The Determinants of Funds Raised by Corporate Political Action Committees: An Empirical Examination

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Abstract
Organizational theorists and other management scholars have long recognized that business corporations operate in complex environments that significantly affect their performance. In recent years, with the federal government an increasingly salient contributor to the complexity of many firms' task environments, the management literature has begun to focus on the effects of this development (Alpin & Hegarty, 1980; Miles, 1982; Post, Murray, Dickie, & Mahon, 1983). Corporations have responded to growing federal intervention in several ways. Many have instituted or expanded formal multipurpose public affairs units to monitor and influence the political environment (Baysinger, 1984; Baysinger & Woodman, 1982; Post et al., 1983). One corporate response has aroused much public controversy—the burgeoning of corporate political action committees (PACs) through which firms channel money into the campaign coffers of candidates for federal offices. The PAC phenomenon has led to several useful studies in management and other disciplines (e.g., Epstein, 1980; Kau, Keenan, & Rubin, 1982). However, scholars have given scant theoretical or empirical treatment to the determinants of variations in corporations' abilities to raise PAC funds. The purpose of this paper is to test hypotheses concerning such variations within a theoretical framework. To our knowledge, the present study is the first comprehensive attempt to analyze this question. A tentative explanation of potential variations in corporate political power at the national level is implicit in its findings.

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