New Schulich Research Challenges Conventional Wisdom on Corporate Political Influence
TORONTO, ON – Thursday, October 23, 2025 – A new study by researchers at York University’s Schulich School of Business challenges long-held assumptions about how corporations influence government policy.
The paper, “Beyond Dangling Carrots: The Effect of Policy Maker Motives on Their Response to Corporate Political Activity (CPA),” is slated for publication in the prestigious Academy of Management Review and is co-authored by Pouyan Tabasi-Nejad, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business (and a former Schulich PhD student), and Yuval Deutsch, Professor of Entrepreneurship & Strategic Management at Schulich.
Corporate Political Activity (CPA) – the ways in which firms attempt to influence government decisions – has traditionally been viewed as a transactional exchange: companies offer money, information or other resources to policymakers in return for favourable policy. But the Schulich study argues that this “exchange” model overlooks a key question: why policymakers actually choose to respond to corporate influence in the first place.
Drawing on social influence theory, Deutsch and Tabasi-Nejad develop a new framework that focuses more onthe policymaker’s perspective. Their model identifies three distinct motivational drivers – instrumental, relational and moral – that affect how politicians and bureaucrats respond to corporate lobbying.
The authors argue that when corporations ignore the non-instrumental motives of policymakers – such as their moral values or relational loyalties – they risk not only losing influence but potentially damaging their credibility or relationships with government decision-makers.
“Our findings suggest that policymakers are not simply rational actors who respond to financial or political incentives,” says Professor Deutsch. “They are also motivated by relationships, moral commitments and a sense of duty. Firms that fail to recognize this human dimension of policymaking may find that their traditional influence strategies – what we call ‘dangling carrots’ – no longer work, or sometimes even backfire.”
The study expands existing theories of corporate political activity by emphasizing the differences between politicians and bureaucrats, showing that each group responds to different kinds of influence. It also reframes how lobbyists are understood – not merely as access brokers, but as vital intermediaries who can shape the tone and success of corporate engagement with government.
