The role of non-market strategies in establishing legitimacy: The Case of Service MNEs in emerging economies

In this article, we examine the mechanisms of corporate political activity of service multinational enterprises (SMNEs) operating in an emerging economy. Reporting the findings of qualitative interviews with key decision-makers in Ukraine, the article illuminates how SMNEs operating in turbulent institutional contexts can enact various corporate political strategies, which include social responsibility activities to mitigate the market costs and develop legitimacy. The findings elucidate how government agencies and institutions may also invoke corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a strategy. The article makes key contributions, firstly, it underscores the complementary dynamics between CPA and CSR strategies in host markets characterised by weak and incomplete institutions. Secondly, the article contributes to the relatively underexplored nature of service sector MNEs operating in such institutional contexts.


Introduction
Academic debates on how multinational enterprises (MNEs) internationalise their operations (Cuervo-Cazurra, 2016;Fortwengel, 2017;Regnér & Edman, 2014), through foreign direct investment (FDI) and non-market strategies have focused predominantly on manufacturing firms and firms involved in natural resource extraction. This is surprising given the fact that between 1990-1992 and 2010-2012, global inward FDI within the service sector grew by almost 908% compared to 491% in the manufacturing sector (UNCTAD, 2014). MNEs in general are considered as playing an important role given their global influence and activities in which they are confronted with a range of issues, stakeholders and institutional contexts, in both home and host countries (Kolk, & Van Tulder, 2010). Furthermore, recently scholars have increasingly recognised the potential for MNEs to be not only part of the problem, but also perhaps part of the solution with corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities being seen as having long-term implications for the international business (IB) realm (Fetscherin, Alon, Lattemann, & Yeh, 2010;Jamali, Karam, Yin & Soundararajan, 2017;Park, Chidlow & Choi, 2014;Pisani, Kourula, Kolk & Meijer, 2017;Preuss, Barkemeyer & Glavas, 2016;).
While a nascent stream of studies has emerged on MNEs based in the service sector (Gleich et al., 2017;Kundu & Lahiri, 2015;Kundu & Merchant, 2008;Stevens et al., 2015), nevertheless, extant IB literature has failed to keep pace with the growth of service industries (Jaklič, Ćirjaković & Chidlow, 2012) and their associated processes of internationalisation over recent years. A decade ago, Kundu & Merchant (2008, p.376), noted, "the challenge lies ahead in the development of theories of service multinational enterprise to explain the intricacies of service firms". This challenge remains. There has been a paucity of research examining the ways in service MNEs are using non-market strategies (Contractor & Kundu, 1998;Ghauri, Tasavori & Zaefarian, 2014) in order to navigate constraints on their business activities within turbulent, often uncertain institutional contexts (De Villa et al., 2018). This encompasses how they sustain the business microaspects of corporate political activity (CPA) connected with corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions in the host country (Saka-Helmhout and Geppert, 2011;Stevens et al., 2016). Whilst the literature on non-market strategy has often been separated into the domains of CSR (Aguinies & Glavas, 2012) and corporate political strategy -sic corporate political activity (CPA) (Lawton et al., 2013a), this article seeks to respond to calls to better understand the interconnectivity between these two lines of intellectual enquiry (Frynas and Stephens, 2014;Frynas et al., 2017;Rodriguez et al., 2006;Sun et al., 2012). This article seeks to address the gap in the extant literature on Service MNEs by examining the dynamics of in-situ operations in relation to CPA and CSR. This study focuses on Ukraine as an emerging economy context.
The article responds to calls for examination of the effectiveness of political strategies in different contexts (e.g. Cuervo-Cazurra, 2016; Lawton et al., 2013a;Lawton et al., 2013b;Mellahi et al., 2016;Meznar & Nigh, 1995) and, in particular, in the context of emerging economies (Doh et al., 2012;Hadjikhani, Elg & Ghauri, 2012). Whilst research on CPA has focused predominantly on firms in the USA (Mattingly, 2007) or Western European countries (Hadjikhani & Ghauri, 2001;Hillman & Wan, 2005;Jimenez, 2010), there is a clear need for more research on how firms entering emerging economies, utilise forms of CPA (Puck et al, 2013). Since firms face greater liability of foreignness in such markets due to the state of the institutional environment which is in a state of flux (e.g., Hadjikhani et al., 2012;Luo et al., 2002;Zaheer, 1995). As Kostova et al. (2008) highlight, differences in institutional environments confronting foreign firms are likely to impact on the success of political strategies for foreign firms within developed and emerging economies. Despite some studies on the importance of political stakeholders in emerging markets such as in China , India (Elg, Ghauri & Schaumann, 2015) and in Russia (Okhmatovskiy, 2010), there remains a dearth of empirical studies on lesser commented, emerging economies-the case in point is Ukraine. Whilst in developed market economies, CPA focuses primarily on influencing, shaping, preventing, or gaining an early understanding of regulatory developments affecting a firm's market strategies (Doh et al., 2012;Lawton et al., 2013a;Jiang et al, 2015), in emerging market settings, firms often use CPA to offset institutional voids (cf. Khanna & Palepu, 2010).
Our article's empirical focus on Ukraine, an emerging economy where the institutional framework remains fluid or void (Puffer et al., 2010), allows us to explore not just the strategic effects and outcomes of non-market strategies (Boddewyn, 2016), but importantly the mechanisms and processes within corporate political activities within these emerging economies. It also permits exploration of the linkages between notions of CSR and CPA within such an institutional environment (Demirbag et al., 2017).
Furthermore, whilst recent years have witnessed growth in research on the corporate political strategies of foreign invested firms (Hillman & Wan, 2005;Mondejar & Zhao, 2013;Zhang et al. 2016), much of this attention has focused on negotiations between the MNE and the host government at the point when the MNE enters a country with a disproportionate lack of attention to the post-entry political strategies and tactics in which firms engage (Hillman & Wan, 2005;Rodriguez et al., 2006;Tasavori, Zaefarian & Ghauri, 2015). Thus, this article provides novel insights regarding the latter and responds directly to the objective of this Call for Articles to examine how in-situ Service MNEs use CPA, connected with embedded CSR, to drive forward their business operations in different market contexts.
This article extends understanding of mechanisms in organizational research (Anderson et al., 2006) by arguing that the corporate political activities of insitu Service MNEs are the product of entwined micro-level business-state relations. Our article argues for the need, theoretically, to move beyond focusing too heavily on macro-orientated market competition perspectives (Whittington, 2012)  The article is structured as follows. Firstly, we discuss the theoretical and contextual background to the study bringing together Service MNC CPA, non-market and CSR literature within the business and management discipline. We then briefly outline state-business relations in Ukraine. Next, the article outlines the methodology developed and employed by the article, which is followed by the presentation of our data and findings. We conclude the article with a discussion of the resultant insights, implications and limitations of the findings.

Non-market and CSR strategies
The study of strategy has focused primarily at the supra level of the competitive aspects of firm activity and behaviour (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 2013). In consequence, the strategic literature has dedicated less attention to micro-practices (Jarzabkowski, 2005) or the institutional environment that shapes competitive strategy (Marquis & Raynard, 2015).
Thus, the development of an understanding of firm interaction in relation to institutional context(s) has formed the primary unit of analysis and shaped the burgeoning literature on 'non-market' strategies (Lux et al., 2011). Navigation of institutional and differing cultural contexts and non-market aspects constitute increasingly critical aspects of firm behaviour. Lawton et al (2013a: 88) signal that work on CPA adopting a functionalist perspective tends to cast the firm's environment as 'apolitical' and 'primarily concerned with regulatory compliance', thus neglecting multi-faceted, fine-grained, culturally contextual or more granular studies of the domain (Demirbag et al., 2017). At the broad level, the aim of non-market strategies and associated firm behaviour is generally to improve firm performance by: "managing the firms institutional context" (Lux et al., 2011: 225). Thus, non-market strategies influence firm behaviour such as, for example, market entry choices (Mellahi et al., 2016;Tasavori, Zaefarian & Ghauri, 2015;Elsahn & Benson-Rea, 2018). Research on non-market activities tends to assume that firms are able to make choices about how, when, and for what motive, to engage in non-market strategic activities (Holburn & Vanden Bergh, 2008). This might however not be applicable to all context as activities such as, for example, CSR have been signalled as highly contextual (Crotty, 2014;Demirbag et al., 2017). Thus it is important to develop studies, which develop such contextualisation.
Furthermore, functional perspectives of non-market strategy argue that CPA activities targeted at formal institutions generally work to ensure that unfavourable policy changes are mitigated (Henisz & Zelner, 2012) and, with informal institutions, impose restrictions of acceptable non-market practices (Biggart & Guillén, 1999;Khan et al., 2015). Hence, in functionalist approaches, firms need to target non-market strategy activities at key individuals who can affect policy making (Holburn & Vanden Bergh, 2008) which forms the basis for CPA (Hillman et al., 2004). Thus, research on non-market strategy extends to cover aspects of lobbying or corruptive firm behaviour (Mauro, 1995). Although this perspective on non-market strategy provides some indication of the rationale for firms to engage in such activities, it neglects firm-level attributes such as the amalgam of CPA and CSR non-market resources and capabilities (e.g., Frynas et al., 2017). For example, a firm's ties with specific individuals (Biggart & Guillén, 1999;Dieleman & Boddewyn, 2011) may provide an organization with access to resources unavailable to others. Therefore, a firm can use such partial ties to engage, not only in non-market strategy, but also to mitigate political risks with such ties forming a buffer against arbitrary institutional behaviour (Dieleman & Boddewyn, 2011). However, the value of each of these ties may differ across organizations (Okhmatovskiy, 2010). Hence, some might enable pro-active non-market strategies while others serve as reactive risk management of resources.
In addition to the functional perspective of non-market strategy, a more dynamic institutional theory inspired by a deeper understanding of non-market strategy is emerging. In this understanding firms use non-market strategy to seek legitimacy (Reast et al., 2013) and overcome liability of foreignness (e.g., Zaheer, 1995), by, for example, aiming to influence agenda setting with relevant regulators or by finding access points that enable the forecasting of any changes to the non-market environment. In a review of non-market literature Mellahi et al. (2016) find that stakeholder theory, agency theory, institutional theory, resource-based views and resource dependency theory are often employed as theoretical lenses to examine non-market strategies. Each of these theoretical foci concentrates on different analytical levels providing insights into how firms use non-market strategies in host markets. These underline that non-market strategic activities are used to attain legitimacy, access resources, garner support from stakeholders and develop resources and capabilities to navigate the competitive market environment (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001).
Further important drivers of non-market literature are CSR (Aguinis and Glavas, 2012; Demirbag et al., 2017) and corporate political strategy/CPA (Lawton et al., 2013a). In particular, CPA is a core aspect of non-market strategy because success in political markets is facilitating success in competitive markets . Even more pertinent for the present argument, CPA is common to organizational activities in emerging and transition countries . Therein, CPA is often associated with issues of corruption, lobbying, and other activities to influence the 'formal' institutional environment (Lawton et al., 2013a). Within developed market economies CPA focuses primarily on influencing, shaping, preventing, or gaining an early understanding of regulatory developments affecting a firm's market (and particularly entry) strategies (Doh et al., 2012;Lawton et al., 2013a). By contrast, where the institutional context is unstable or missing, firms use CPA to offset institutional voids. This can often lead to exchange relationships between firms and the state, which can provide firms with legitimacy, or in some cases, result in firms engaging in illicit and corrupt behaviour (Doh et al., 2012;Lawton et al., 2013a). Therein, Petrou (2015) notes that foreign firms may find themselves at a particular disadvantage as they are not an indigenous part of established networks and therefore lack integration at individual and social group levels.
However, hitherto, the non-market literature has focused on institutional context as a moderator of non-market strategy with firms able to shape and manage their context by engaging in such firm behaviour. There is less awareness of how the institutional context predicates specific non-market behaviours and strategies of firms and the myriad individuals within and surrounding them. Therefore, Lawton et al. (2013a) and Frynas and Stephens (2014) call to re-examine the role the state plays in the mechanics and mechanism of non-market strategy.

Contextualising and politicizing CSR as part of CPA
CSR traditionally has been based upon implicit understandings that firms voluntarily (Carroll & Shabana, 2010) (Crotty, 2014;Ray, 2008). Alongside the increased interest in how CSR is operationalized across different institutional contexts, there has been an increasingly 'political' turn (Scherer et al. 2016) with the emergence of the concept of 'political CSR' (Hadjikhani, Lee & Ghauri, 2008;Scherer et al., 2016;Scherer and Palazzo, 2011;Matten and Crane, 2005), which pays attention to how firms increasingly adopt governmental responsibilities beyond their economic, ethical, legal and philanthropic responsibilities. The firm as a 'political actor' often emerges in response to the regulatory vacuum existing around the activities of MNEs (Matten and Crane, 2005;Palazzo and Scherer, 2006).
As Scherer et al. (2016, p.277) argue, political CSR has emerged in response to limitations across three academic discourses. Firstly, within the international business (IB) literature, apart from some notable exceptions (Doh et al., 2012;Rodriguez et al., 2006), much IB research fails to explore fully the responsibilities of MNEs as a consequence of phenomena such as global sourcing and different forms of internationalization. Secondly, the continued 'instrumental' framing of CSR (Carroll and Shabana, 2010) assumes a delineation between economic and political realms and hence fails to illuminate how firms in response to rapid forces of globalization, increasingly take on the provision of public goods within blurred political and economic domains. Finally, and particularly pertinent to this article's underlying argument, political CSR challenges extant literature on CPA which whilst explaining the conditions and the success of political strategies of firms (Hillman et al., 2004;Lawton et al. 2013a;Lux et al., 2011) remains too focused on an instrumental view of corporate politics, often with no account taken of CSR research (Hillman et al., 2004).
Rather than businesses simply influencing political environments in order to maximise their economic interests, political CSR sees firms becoming political actors, coproducing specific institutional environments, in which they operate (Scherer and Palazzo, 2011).
As outlined above, we have witnessed the development of more contextualized CSR approaches and the rise of a CPA literature within business and management studies. Nevertheless, the linkages between CSR and CPA remain a neglected area of study, which has the potential to contribute to existing understandings of firms' nonmarket strategies. This article seeks to address this gap in extant literature not by exploring how firms jointly mediate CSR and CPA policies, but, rather, we seek to examine the relationships between CSR and CPA, in Service MNC contexts (Ghauri, Tasavori & Zaefarian, 2014) exploring to what extent firms seek an alignment (Birkinshaw, 2011: 42) between these two concepts.

Non-Market Strategies: The Role of the Everyday in Emerging Market Contexts
Existing non-market literature has focused on the notional unit of the 'firm' whilst failing to examine the critical importance of processes at the micro-level of non-market strategies. In response, within this article, we develop a micro-level focus to complement the macro-level work already undertaken. Furthermore, for Mellahi et al. In applying the above thinking to non-market strategies, we recognise how nonmarket strategies emerge in varying institutional contexts. These form of microfoundational assertions suggest that various institutions and bodies, within an overall institutional framework, employ 'strategies' which aim to direct and control firms' behaviours (Cooper et al, 2017;Felin, Foss & Ployhart, 2015). However, individuals and firms are likely to develop and utilise 'tactics' in order to work alongside, by-pass and even replace parts of the intended institutional measures and mechanisms. These actions operate on an everyday basis with individuals exercising tactics in order to counter and subvert the perceived constraints and oppression of the strategies imposed by the institutional system. This dynamic raises an important issue over competing legitimacies of the formal institutional structures and strategies, which are normatively deployed, and the everyday tactics engaged by individuals. As such, there is a clear need for more granular, critical, individual-focused and micro-orientated studies of the CPA: CSR domain. The article continues with a discussion of the research context of Ukraine and the methodologies employed within this study.

Research Context
Context remains a key issue in management and organization studies (Child, 2009;Meyer & Peng, 2016). As Liu & Vrontis (2017)  Ukraine 130 out of 167 countries on its 'corruption perception index'. Processes of rapid privatisation of state assets following the collapse of socialism led not to embedding of real market relations in Ukraine, but rather the appropriation of state assets by those with connections to government (Williams et al., 2013), leading to Ukraine resembling a 'predatory' state (Grzymala-Busse, 2008). The institutional environment in Ukraine is evolving which presents significant challenges to MNEs. Thus in such context, non-market strategies take a central stage in developing competitive advantage in emerging markets and dealing with evolving business environment (Li et al., 2013;Puck et al., 2013).

Methodological Approach
We utilised a qualitative design to explore the nature of non-market strategies utilised by foreign owned SMNEs operating in Ukraine. Our approach is in line with recent research highlighting the need for qualitative studies in the field of IB Doz, 2011;Welch & Piekkari, 2017). Engaging in an inductive research methodology enabled the generation of rich, in-depth exploratory data (Bryman and Bell, 2015;Ghauri, 2004;Ghauri & Firth, 2009;Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010) regarding how foreign owned SMNEs engage in non-market strategies as a means to develop a sustainable market position within Ukraine. In order to avoid 'regional bias' in a country with strong regional diversity (Rodgers, 2006), data were generated in three cities, Kharkiv in the east, L'viv in the west and in Kyiv, in the centre of Ukraine. All three cities are key regional administrative centres in Ukraine. Kharkiv located in the east of the country is a predominantly Russian-speaking city (Rodgers, 2006) and today remains a leading centre of heavy engineering in Ukraine. L'viv, located in Western Ukraine, close to the Polish border remains the hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism and European leaning. Finally, Kyiv is the capital and government and commercial centre of Ukraine.
In order to overcome difficulties regarding sampling bias, we engaged in a referral-driven sampling method. The lead author, who has lived and worked in Ukraine previously for several years, generated a list of potential firms through Internet searches and contacting the Chambers of Commerce and other business associations in the three respective cities. Taking into account the overarching aim to explore how foreignowned SMNEs operated in Ukraine, domestically owned firms were excluded from the search. The list was based on existing known 'warm' contacts (access is notoriously difficult in Ukraine) and a smaller number of possible contacts provided by referral (Stokes & Wall, 2014). In following this rigorous process, we sought to overcome potential risks associated with a reliance on a narrow set of social contacts and avoided any issues regarding sampling bias. As a result, twenty-four in-depth qualitative interviews lasting between a minimum of forty-five minutes and a maximum of ninety minutes were undertaken with business-managers and business owners in 2013 within nine foreign-owned Service MNEs operating in Ukraine. These interviews were conducted in the Russian and Ukrainian languages with the consent of each respondent.
The lead author is fluent in both languages, which enabled rapport to be established with the respondents and ensured consistency in translation of the interviews into the English language. The interviewee profiles are mapped in Table 1.

INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
The interviews were semi-structured, which meant that a number of issues not on the interview schedule were raised by some respondents, which were relevant and were subsequently explored further (Silverman, 2013). The interviews were recorded with the respondent's consent and transcribed and translated. Interviews talked about the general business environment in Ukraine, constraints to undertaking business in Ukraine in general and as a foreign firm in particular, relations with state bureaucrats and tactics utilized for generating a sustainable market position for the firm.
We undertook a thematic analysis and coding of the interview data in order to explore emergent themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006;Gaur & Kumar, 2018;Ghauri, 2004;Ghauri & Firth, 2009;Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010). In keeping with Bryman (2012) the reliability of coding was structured in order to prevent coder bias. The coding process was conducted independently by the authors, with overarching thematic categories identified to develop a coding scheme based on key themes so that intracoder reliability could be consistent (King and Brooks, 2016). The authors then applied this coding scheme, and the results were compared to ensure inter-coder reliability by identifying any discrepancies between the coders so that they could be revisited and agreed. This constant comparative method involved continually identifying emergent themes against the interview data, and employing analytic induction whereby the researcher identifies the nature of a relationship and develops the narrative (Silverman, 2013;Ghauri, 2004;Ghauri & Firth, 2009;Gaur & Kumar, 2018).
The qualitative approach was particularly appropriate to enable managers to articulate how they perceive the institutional environment and their firm's reliance on non-market strategies to deal with institutional challenges. Quotations from the interviews are used to provide enhancement and to add voice to the study. Table 2 presents a summary of the responses to the key issues emerging and the frequency of those responses. In many cases, consensus was found regarding the key areas of exploration and these responses could therefore be considered to be representative of the views of the majority of the respondents.

INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE
Our second and third order themes were derived through an iterative and comparative method (Silverman, 2005). The final set of core categories emerged from our analysis of the interview data. Several themes were distilled, which we theorise in our discussion: formal and informal CPA; individual and institutional dynamics; outsourcing of blurred CPA activities; Aligning and blurring of CPA/CSR activities and coerced complementarity and isomorphic legitimation. We discuss each of these in turn in the following section. We now move on to present our findings.

Formal and informal CPA: individual and institutional dynamics
During the fieldwork, the majority of managers interviewed spoke about the consequences of Ukraine's difficulties in transforming from a command-based to a market-based economy (Williams et al., 2013). The managers highlighted that as well as engaging in 'formal' CPA activities such as lobbying ('We are a Russian firm and

use our Chambers here in Ukraine to lobby interests through meetings with the various
Ministries' -INT 10), the existing 'rules of the game' in Ukraine's institutional milieu forced firms to engage in explicitly corrupt activities to survive in the marketplace.
Several managers outlined how they were subject to corrupt, forced into adhering to not only formal rules of business engagement but also informal rules of the game.
'We are an American owned firm. We require constant checking of our systems from the state regulatory organs. In order to gain approval, we need to pay these state officials. We've found out that it works like that here'. (INT: 14).
Nevertheless, the weaknesses and or/lack of state capacity in Ukraine leading to institutional voids (Khanna & Palepu, 2010;Puffer et al., 2010) was commonly mentioned by managers: 'We are a large multinational business. We have a competent tax department, which rarely makes mistakes. Here the tax administration tries, often shamelessly, to make out that we're not paying our way correctly.' (INT: 24).
Individuals also spoke about the continuing legacies from Soviet times with state bureaucrats constantly seeking to enact their 'power'. Whilst state bureaucrats had overseen Ukraine's chaotic attempts at economic transformation (Williams et al., 2013) which whilst leading to insignificant meaningful economic reforms had facilitated a minority elite in Ukraine to enrich themselves greatly (Aslund, 2014), had left bureaucrats receiving pitifully low formal wages. In response, state actors had sought to 'privatise' their power, seeking to enrich themselves in often semi-legal or illegal means. Various non-market strategies formed an integral part of this process.

Outsourcing of 'blurred' CPA activities
Whilst respondents highlighted how managers were compelled to develop and enact different 'opaque reality of local tactics' (De Certeau, 1984: xxiii)

Seeking legitimacy
The findings suggest that majority of the firms engaged in aligning forms of CPA/CSR activities to varying degrees. The examples below illustrates how foreign-owned firms, upon developing their business operations in Ukraine had chosen to engage in philanthropic activities as a way to seek legitimacy (Elg, Ghauri, Child & Colinson, 2017) across a wide range of stakeholders in Ukraine.
'Our firm purchased a large installation and we soon realised our importance to the city in which we work. In the Soviet times, the installation had been part of a complex, which had provided social provisions for the city; nursery schools and health clinics. We've continued in these traditions and we think it's been well appreciated' -(INT 12).
As the above example highlights, there exists a legacy of vertical paternalism from the Soviet times, which firms have chosen to continue as a corporate strategy in Ukraine.
Moreover, managers also noted how often their CSR activities provided social goods, which were substituting for the state's lack of capacity to provide such services. As a manager of Polish owned fashion retailer states, 'When we started our business here we became aware that the local sports fields had become derelict. The city council is responsible for their upkeep but doesn't have any money. We've stepped in and we know make sure the local people have good facilities here' -(INT 7).
Other managers also outlined how their firms engaged in such 'voluntary' forms of CSR (Davis, 1973), providing services such as childcare and engaging in other forms of corporate philanthropy and social responsibility.

Coerced complementarity and isomorphic legitimation
Traditional approaches to CSR in Western contexts assume that whilst a firm engages in CSR activities, motivated by an instrumental of normative biasnonetheless this activity is voluntary (Crotty, 2014). However, several business managers outlined how their firms, since developing their business in Ukraine had increasingly been coerced into developing CSR activities. As a manager of a Turkishowned transportation firm asserts: 'We know the rules and how things work here. When we arrived, we invested time and money in getting to know the local state elites. It was clear that there was an expectation for us to deliver not only jobs for local people and pay our taxes but to do more. We were shown some social projects in the city, which needed funding. Since then, we have made strategic decisions to fund these. It works like that' -(INT 23) Several respondents echoed these sentiments, highlighting how in Ukraine's weak institutional environment, when the state actors were either unwilling or lacking the capacity to fulfill their social obligations to the citizenry, large firms, particularly foreign MNEs were 'asked' and 'expected' to provide assistance. The 'coerced' nature of such CSR activities echoes similar results in Crotty (2014)'s study in provincial Russia. Moreover, theoretically it highlights how in specific institutional contexts the firm may 'substitute' for the state (Matten & Crane, 2005). Whilst such substituting effects were evident ('we have been asked by the state to make sure that the health centre in our district remains fully stocked with medicines' -(INT 4), nevertheless, substituting effects did not take place solely here. In fact, several managers highlighted implicit linkages between a firm's CPA and CSR activities. As a manager of a large Russian-owned IT firm stated, 'It's like a see-saw. In reality, firm's have a choice but don't really have a choice. We can either engage in social projects, assisting the local government or we'll end up paying lots in terms of lobbying and consultancy fees. The only constant is that we'll end up paying' (INT -11).
Here, we witness how engaging in CSR activities not only means substituting for the firm in terms of its responsibilities to society at large, it also leads to substituting or 'offsetting' effects in terms of lobbying (CPA) costs. Whilst we witness the interplay of CPA and CSR activities, there also surfaced complementary effects between CPA and CSR policies. Managers highlighted how in some instances, the firm was expected to engage in both informal/illegal CPA activities and simultaneously invest resources into CSR policies.
'Where we've worked before, to be honest, you pay the right people and you are allowed to get on with your business. Here, things are different. We pay the right people and employ consultants to keep the state officials off our backs. However, they want more. They want us to invest in lots of social programmes too' (INT -5).
Other managers highlighted how CPA and CSR activities often "go hand in hand" -(INT 10) and demonstrate how, rather than the alignment of CPA and CSR activities leading to increased trust between business and the polity , rather this 'artificial trust' coerced complementarity between CPA and CSR was a product of the 'weak-strong' nature of institutions within Ukraine's institutional space.
Moreover, as well as engaging in both CPA and CSR activities in order to adhere to the rules of the game, predicated by the state, nevertheless, such activities aided both firm and state alike in increasing their legitimacy across society (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999) and was necessarily mutually reinforcing.
'We understand the rules of the political game now. We need to pay some informal taxes and also we need to fund some social programmes. We benefit from improving our reputation as a foreign business interested in local issues.
For the state officials, it's is a 'win-win' too. They manage to receive some monies and also show to the local population how they've attracted international business to the region' (INT 22).

Such sentiments represent a form of organizational isomorphism emerging in which
the 'rules of the game' in Ukraine are driving an alignment and homogeneity of firm behaviour (Keig et al. 2015) in order to improve mutual legitimacy. However, what is significant is that rather than Ukraine's corrupt institutional environment driving corporate social irresponsibility (Keig et al., 2015), as might be expected, instead the specific institutional milieu in fact drives socially responsible behaviour in cahoots with more informal/illegal corporate political activities.

Conclusions
This article responds to the core objectives of this Call for Articles to examine how Service MNEs engage in internationalisation activities and in particular underscores the mechanisms through which Service MNEs seek to develop legitimate market positions within emerging market economies (Elg et al., 2015;2017). The article addresses the overlapping of CPA and CSR across international contexts by exploring the tactics of foreign-owned Service MNEs operating in Ukraine. In doing so, the article contributes to extant literature relating to how firms use non-market strategies across different institutional contexts (e.g. Ghauri, Tasavori & Zaefarian, 2014;Lawton, McGuire, & Rajwani, 2013;Lawton, Rajwani, & Doh, 2013;Meznar & Nigh, 1995) and in particular, in the context of emerging economies (Doh et al., 2012;Elsahn & Benson-Rea, 2018). Furthermore, the article responds to calls to integrate the two dominant domains of non-market strategy of CPA and CSR (Baron, 2001;Frynas & Stephens, 2014;Frynas et al., 2017;Rodriguez et al., 2006). Contributing to the extant literature on the behaviour of MNEs within emerging economies (Akbar & Kisolowski, 2013;Elg et al., 2015;2017;Hillman & Wan, 2005;Puck, Rogers, & Mohr, 2013) and in particular how foreign firms utilise CPA within emerging economies (Puck et al, 2013;Elsahn & Benson-Rea, 2018), this article focuses on the mechanisms involved within non-market strategies (De Villa et al., 2018;Lawton et al., 2013). As such, whilst extant literature has focused strongly on the determinants of political strategies (Blumentritt & Nigh, 2002;Meznar & Nigh, 1995), there is a need for empirical analyses of not only the outcomes of political strategies (Li, Zhou, & Shao, 2008) but also the effectiveness of political strategies across different contexts (Demirbag et al., 2017Getz, 1997. Rather than focusing on how MNEs negotiate with a host government upon entering a foreign market (Hillman & Wan, 2005;Mondejar & Zhao, 2013;Zhang et al. 2016), our empirical findings extend extant knowledge in this area by highlighting how Service MNEs, use a variety of post-entry CPA and CSR tactics to navigate and offset institutional voids (Khanna & Palepu, 2010) in order to establish legitimacy in the market (Elg et al., 2017;Kostova & Zaheer, 1999), but also overcome the liability of foreignness (Zaheer, 1995).
The study contributes to extant understandings of strategic firm responses within IB research (Doh et al., 2012;Regnér & Edman, 2014) by showcasing the inherent interdependency between context and agency (MNE strategies and institutional actors) within international business settings and how they have the power to constitute each other in distinct ways (McGaughey et al., 2016). As such, the article makes an important theoretical contribution by highlighting the need to better understand the mechanisms in organizational research (Anderson et al., 2006). We argue that the corporate political activities of Service MNEs in the specific emerging market setting of Ukraine, are the product of entwined micro-level business-state relations (e.g., Felin et al., 2015).  (Lawton et al., 2013) but also in terms of the wider society and access to an attractive market (Brouthers et al., 2008).
Responding to calls to integrate approaches from different academic disciplines to extend our understanding of the nature of non-market strategies (cf. Frynas et al., 2017), the study makes the theoretical contribution of employing De Certeau's (De Certeau, 1984) framework of 'strategies' and 'tactics'. By doing so, the article demonstrates how in the specific institutional 'rules of the game' of Ukraine, service MNEs are forced to not only maintain strong market capabilities but also need to engage in proactive CPA and CSR activities.
Theoretically, our findings extend the scant attention to linkages between two dominant domains within non-market strategy literature (Frynas and Stephens, 2014;Frynas et al., 2017;Rodriguez et al., 2006) (Keig et al., 2015), within our empirical study, on the contrary, we find that MNEs, and the individuals within them, can engage simultaneously in pseudolegal, informal/corrupt activities (CPA activities) whilst also engaging in formal CSR activities. Thus, these findings offer a much fine grained micro level insights about the deployment of non-market strategies by MNEs in emerging markets (Felin et al., 2015).

Implications for Practice
The empirical findings outlined in this article also have implications for business practitioners and policy-makers. Firstly, it is important to recognise the specific challenges business managers within MNEs based in developed economies face when seeking to enter and crucially remain within often uncertain and politically risky when operating in emerging markets in order to develop competitive advantage and survive at the post-entry stage.