Corporate political advocacy: Exploring a new phenomenon

In this paper, we analyze an emerging problem area in CSR and the ongoing debates on corporations as political actors which we call corporate political advocacy. Advocacy denotes the phenomenon of corporations taking a stance, politically, by showing explicit and public support for certain ideals or values with the aim of convincing others to embrace them as well. An example of advocacy is Ben and Jerry's active support of a law legalizing gay marriage in Vermont. Yet, such behavior raises normative challenges: what, if any, notion of moral responsibility can account for corporate political advocacy? Under what circumstances and from what perspective can it be considered legitimate or even desirable? We argue that while advocacy shares some overlaps with existing debates on the political role and responsibility of corporations (e.g. Political CSR and Corporate Political Activity), none of these debates succeeds in making conceptual and normative sense of the phenomenon.