Corporate lobbying is a controversial area of business activity. Although firms have a legitimate right to engage in lobbying, the public is sceptical of their motives and actions when they do so. There have been several recent reviews of the Corporate Social Responsibility field as a whole, but none specifically addressing lobbying. This paper fills the gap by critically examining the literature on responsible lobbying. It presents three broad perspectives: self-regulation, ethical frameworks, and transparency. The paper concludes that none of the existing perspectives is fully satisfactory. The paper therefore calls for two-track research on the topic of responsible lobbying, and suggests a model for how this might fruitfully be accomplished. An economic lens is proposed for the content of lobbying, whilst organizational and political perspectives are proposed for addressing the lobbying process. The paper ends with a consideration of methodological implications of the resulting research agenda.
