, as well as ne should expect the 'type of capitalism' in Brazil to be reflected in the subsidiaries political capabilities. This research presents the case study of the configurations of political capacities of the subsidiaries operating in Brazil and contributes to the current knowledge in three ways. The first contribution is the proposition of a theoretically-grounded model for political capacities. The second contribution is the description and analysis of the configuration of political capabilities used by subsidiaries operating in Brazil, as well as the theoretical discussions resulting from this case. The case describes the particular use of relational and reputation based resources. The case also describes that political capabilities are primarily locally developed. This has implications for the literature of political capability transfer and institutional duality on political capabilities development. The final contribution is the description and proposal of a specific type of political capability design, in the case of companies’ with significant share of government sales as a percentage of total sales. / Este estudo trata do fenômeno da configuração das capacidades políticas utilizadas pelas subsidiárias de multinacionais operando no Brasil. As subsidiárias de MNE´s operando em países em desenvolvimento têm o desafio de utilizar ações políticas enquanto sofrem pressões de conformidade, tanto das matrizes das MNE´s como dos atores políticos locais. O Brasil serviu de laboratório natural para atingir os objetivos desta pesquisa. A forte atuação política das MNE´s no país, o “tipo de capitalismo” brasileiro e suas ramificações sobre o sistema político brasileiro e sobre o modo de se engajar em ações políticas corporativas, qualificam o Brasil como um setting adequado para esta pesquisa. Através de estudo de caso das configurações das capacidades políticas das subsidiárias operando no Brasil, esta pesquisa colabora o conhecimento atual em três tópicos. A primeira contribuição é a proposição de um modelo teórico multi-nível para as capacidades políticas, teoricamente fundamentado. A segunda contribuição passa pela descrição e análise da configuração das capacidades politicas usadas pelas subsidiárias operando no Brasil, bem como nas discussões teóricas advindas deste estudo de caso. O caso descreve o uso único de recursos de relacionamento e de reputação. O caso também descreve o desenvolvimento primordialmente local das capacidades políticas, o que tem implicações sobre a literatura de transferência das capacidades políticas, bem como na literatura da influência institucional sobre as capacidades políticas. Finalmente, o trabalho analisa e propõe a existência de um tipo específico de configuração de capacidade política para os casos de empresas cujos interesses em vendas ao governo são significativos.

Dans les économies en transition, un mode de gouvernance hybride - le mode de gouvernance clanique – désigne l’interaction de l’entreprise avec son environnement insitutionnel à travers la participation à la politique. Il est caractérisé par la socialisation, la prédominance des pratiques informels et des facteurs non marchands. Il constitue une réaction de la part de l’entreprise à son environnement institutionnel évolutif et turbulent. En Ukraine, les relations entre l’entreprise et les pouvoirs publics sont fondées sur le clientélisme à travers l’échange de ressources. Les entreprises mobilisent leurs ressources politiques sous forme de votes de leurs employés en faveur des partis. En échange, l’entreprise obtient des décideurs politiques une régulation favorable avec une rente sous forme de subvention. Cette thèse cherche à prouver l’existence d’un lien entre les ressources politiques et les ressources économiques de l’entreprise. Les entreprises investissent des ressources disponibles dans l’activité politique pour obtenir des bénéfices. L’activité politique peut être vue par l’entreprise comme une activité profitable. La recherche de la rente constitue modus operandi du mode de gouvernance clanique qui permet d’assurer le fonctionnement efficient de l’entreprise dans un environnement d’affaires particulier. L’informel constitue une autre caractéristique de ce mode de gouvernance. Les échanges de ressources politiques avec les pouvoirs publics sont faits à travers des réseaux sociaux informels dont la configuration permet de définir le périmètre des structures claniques. / In transitional economies, a hybrid mode of corporate governance – the clanic mode – refers to the interaction between the firm and its institutional environment through its participation in politics. It is characterized by socialization, predominance of informal practice and non market factors. It constitutes a recation of the firm towards its evolutive and turbulent institutional environment. In Ukraine, the relations between the firm and the authorities are based on clientelism through an exchange of resources. The firm deploys their political resources represented by votes of their employees in favor of political parties. It obtains form policymakers a favorable regulation through a rent provided via subventions.This thesis seeks to prove the existence of the relation between corporate political and economic resources. The firm invests available resources to obtain benefits. Political activity can be seen as profitable. Rent-seeking constitutes modus operandi of the clanic governance that allows to the firm to operate efficiently in a specific business environment. This mode of governance is also characterized by informal practices. The exchange of resources with policy-makers is made through informal networks whose configuration defines the perimeter of clanic structures.

Yes / We examine how ties with multiple host-country political institutions contribute to MNE subsidiary performance in countries with weak formal institutions. We suggest that forging relationships between subsidiaries and host-country government actors, local chieftains, and religious leaders generates regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive political resources. We integrate institutional and configuration theories to argue that similarity to an ideal configuration of the three political resources contributes to MNE subsidiary performance, and that the more dysfunctional host country institutions, the greater the impact on performance. We test our hypotheses using primary and archival data from 604 MNE subsidiaries in 23 Anglophone sub-Saharan African countries and find support for our hypotheses. In our conclusion we discuss the wider theoretical, managerial, and public policy implications of our findings.