Advocacy intelligence and competition: assessing lobbyists' sharing of tactical knowledge in focus group interviews

Advocacy intelligence is a critical organizational resource fostering long-term survival and policy success. Policy-active interest groups such as non-profits, business associations and labor unions, seek to maintain their competitive advantage among peers and therefore have incentives to remain secretive about the details of their lobbying strategies and membership mobilization. We empirically evaluate this argument based on knowledge sharing interactions in 12 focus group interviews with approximately 50 representatives of interest groups in the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark. Our research design manipulates the composition of the focus groups to vary the level of competition for political influence and membership among the participants. Strikingly, we find no evidence that either type of competition hampers knowledge sharing. Instead, our novel data point to three fruitful alternative explanations: the importance of socialization, mentorship and personalities of interest group leaders.