The way a company engages with the political process is directly relevant to its "character," yet lobbying and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are often seen as separate. Taking a narrative approach, the author examines the automotive industry’s processes around lobbying, in the light of legislation to restrict emissions of CO₂ from cars in the European Union. The author uses the data generated through interviews to generate a narrative model of political engagement, and to start to apply Basu and Palazzo’s process model of CSR. This article shows competing narratives within the industry, which range from broadly cooperative toward regulatory activity, to broadly instrumental. The author argues that lobbying needs to be included in the scope of corporate citizenship theorizing and discusses changes to corporate character.

The state governance system seems to be incapable to address sufficiently global public goods problems or to regulate global business so that the public interest is served. At the same time, international governmental organizations are unable to fill the governance gap while nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) criticize the behavior of business firms along their supply chains. Therefore, business firms are confronted with increasing social and environmental demands and are requested to take responsibility for issues of public concern. As a response, some business firms engage with corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects and directly contribute to the production of public goods. These developments challenge the received theory of the firm and its strict separation of public and private domains. Corporations become political actors. In this introductory essay, the guest editors first elaborate on the concept of politics and describe the challenges that lead to the new political role of global business firms and, second, will introduce the articles in this special issue and briefly comment on their contribution.