The false developmental promise of Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from multinational oil companies

International Affairs

Volumn 81, Issue 3, 2005, Pages

  Frynas, Jedrzej George ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 19544379486     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2005.00470.x     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. J. B. Wells, M. Perish and L. Guimaraes, 'Can oil and gas companies extend best operating practices to community development assistance programs?', paper presented at the SPE Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, Jakarta, Indonesia, 17-19 April 2001.
2. See e.g. Jedrzej George Frynas, Oil in Nigeria: conflict and litigation between oil companies and village communities (Hamburg, New Brunswick, NJ and London: LIT/Transaction, 2000);
3. Stuart Kirsch, 'Social impact of the Ok Tedi Mine on the Yonggom Villages of the North Fly, 1992', Research in Melanesia 19, 1995, pp. 23-102.
4. World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Corporate social responsibility: making good business sense (Geneva: WBCSD, 2000).
5. The article is based on an extensive twelve-month research project on the Gulf of Guinea region, which was generously funded by the Nuffield Foundation. In the course of the research 89 interviews were conducted with oil company staff, consultants, NGO staff, government officials and others in the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
6. Jedrzej George Frynas, 'Global monitor: Royal Dutch/Shell', New Political Economy 8: 2, 2003, pp. 275-85.
7. I. H. Rowlands, 'Beauty and the beast? BP's and Exxon's positions on global climate change', Environment and Planning C 18, 2000, pp. 339-54.
8. Scott Pegg, 'World leaders and bottom feeders: divergent strategies toward social responsibility and resource extraction', in Christopher May, ed., Global corporate power (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, forthcoming 2000).
9. Jedrzej George Frynas and Geoffrey Wood, 'Oil and war in Angola', Review of African Political Economy 28: 90, 2001, pp. 587-606.
10. See e.g. I. Jawahar and G. McLaughlin, 'Toward a descriptive stakeholder theory: an organizational life cycle approach', Academy of Management Review 16: 3, 2001, pp. 397-414.
11. See 'Nigeria and Shell: helping, but not developing', The Economist, 12 May 2001.
12. D. Ellerman, Helping people help themselves: toward a theory of autonomy-compatible help, Working Paper no. 2693 (Washington DC: World Bank, Oct. 2001).
13. E. F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful: economics as if people mattered (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 204-5.
14. For more information, see W. D. Knight, N. C. Alagoa and D. Von Kemedi, 'Akassa: a new approach to the problems of the Niger Delta', paper presented at the SPE International Conference on Health, Safety and the Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Stavanger, Norway, 26-28 June 2000.
15. See e.g. R. B. Clark, ed., The long-term effects of oil pollution on marine populations, communities and ecosystems (London: Royal Society, 1982);
16. J. Ketola, 'Why don't the oil companies clean up their act? The realities of environmental planning', Long Range Planning 31: 1, 1998, pp. 108-19.
17. Frynas, Oil in Nigeria, p. 165.
18. See e.g. Frynas, Oil in Nigeria, ch. 5;
19. Frynas, 'The oil boom in Equatorial Guinea', African Affairs 103: 413, 2004, pp. 527-46.
20. See e.g. J. D. Sachs and A. M. Warner, Natural resource abundance and economic growth, Development Discussion Paper no. 517 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Institute for International Development, Oct. 1995);
21. A. Gelb et al., Oil windfalls: blessing or curse? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
22. For a review, see M. L. Ross, 'The political economy of the resource curse', World Politics 51: 2, 1999, pp. 297-322.
23. The 'Publish What You Pay' campaign by Global Witness and other NGOs addresses the issue of revenues and taxation by urging oil companies to publish the amount of money they pay to corrupt governments. Support for such voluntary transparency came notably from the UK government through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). But one key dilemma of current transparency measures is that (in the words of one oil industry insider) they 'shifted the responsibility back to government'. Transparency initiatives do not address the crucial issues of how the management of oil revenues could be improved, how the influx of oil revenues may be contributing to bad governance in the first instance or the role of oil companies in governance.
24. See Jedrzej George Frynas, 'Political instability and business: focus on Shell in Nigeria', Third World Quarterly 19: 3, 1998, pp. 457-79.
25. See e.g, S. Younger, 'Aid and the Dutch Disease: macroeconomic management when everybody loves you', World Development 20: 11, 1992, pp. 1587-97.
26. See e.g. OECD, Improving the effectiveness of aid systems: the case of Mali (Paris; OECD, 2000).