Lobbying and the responsible firm: Agenda‐setting for a freshly conceptualized field

• Author: Stephanos Anastasiadis,Jeremy Moon,Michael Humphreys
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12180
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Date: 01 July 2018

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Lobbying and the responsible firm: Agenda-setting for a freshly

conceptualized field

Stephanos Anastasiadis

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Jeremy Moon

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Michael Humphreys

3

1

School of Management, Royal Holloway

University of London, Egham, Surrey, United

Kingdom

2

Department of Management, Society and

Communication, Copenhagen Business

School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

3

Durham University Business School,

Durham, United Kingdom

Correspondence

Stephanos Anastasiadis, School of

Management, Royal Holloway, University of

London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, United

Kingdom.

Email: stephanos.anastasiadis@rhul.ac.uk

“Responsible lobbying”is an increasingly salient topic within businessand management. We make

a contributionto the literature on “responsible lobbying”inthree ways. First, we providenovel def-

initions and, thereby, make a clear distinction between lobbying and corporate political activity.

We then define responsible lobbying with respect to its content, process, organization, and envi-

ronment, resultingin a typology of responsible lobbying, a conceptual model that informs the rest

of the paper. Second, the paper provides a thematic overview of the current literature underpin-

ning lobbying and the responsible firm, and the underlying paradigms informing this literature.

Third, the paper makes specific suggestions for a future research agenda, endingwith a considera-

tion of methodological implicationsof such research.

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INTRODUCTION

Lobbying is often regarded as a “dirty business”of back-room deals

among powerful, corrupt “special interests”(Mills, 1956), raising ques-

tions as to whether lobbying should even be allowed (on the gover-

nance of corporate political activity, see Dahan, Hadani, & Schuler,

2013). Nevertheless, lobbying is firmly established in public life (see

Oberman, 2004, p. 246) and has been defended on grounds of legiti-

macy and improvedpublic policymaking (Dahl, 1982).Our paper exam-

ines the basis on whicha firm could lobby in a responsiblemanner.

This is important for at least four reasons. First, lobbying can be

irresponsiblein ways that are harmful to social well-being(e.g., blocking

regulatory attempts to reduce the negative externalities of business,

misleading decision-makers in an effort to lower company costs). Sec-

ond, firms can lose legitimacy if they are perceived to abuse the politi-

cal process for their own self-interest (Grimaldi, 1998), particularly if

they otherwisehave a responsible reputation(Finnemore, 2009). More-

over, persistent public skepticism of lobbying arguably undermines

trust in the political process more generally. Third,“the lack of system-

atic attention to lobbying is a noticeable gap in the [CSR] literature”

(Anastasiadis, 2014, p. 264), and the failure to address lobbying weak-

ens the CSR field (Bauer, 2014). Fourth, without a clear notion of

responsible lobbying, practitioners may focus on partial or inappropri-

ate solutions. Transparency is an example of a partial solution, which

we address in this paper (but see also the UK government’santi-

lobbying policyon public funding; Wright, 2016).For these reasons, we

consider the complex relationship between lobbying and the responsi-

ble firm to be an interestingarea of research.

The past decade has seen a steep increase in scholarship on the

topic of responsible business and politics generally, notably with a

move towards political CSR (Scherer & Palazzo, 2011; also Palazzo &

Scherer, 2006), within which there is also growing interest in lobbying

and the responsible firm (e.g., Bauer, 2016, 2017; den Hond, Rehbein,

de Bakker, & Kooijmans-van Langveld, 2014; previously, Moon, Crane,

& Matten, 2005). The increasein scholarly interest in lobbying and the

responsible firm, coupled with persistent public skepticism, suggest

that now is an opportune time for a conceptual reassessment that

addresses the extantliterature and the underlyingparadigms governing

conceptions of politics and lobbying. These paradigms are interesting,

because they inform existing, disparate conversations on responsible

lobbying. Moreover, despite the interest in lobbying and the responsi-

ble firm, much of the scholarship associated with this interest

addresses CSR and lobbying as two separate phenomena. That is, it is

concerned with the interactions between CSR and lobbying with

respect to such issues as trust (Liedong, Ghobadian, Rajwani, & O’Re-

gan, 2015) or debt financing (Liedong & Rajwani, 2017). The present

paper is concerned with responsible lobbying; that is, the actions of

organizations as they seek to influence the frameworks within which

firms engage in market-related activities. The paper thus makes a sub-

stantive contribution to this particularfield of investigation.

This paper contributes, first, by clarifying what is meant by lobby-

ing, proposing working definitions of both lobbying and responsible

BusinessEthics: A Eur Rev. 2018;27:207–221. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer V

C2018 JohnWiley & Sons Ltd

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Received:7 November 2016

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Revised: 5 October2017

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Accepted:3 December2017

DOI: 10.1111/beer.12180