Given growing worry about dark money electoral spending and covert forms of business lobbying – neither of which generally require federal reporting – a shareholder-activist movement has emerged to pressure companies to increase their voluntary political disclosures. This chapter investigates how companies are pressured for greater disclosure and how they respond. I find that firms are likely to be targeted if they are larger and more prominent, and engage in higher levels of conventional lobbying and electoral spending. Additional qualitative evidence shows that targeting follows from a firm’s receptivity to engagement and also if their spending appears contradictory to corporate values. Lastly, I investigate the likelihood that shareholder activism is successful, finding that apparent concessions are more likely after repeated targeting and during years of S&P 500 index constituency. The chapter draws conclusions about the prospects for greater transparency of corporate political expenditures in a time of uncertain government oversight.

As scholars and activists seek to define and promote greater corporate political responsibility (CPR), they will benefit from understanding practitioner perspectives and how executives are responding to rising scrutiny of their political influences, reputational risk and pressure from employees, customers and investors to get involved in civic, political, and societal issues. This chapter draws on firsthand conversations with practitioners, including executives in government affairs; sustainability; senior leadership; and diversity, equity and inclusion, during the launch of a university-based CPR initiative. I summarize practitioner motivations, interests, barriers and challenges related to engaging in conversations about CPR, as well as committing or acting to improve CPR. Following the summary, I present implications for further research and several possible paths forward, including leveraging practitioners’ value on accountability, sustaining external calls for transparency, strengthening awareness of systems, and reframing CPR as part of a larger dialogue around society’s “social contract.”

Transnational corporations have come under pressure to show that their lobbying behavior is consistent with their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies. Few empirical studies, however, have examined how companies coordinate their CSR and public policy activities or how aligned these activities are towards common goals. We address these questions by evaluating the testimony that large corporations have given to relevant UK parliamentary committees. Using an original coding frame, we assess the extent to which companies with strong CSR credentials align their testimony with the norms of the sustainability field as well as how supportive high CSR companies are of state interventions into the market. We find consistent differences in how high and low CSR companies lobby before these parliamentary committees. High CSR companies are more likely to discuss and support specific policy measures than their low CSR counterparts and to offer more fleshed out justifications for their policy positions.

American politics has become sharply polarized. Partisan deadlock has prevented the addressing of critical public policy issues. A prime example is Congress’s inability to pass campaign finance legislation. Corporations spend unlimited amounts of company funds to promote management’s preferred candidates without disclosure. The distortive effects of large unaccountable corporate political expenditures are evident, and the opportunity for corrupting our politics is clear. In addition, large undisclosed corporate contributions pose a threat to a well-functioning marketplace and democracy. This chapter addresses the challenge of addressing corporate political spending through the informal, non-state suasion and advocacy of the nonprofit Center for Political Accountability. CPA is a case study in successful private ordering, prompting S&P 500 companies to disclose corporate political spending; develop policies that will ensure good compliance and governance; adopt codes of conduct to reflect and inspire pro-accountability behavior; and successfully compete with other firms for best disclosure and accountability practices.

This chapter introduces the concept of CPR and gives a high-level overview of the chapters to follow. It also defines key terms, presents some background statistics on political spending over time, and offers an initial discussion of the extent to which business has captured the political process.

This chapter examines the role of disclosure as a tool for promoting corporate political accountability by reviewing how shareholders reacted to various events in the United States and abroad that either changed the ability of firms to engage in the political process or revealed previously hidden corporate political activity. The conclusions drawn from this summary are mixed, with investors’ reactions contingent on myriad factors, including the form of the political activity engaged in, prior contestation over such activity by shareholders, and other firm-level nonmarket and market dynamics. The chapter concludes by discussing the limits of disclosure as a tool for regulating corporate political activity, as well as public policy more broadly, and advocates for broader, institutional reforms regarding the role of money in politics.

Between 2006 and 2009, firms spent an estimated billion dollars lobbying on climate-related bills and issues. Although such spending is largely perceived as a strategy by industry to oppose regulation, recent research finds a U-shaped relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and lobbying expenditures (Delmas et al., 2016). These results suggest that both dirty and clean firms are active in lobbying, which challenges the view of adversarial corporate strategy. However, limitations on legal requirements for detailed disclosure make it impossible to hold companies accountable for their lobbying activity on specific issues. This chapter explores the existing disclosures, demand for additional disclosures by various stakeholders, and regulatory changes in process and on the horizon. Our discussion develops recommendations for enhanced disclosure of climate-related political activity, considering issues related to content, timing, disclosure users, disclosure regulators, and the value and role of third-party information intermediaries.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) assume political responsibilities by contributing to national and global governance, influencing their legal and moral environments, and addressing sustainability issues. Scholars have developed various frameworks, most prominently corporate political activity (CPA), corporate citizenship (CC), political corporate social responsibility (PCSR), and corporate political responsibility (CPR), for theorizing the political role and responsibility of the corporation. This chapter analyzes the challenges of MNCs, advances their political responsibility, and explores the implications for theorizing about human resource management (HRM). We propose HRM should be extended to include a political agenda along two functions: as a “steward” taking care for the wellbeing of the firm’s work force and as an “enabler” making organizational members competent for helping others. On that basis, we offer a perspective on how political HRM can be conceived of in the CPR approach and contribute to its development.

This chapter explores the political role of business in influencing several important federal climate change policy initiatives over the last two decade. These include the Kyoto Protocol (1998), the Climate Stewardship Act (2003), the Climate Security Act (2007), the American Clean Energy and Security Act (2009), the Clean Power Plan (2015), and the Paris Climate Agreement (2015). It examines the increasing patterns of division within the business community and explains why a growing number of companies and investors have voiced support for federal policies to address the risks of global climate change. It also explores why, nonetheless, business opponent of federal regulation have been consistently so successful in preventing the enactment of comprehensive greenhouse reduction policies by the federal government. A key reason is that business opponents of regulation have more to lose than its proponents have to gain.

In this chapter, we examine the measurement issues that currently plague analysis of corporate political activity and that must be remedied for CPR to be credible, with a focus on the federal level. We begin with issues of electoral spending before turning to spending on lobbying. In each case, we survey the laws mandating disclosure of these activities, along with what some firms and third parties are doing to shed light on activities that fall outside these reporting requirements. We then discuss the questions that can be answered with existing data, and the important questions that are impossible to answer due to data gaps. Finally, we discuss changes to current laws, and to norms of corporate behavior, that could increase transparency and accountability around corporate political activity.