Methodology

Understanding corporate lobbying on human rights is key to pushing for a more just and sustainable economy

Social LobbyMap applies a structured, data-driven methodology to track how companies shape labour and human rights regulations. 

Our framework provides clear evidence of corporate influence, helping stakeholders evaluate lobbying behaviour and advocate for stronger protections.

Why This Work Matters

Why Monitoring Lobbying Is Critical To Accountability

Corporate lobbying is one of the most powerful tools companies use to shape the regulatory environment. While many businesses publicly commit to respecting human rights and sustainability, their lobbying activities often tell a different story. By analysing corporate lobbying on human rights, Social LobbyMap research and data helps uncover:

Who is pushing for stronger protections
Who is trying to weaken or delay regulations
Who is staying silent or taking mixed positions

How We Do It

Turning Policy Influence Into Actionable Data

We monitor:

Corporate engagement around legislative processes concerning labour and human rights policies
Lobbying activities that impact workers, communities, supply chains and social commitments
Trade associations that represent corporate interests in regulatory debates

Methodological Commitment

Our Commitment To Transparency

Open Methodology: our scoring and assessment criteria are publicly available to ensure transparency.

Continuous Improvement: we reviewed and refined our methodology in response to stakeholder feedback and evolving policy landscapes and we will repeat this process periodically.

Collaboration with Experts: we work with human rights experts, labor organisations, and ESG researchers to validate and strengthen our approach.

Scope of Our Analysis

Who We Track

Social LobbyMap’s initial research covers sectors identified through research and stakeholder consultation as being relevant drivers of corporate political influence. We further chose to cover the companies engaged through the PRI Advance Initiative. We identified focus sectors as:

Companies engaged through the PRI Advance Initiative who are in the renewable and mining sectors.
Entities in the Finance, Apparel, and Food and Beverage sector
Trade associations, both cross sectoral and in the sectors mentioned above.

However, in order to fully capture corporate positions and influence on specific policy debates, we may also add entities that are outside these sectors where their involvement is relevant to the policy debate being assessed.

How We Score Lobbying Behaviour

Evaluating Corporate Influence On A 5-Point Scale

We assign scores for an organisation’s approach to corporate lobbying on human rights on a 5-point scale:

The final scores received are calculated based on these assessments which are expressed as a percentage of 0% to 100%. These include:

Organisation Score: How supportive or obstructive an entity’s direct engagement is towards a social policy. A score of 0% indicates full opposition, and a score of 100% indicates full support.
Relationship Score: How supportive or obstructive a company’s trade associations are towards social policy. Not all companies are assigned a Relationship Score, as the research has not yet identified relevant trade association links for some companies. Trade associations are not assigned a Relationship Score.
Total Score: For companies a combined score from both the Organisation Score and the Relationship Score. Where there is no Organisation Score the Total Score is based on the Relationship Score alone. Where there is no Relationship Score this score is representative of their Organisation Score alone.
Engagement Intensity: A measure of how active an entity is in its direct engagement activities. A score below 3 indicates limited engagement and entities with a score below 3 are typically not considered for most supportive or most opposing rankings.

The Performance Band is a letter grading system for simplified classification which translates the total score into a letter grade which ranges from A+ (95-100%) to F (scores below 25%). Please refer to our methodology for more information.

Our Framework

Nine Key Themes

We assess corporate lobbying using nine key indicators aligned with international frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and ILO core labour standards. These indicators allow us to evaluate how companies and trade associations influence policies that affect people, workers, communities, and supply chains.

We assess businesses’ positions on policies that regulate how they: