Business and the politics of human capital investment policy: A new institutionalist perspective

Despite the conventional wisdom that managers generally oppose social polic y, business opinion polls revealed considerable support for the health and training initiatives of the first Clinton administration. Yet while manager s acting collectively in groups made tangible, public expressions of suppor t for the training initiatives proposed by Clinton, they ultimately rejecte d the president's national health plan. This paper attributes the different ial responses by business, in part, to variations in the networks organizin g employers in the two spheres. Differences in policy-level business organi zation, private policy expertise and policy legacies mattered enormously to how managers thought about the proposed government initiatives and how the y participated in the legislative process.