FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME? THE IMPACT OF MEDIA VISIBILITY AND MEDIA REPUTATION ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CORPORATE POLITICAL ACTIVITY AND GOVERNMENT CONTRACT AWARDS

Although corporate political activity (CPA) may enable firms to achieve sought-after public policy outcomes that benefit firms' bottom line, this is most likely when exchanges yielding firm-level benefits are opaque. The government contracting arena is highly opaque to outsiders, and firms competing for such contracts avoid political attention to maintain this opacity. Yet, in exploring factors that disrupt opacity and reduce CPA efficacy, scholarship has primarily investigated political issue salience or political issue visibility. However, firms operate within a broader, nonpolitical information environment, and scholarship has ignored how such information may disrupt the value-generation potential of political exchange opacity. We thus question whether nonpolitical outside attention to politically active firms disrupts political exchange opacity and affects firms' ability to use CPA to receive government contracts. Further, we explore how the affective tenor or tone of media reporting impacts firms' ability to influence government contract awards through CPA. Using a 16-year longitudinal analysis, we discover that both general media visibility and positive media reputation negatively moderate the CPA-contract awards association. The findings expand existing literature by uncovering how general media attention and media reputation may draw attention to political exchange participants, and impact firm CPA efficacy in achieving tangible outcomes.