Express: A Configurational Theory of Business Collective Action

Firms facing institutional pressures often respond collectively through established organizations such as trade associations. However, they may also create new organizations that supplement, redirect, or challenge these incumbent vehicles. Yet we know little about what shapes firms’ choice among these different forms of collective action. Adopting a configurational approach, we theorize how collective responses reorganize the set of organizational vehicles through which business interests are aggregated, represented, and coordinated in organizational fields – the BCA infrastructure. We identify critical contingencies related to institutional pressures, field structure, and existing BCA infrastructure, and we theorize how combinations of these contingencies generate four recurrent coordination problems––contribution problems, distributional conflict, capacity gaps, and representational authority problems––that give rise to distinct BCA infrastructure outcomes: consolidation around incumbent vehicles, complementation through new BCA vehicles offering functional differentiation, cooptation of existing vehicles, or competition via rival BCA vehicles. In doing so, we offer a conceptual lens for understanding the proliferation of business associations, coalitions, platforms, and initiatives across organizational fields.