The business of policy: a review of the corporate sector’s emerging strategies in the promotion of education reform

Fontdevila, C. , Verger, A. and Avelar, M. (2021) The business of policy: a review of the corporate sector’s emerging strategies in the promotion of education reform. Critical Studies in Education, 62(2), pp. 131-146. (doi: 10.1080/17508487.2019.1573749)

Abstract

This paper examines the increasingly diverse range of roles played by the corporate sector in shaping education policy. While a growing body of scholarship has documented the deepening embeddedness of the corporate sector within policy-making processes, empirical research on the strategies mobilized by corporate actors remains unsystematised and fragmentary. Furthermore, existing categorizations of corporate policy-influence strategies are frequently restricted to a limited group of Anglo-Saxon countries and, consequently, are ill suited to capturing emerging policy dynamics globally. Building on the results of a literature review, this paper categorises four emerging strategies articulated by the corporate sector: knowledge mobilization, networking, engaging with grassroots, and leading by example. Each strategy is illustrated with examples from a selection of country case studies. These examples suggest that, in the education policy domain, the corporate sector operates not only as a policy influencer, but increasingly as a policy actor organically embedded within policy-making processes and spaces.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Fontdevila, Dr Clara
• Authors: Fontdevila, C., Verger, A., and Avelar, M.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Journal Name: Critical Studies in Education
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1750-8487
• ISSN (Online): 1750-8495
• Published Online: 06 February 2019