Politicized <scp>CSR</scp>: How corporate political activity (mis‐)uses political <scp>CSR</scp>

Lock, Irina; Seele, Peter

doi:10.1002/pa.1667

Cited by 33 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…More prominently, MNCs now have a bigger role as major actors in global governance [42][43][44]. This particular governance role of capitalist firms in democracies must be questioned [2,45,46].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional Voids and the Philanthropization of CSR Practices: Insights from Developing Economies

Ahen

Amankwah‐Amoah

2018

Sustainability

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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and conceptions vary across sectors and nations. However, there is a general tendency among academics and practitioners to present CSR in Africa as activities characterized by philanthropy due to the existence of institutional voids. This review of the current literature demonstrates that weak institutions lead to weaker bargaining powers designed through the historical and geopolitical institutional frameworks of international business and global governance systems. Accordingly, multinational corporations (MNCs) take advantage of such weaknesses to define CSR on their own terms by replacing the ideal responsible and sustainable innovations with ad hoc philanthropy that diverts the attention from the negative consequences of neoliberal 'structures of accumulation'. This is akin to aid that hardly contributes to structural changes, but rather leads to complacency, corruption, dependency, boutique projects, disguised exploitation, and the misuse of corporate political power to achieve corporate bottom lines. The implications of the results are vast, and they are generalizable to all weaker institutional settings. Thus, weaker institutions create the necessary regulatory, political, economic, and governance climate that perpetuates a pattern of abuses and ethical violations that are then masked with philanthropy. It is argued that the fundamental institutional and geopolitical contexts within which MNCs interact with nation states cannot be ignored in any comprehensive analysis that seeks to meaningfully shed light on the comparative differences of CSR practices. The neglect of the web of contextual, historical, and geopolitical issues in which CSR is entrenched and framed diverts attention from the origins of the socio-economic and environmental questions to philanthropy as a final solution, which has hitherto been perpetuated with undesirable outcomes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional Voids and the Philanthropization of CSR Practices: Insights from Developing Economies

Ahen

Amankwah‐Amoah

2018

Sustainability

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“…Controlled by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, corporate lobbying is described as any information regarding the modification, formulation, and adoption of legislation that is communicated by clients to members of the Congress, the President, congressional staffers, White House staff, and high‐level employees of about 200 agencies (The Centre for Public Integrity). Corporate lobbying is helpful as it provides the central government with important information from the different individuals and interest groups who are affected by existing and upcoming legislative activities (den Hond, Rehbein, de Bakker, & Lankveld, 2014; Lock & Seele, 2017). This information helps governmental agencies make better and more informed decisions.…”

Section: Literature Review and Hypothesis Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Giving too much and paying too little? The effect of corporate social responsibility on corporate lobbying efficacy: Evidence of tax aggressiveness

Lin

2020

Corp Soc Responsibility Env

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Though lobbying accounts for a significant proportion of corporate political expenditure, comprehensive research on its advantages is scarce. Further, research findings have been inconclusive in quantifying political lobbying expenditures' rate of return. Using data from Fortune's America's Most Admired Companies (AMAC) with publicly available financial statements for the period from 2008 to 2017, this study delved into the tax benefits of lobbying using the dynamic panel system GMM and quantile regression model. This study found strong evidence that corporate lobbying is associated with higher levels of tax aggressiveness. The results also show that firms that spend more on lobbying in a given year pay lower effective tax rates. Additionally, this study revealed that the reputational effects of corporate social responsibility lead to the increased effectiveness of corporate lobbying expenditures. Thus, political lobbying affects tax enforcement, resulting in lower tax burdens for politically active firms. These results are consistent with the conjecture that firms with high levels of social responsibility and political lobbying are more tax aggressive. This study has addressed the need to quantify the benefits of lobbying and corporate social responsibility activities, especially in terms of lower tax payments and better financial returns to shareholders while still meeting the needs of non‐owner stakeholders.

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“…It has also been argued that strategic considerations vis-à-vis policyrelevant stakeholdersand government actors in particularinfluence corporate decision-making with regard to environmental aspects (Coglianese and Nash, 2016;Delmas and Toffel, 2008). Besides trying to lobby political decision-makers (Lyon et al, 2018), corporate actors may choose to engage with important stakeholders in several other ways in order to benefit from policy-making processes and their outputs (Hong and Liskovich, 2016;Lock and Seele, 2018;Werner, 2015).…”

Section: The State-private Sector Relationship and Public Opinionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Greening the Economy Through Voluntary Private Sector Initiatives or Government Regulation? A Public Opinion Perspective

Kolcava¹,

Bernauer²

2020

Preprint

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Societal efforts towards greening the economy are typically accompanied by controversy over whether voluntary initiatives by firms or government regulation are more effective to that end. Recent research shows that public opinion plays an important role in this regard because citizens’ preferences are crucial when democratic policy-makers decide. We investigate whether and how citizens’ general attitudes regarding the relationship between the private sector and government can help explain their policy preferences. We argue that whether citizens perceive the firms-state relationship as synergistic or antagonistic has an effect on their support for private sector self-regulation or government regulation respectively. We assess this argument based on information from a representative survey (N=1677) in Switzerland that covers four green economy issues: environmental impacts of consumption of peat, plastic packaging, climate- (un)friendly pension fund investments, and consumption of clothing. We find that citizens who regard the firms-state relationship in environmental policy-making as synergistic favor private sector self-regulation (with government rules potentially serving as a floor standard). In contrast, citizens who regard the firms-state relationship as antagonistic prefer either self-regulation or government intervention. We also observe that views on whether firms engage in self-regulation to gain a competitive economic advantage shape the perception of a synergistic firms-state relationship. Our findings are relevant to current green economy debates as policy-makers in Europe and elsewhere are trying to move beyond the ‘either firms or the state’ paradigm in regulatory environmental politics.

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Politicized CSR: How corporate political activity (mis‐)uses political CSR

Cited by 33 publications

References 61 publications

Institutional Voids and the Philanthropization of CSR Practices: Insights from Developing Economies

Institutional Voids and the Philanthropization of CSR Practices: Insights from Developing Economies

Giving too much and paying too little? The effect of corporate social responsibility on corporate lobbying efficacy: Evidence of tax aggressiveness

Greening the Economy Through Voluntary Private Sector Initiatives or Government Regulation? A Public Opinion Perspective

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