Lobbying and the responsible firm: from critical review towards an integrative perspective
Dr Stephanos Anastasiadis, Lecturer in Sustainability, RHUL
Please note early start time (12 noon), lunch is available from 1.30pm
Abstract
Our paper provides a review of the Corporate Social Responsibility literature, paying particular attention to one much-contested aspect of corporate political activity, namely lobbying. There have been several excellent recent reviews of the CSR field as a whole, but comparatively little work on the narrower topic of lobbying. This paper seeks to address the deficit: we critically examine the literature on responsible lobbying – we believe for the first time – and present three broad perspectives that emerge: self-regulation; ethical frameworks, and transparency.
We conclude that none of these is fully satisfactory, and that a more comprehensive approach is needed. We then present initial ideas on what ‘responsible lobbying’ might mean. We argue that the relative paucity of research in this particular area weakens the CSR field, and therefore call for research on the specific topic of responsible lobbying to facilitate solid CSR theory building around the issue of corporate lobbying. We end with a discussion of a concomitant research agenda to enable further research into the mechanisms of lobbying.