…if Shell had been treating an oil field in the U.S. or Europe in the way that it has its assets in the Niger Delta, where 2,000 major spillage sites have never been cleaned up, then the political and media fallout would be similar to what BP is now struggling with in the United States.
By Paddy Briggs
The calamity of BPs Deepwater Horizon disaster continues to put corporate reputation as a subject very much in the spotlight and, hardly surprisingly, many commentators contrast BPs past attempts to claim the moral highground on environmental matters with the stark reality of what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. The idea that corporations should be socially responsible whilst fashionable is not new – and it remains an extremely controversial concept. Let me try and delve into what Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) really means – and explain that all too often CSR has been just a tool of a companys reputation management/Public Relations activities rather than something that sets strict behavioural norms. In all too many cases CSR reports are selective, partial and glossy window-dressing – leading to charges of Greenwash – rather than true reflections of a corporations actual non-financial (Health, Safety, Environment etc.) performance.
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