Grooming for Politics: How Corporations Combine Lobbying with Social Responsibility

Corporations are increasingly engaging in activities related to corporate citizenship and social responsibility (CSR) as well as in corporate political action (CPA), such as lobbying or donating money to politicians. While these two modes of non‐market activity are both aimed at managing a corporation’s spheres of influence, little is known about how they relate to each other: How do corporations combine more overtly instrumental political activity with strategies to meet societal expectations of corporate social and environmental responsibility? We argue, firstly, that these two modes of behaviour can be explained by the same behavioural logic: Both, CSR and CPA are means by which corporations seek to enhance their long-term profitability. Secondly, we propose that CSR activities are employed instrumentally in support of a corporation’s political strategies. To evaluate our argument, we analyse a new dataset of over 2,000 corporations from around the world that contains information on their political and social activities. Our findings show that CPA and CSR can be predicted by the same empirical model. Moreover, the two types of non‐market activity go hand in hand: Engaging in CPA significantly increases the likelihood of a corporation to employ CSR related strategies, which supports the expectation that corporations engage in CSR to enhance the effectiveness of their CPA.