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6 - Responsible Lobbyists?

Corporate Social Responsibility Commitments and the Quality of Corporate Parliamentary Testimony in the UK

from Section III - Accountability: Linking Corporate Social Responsibility, Employee Relations, and Corporate Political Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2023

By
Alvise Favotto ,
Kelly Kollman  and
Fraser McMillan
Edited by
Thomas P. Lyon
Thomas P. Lyon
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

Transnational corporations have come under pressure to show that their lobbying behavior is consistent with their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies. Few empirical studies, however, have examined how companies coordinate their CSR and public policy activities or how aligned these activities are towards common goals. We address these questions by evaluating the testimony that large corporations have given to relevant UK parliamentary committees. Using an original coding frame, we assess the extent to which companies with strong CSR credentials align their testimony with the norms of the sustainability field as well as how supportive high CSR companies are of state interventions into the market. We find consistent differences in how high and low CSR companies lobby before these parliamentary committees. High CSR companies are more likely to discuss and support specific policy measures than their low CSR counterparts and to offer more fleshed out justifications for their policy positions.

Keywords

corporate social responsibilitycorporate sustainabilityresponsible lobbyingUK parliamentorganizational alignmentcontent analysislegislative committeestransparency
Type
Chapter
Information
Corporate Political Responsibility , pp. 157 - 187
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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