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Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth? Organising Boundary‐Spanning Government Affairs Units during Times of Crisis
Author(s) -
Barron Andrew,
Vanyushyn Vladimir
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
european management review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.784
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1740-4762
pISSN - 1740-4754
DOI - 10.1111/emre.12419
Subject(s) - brexit , boundary spanning , politics , boundary (topology) , government (linguistics) , business , public relations , economics , sociology , political science , knowledge management , computer science , law , european union , international trade , mathematical analysis , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics
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.