Lobbying and CSR: From Voluntary Codes to Actively Pushing for Stricter Regulation

Participation in global CSR initiatives is on the rise. This feeds into the long-standing debate on whether private, voluntary initiatives hinder or foster more stringent, formal regulation. Ethical CSR scholars argue that the rise in these initiatives demonstrates a shift in norms of what acceptable global business behaviour entails. These “CSR firms” are, then, expected to foster more stringent regulation. The aim of this article is to shed light on this puzzle by linking CSR initiatives to the most traditional venue for corporations to influence regulation, namely lobbying. In other words, how do firms that engage in global CSR initiatives differ in their policy positioning and lobby success compared to other firms and industry associations? I build on a unique dataset by Dür et al (2015) that provides the golden standard measurement for lobbying success for 1043 actors on 70 policy proposals put forward by the EU Commission between 2008 and 2010. Multivariate regression analyses show that CSR firms do prefer higher levels of regulatory stringency compared to other business interest groups, however, difference in lobby success were insignificant. Nonetheless, for environmental and social policy issues, CSR firms are significantly more successful, showing the disparity between policy domains. In conclusion, this article provides some support for differences in lobby behaviour between business interest groups and, hence, shows how global CSR initiatives influence policy preferences of firms.