Executive Summary

Executive Summary

“The Political Behavior of Business Actors”

The case of Swedish MNCs and the EU

By Amjad Hadjikhani

Earlier, most researches were focusing on government’s role over MNC’s but in this article, Hadjikhani opposes this issue and proposes that there is a focal relationship between the government and multinationals. He primarily takes into account political actors and considers them as central to his study.

The main question addressed is how businesses behave when they interact with political actors. This is important because such activities can create winners or losers in the market by their effect on needed resources. To explain this, a 3-factor model: interactions (commitment to gaining knowledge, resource commitment and trust), objective (influence) and actor’s characteristics (legitimacy, type, size) is used.

It is stated that initially power supremacy lies with governments. Business actors then establish influential relationships to convince political actors to provide specific types of political support.

To further strengthen his proposition,