This study explores how some oil and gas firms sought to leverage participation in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)—a multi-stakeholder, anti-corruption initiative—to their advantage by re-aligning their market and non-market strategies. Firms with strong technical capabilities and origins in high-governance countries were more likely to support EITI, and these firms repositioned their operations both geographically and in technological space to mitigate risks of transparency commitments. After mandatory disclosure rules were introduced, EITI supporters secured more oil and gas licenses than non-supporters. Analysis of lobbying records reveals how these firms integrated political activity with capability development to strengthen competitiveness. The findings highlight how voluntary initiatives can promote competitiveness by aligning self-regulation with strategic goals in dynamic regulatory environments and complex stakeholder ecosystems.

Under what conditions can voluntary self-regulatory institutions address corruption in weak governance contexts? Prevailing wisdom suggests that, absent rigorous enforcement, such initiatives may merely generate symbolic gestures. We revisit this conclusion by examining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)—a multi-stakeholder effort designed to deter corruption in resource-rich countries. Linking annual firm-level EITI membership with Afrobarometer survey data and satellite-based measures of local economic activity, we find lower perceptions of corruption, greater civic engagement, and increased economic development near the oil and gas operations of firms after they become EITI members. Furthermore, we show that voluntary transparency commitments can deliver an impact on economic outcomes comparable to subsequent mandatory disclosure rules. We argue that, in these weak governance environments, external pressure from civil society and global NGOs can partly substitute for formal legal enforcement, inducing genuine adherence to self-imposed transparency standards, which in turn, meaningfully improve governance and development outcomes.

This study investigates how a patchwork of state information disclosure policies, public pressure, and regulatory risks affect the adoption of green fracking fluid inputs by publicly traded and private oil companies in the US. We theoretically and empirically show that as public pressure increases, public firms claim fewer trade secrets and use fewer toxic chemicals, suggesting a preference for greener alternatives. Conversely, private firms report fewer toxic chemicals but increase their trade secrets claims, implying potential concealment of toxic inputs as trade secrets. Further analysis indicates that after the 2016 TSCA amendments, private firms reported fewer trade secrets and more toxic chemicals, suggesting reduced concerns about regulatory risks. Moreover, private firms are more likely to adopt cleaner chemicals when they observe more public firms successfully using them, indicating a spillover effect in technology adoption. The study underscores the complex relationship between policy, firm heterogeneity, and nonmarket pressure in driving directed technical change.

This study investigates how firms navigate mergers and acquisitions (M&As) under the heightened uncertainty of pending or canceled regulations. Drawing on the Theory-Based View, we argue that managerial cognition—specifically, forward-looking and causal reasoning abilities—moderates the tendency of regulatory risk to deter M&As. Using a novel “Regulatory Pipeline” measure of impending policy proposals and text-based indicators of managerial cognition from conference calls, we find that although regulatory uncertainty typically suppresses deal-making, firms exhibiting stronger cognitive capabilities are significantly more likely to proceed with acquisitions. Our study contributes to research on strategic decision-making under uncertainty by offering new measures of cognition and evidence that firms with high cognitive capabilities can better interpret and respond to unpredictable policy environments.