The Practices of Power. Debates on the Business Political Action as a Problem

Abstract

The systematic analysis of the business political action is still a debt for much of the social sciences. To this extent, most studies focused on business behavior have tried to explain how businessmen behave rather than why they do what they do. The why has been usually theoretically deduced from a set of axioms that determine what can be expected from business’ action. This paper proposes a shift on the focus and suggests the need for a more critical empirical research on the mechanisms and processes that help to explain why business act in certain ways under certain circumstances. With this aim, the paper visits a set of theories that taken together build a frame for discussing the business political action as a research problem. Based on that revision, the paper also suggests that in order to comprehend the businesses political behavior no single theory is enough, but a multi-dimensional perspective is necessary. Finally, this paper argues that the most commonly accepted theories on business action and decision making (those based on the material interests and rational choice theories) need to be complemented with other theoretical approaches.