Local Capitalism and Civic Engagement: The Potential of Locally Facing Firms

• Author: Matthew Record,Jill K. Clark
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12791
• Published date: 01 November 2017
• Date: 01 November 2017

Local Capitalism and Civic Engagement: The Potential of Locally Facing Firms 875

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 6, pp. 875–887. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12791.

Matthew Record is assistant

professor of public administration in

the political science department at

San Jose State University. His primary

research interests include politics and

bureaucracy, state and local governance,

affordable homeownership policy, and civic

engagement.

E-mail: matthewcrecord@gmail.com

Jill K. Clark is assistant professor in

the John Glenn College of Public Affairs

at The Ohio State University. Her research

interests include food policy and practice,

centering on community and state

governance of food systems, the policy

process, and community engagement. Her

current research topics include food policy

coalitions, food system planning, healthy

food access, and food security.

E-mail: clark.1099@osu.edu

Abstract : The twin forces of globalization and devolution have created administrative circumstances that strain

the problem-solving capacity of local governments and increase the importance of nongovernmental processes

and institutions. The literature suggests that locally owned firms are more likely to engender higher levels of civic

engagement critical to buttressing that problem-solving capacity. This research adds an additional dimension,

investigating to whom those firms sell and through which supply channels. Using survey results from hundreds of

local firms across five study sites, this research demonstrates that locally facing firms—that is, firms that intentionally

interface with community members and other local businesses—are associated with greater levels of civic and political

engagement compared with locally owned firms that sell their products to customers elsewhere. Findings suggest that

local governments should look beyond the local/nonlocal ownership binary to consider how private firms can be

partners in serving and supporting their communities.

Practitioner Points

• Local governance efforts to build community engagement might benefit more from specific collaborations

with locally owned businesses that intentionally serve local community members rather than locally owned

businesses generally.

• Owners of local business who are affirmatively motivated by serving the needs of their community have

higher levels of civic and political engagement than business owners who are motivated exclusively by

conventional economic incentives.

• Civic engagement of local business owners may provide a framework for understanding and perhaps even

predicting whether some communities are better prepared for the benefits and burdens that come with

devolution and privatization of services.

Jill K. Clark

The Ohio State University

Matthew Record

San Jose State University

Local Capitalism and Civic Engagement:

The Potential of Locally Facing Firms

I n a 2000 special issue of Public Administration

Review, Donald F. Kettl asserted that the twin

forces of globalization and devolution created

administrative circumstances that strained the

problem-solving capacity of local governmental

actors and greatly increased the importance of

nongovernmental processes and institutions, such as

the nonprofit and business sectors. This reasoning

brings the field of public administration directly in

line with decades of sociological literature suggesting

that the nature and configuration of a community ’ s

private firms have a direct association with the health

of that community ’ s civic life and the prosperity of its

citizens.

A principal argument in favor of returning

processes from the collective (through governmental

organizations and institutions) to individuals and

private citizens (through the market) is that it

engenders an increased sense of efficacy and enhances

community engagement, but those impacts have

not necessarily manifested as the theory suggests

(Champlin 1999 ). Moreover, the nature and behaviors

of the private and semiprivate institutions that make

up a community in a post–devolution/globalization

society vary widely from community to community,

with commensurately varied impacts.

A robust literature exists illustrating the deleterious

impacts of nonlocal business ownership on

communities, including economic instability and

concentration of wealth. “Delocalized” or absentee

ownership serves to divorce the health and viability of

a business from the community in which it operates

(Goldschmidt 1946 ; Heying 1997 ; Mills and Ulmer

1946 ; Tolbert, Lyson, and Irwin 1998 ; Tolbert

et al. 2002 ). However, these studies have primarily

examined the structure of businesses (specifically

whether they are locally owned), not the activities

in which those businesses engage. The fact that a