Tag Archives: Shell

Sustainability Reporting

Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility

Delfgaauw, T. (2000). Reporting on Sustainable Development: A Preparer’s View. Auditing, 19(1), 67.

Abstract from author
The article discusses the experiences of the petrochemical company Shell Group with sustainability reporting. One publicly stated objective of “The Shell Report” is that eventually it aims to evolve into the Shell annual report including the full financial report, as well as reports on the environmental and social performance of the Shell Group, hopefully in a fully integrated manner. Shell has had the core values of honesty, integrity, and respect for people at the heart of its approach to business for more than a hundred years. They are the bedrock on which its business principles are based. After the external crises that hit Shell in the mid-1990s, intensive stakeholder contacts and internal deliberations followed. At the end of that a decision was taken to incorporate two new commitments into the business principles: a commitment to contribute to sustainable development and a commitment to respect fundamental human rights. The article author would like to highlight two additional issues: the need for standards on sustainability reporting, and the question of which parties can verify sustainability reports. Regarding the first issue, the necessity is clear and several organizations are working to develop standards..

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Making sense of CSR in international business

Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility

Schouten, E. M. J., & Remm, J. (2006). Making sense of corporate social responsibility in international business: experiences from Shell. Business Ethics: A European Review, 15(4), 365-379.

Abstract from author
International business organizations are regularly addressed on their corporate social responsibility (CSR). As illustrated in this paper, it is not yet clear exactly what CSR means to organizations and how to deal with it. In this paper, the authors explore how a sense-making approach helps to understand the business challenges of CSR within an organizational context. The theories of Karl Weick are applied to the experiences of CSR in Royal Dutch Shell. The authors argue that the key to CSR in international business organizations is to engage stakeholders and start a process of joint sense-making. Three main competencies are crucial in this: the competency to engage stakeholders through listening and understanding; the creation of an organizational language so that CSR makes sense to members of the organization; and recognizing the momentum of taking action.

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Reputation Management at Royal Dutch Shell

Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility

Schultz, M., Hatch, M., Larsen, M., Fombrun, C., & Rindova, V. (2002). CHAPTER 6: The Road to Transparency: Reputation Management at Royal Dutch/Shell. Expressive Organization, 77-96.

Abstract from author
The article presents an extensive empirical analysis of the transformation of the company Royal Dutch/Shell into a more transparent and expressive organization by the use of a comprehensive reputation management process. The authors introduce a learning model for reputation management and describe the managerial and organizational processes needed to support reputation as strategy. The models of reputation management that Shell derived from its experience show that the management of organizational reputation is inextricably linked to the management of organizational identity. In order to influence how a firm wants to be perceived it has to change who it believes itself to be. Thus, the sustainability of a firm’s reputation as an asset is also better ensured.

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Transparent and caring corporations?

Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Marketing,

Livesey, Sharon M, & Kearins, Kate. (2002). Transparent and caring corporations? A study of sustainability reports by The Body Shop and Royal Dutch/Shell. Organization & Environment, 15(3), 233-258

Abstract from author
This article analyzes sustainability values reports published by The Body Shop International and by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The authors show how corporate discourses expressed in these precedent-setting texts both reflect and influence sociopolitical struggle over the meanings and practices of sustainable development. Specifically, the authors examine metaphors of transparency and care used to describe corporate rationales for increasing stakeholder communication, including reporting. Drawing on distinct discursive domains of business accountancy and personal ethics and sentiment, these metaphors promise to reconstruct the interface between the firm and society. Exploring the quite different assumptions on which each of these metaphors relies and their implications for corporate practices of sustainable development, the authors consider whether sustainability values reporting and the dialogue that it claims to facilitate can promote more democratic and socially and environmentally responsive corporate decision making, even as they impose new forms of managerial control.

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The authors also presented a conference paper about The Body Shop and Royal Dutch Shell entitiled (Be)Coming Clean: Sustainable Developement Accounting as Social Construction of Greening in 2001.

Abstract from authorThis paper addresses corporate public reporting efforts of two very different companies, The Body Shop International and Royal Dutch/Shell Group, both cited as pioneers in producing “values” or “social” reports. These are early examples of an emerging report genre so-called “triple bottom line” or “sustainable development” accounting that aspires to integrate social, environmental and financial performance indicators. Our post-structuralist analysis closely examines the texts of reports by each company to show how they restore the progress myth and its narrow economic paradigm in order to deconstruct the polarity between profits and principles. Thus, they construct new premises for sustainable (i.e., legitimate and competitive) business practice. The reporting examples we choose serve different corporate motives and goals for the two companies involved; nonetheless the reports themselves share common characteristics and strategies particularly, the interpolation of sentimental discourses of “caring” and “passion” with more rationalist discourses of business economics and accountancy. Thus, they attempt to articulate connections between distinct and previously incompatible discourses, between modernist sensibilities and those that challenge them. Broadly speaking, we argue that these new forms of corporate reporting constitute a micropractice of sustainable development, a currently emerging discursive domain. In this respect, the evolving genre plays a significant role in the constitution of knowledge about the environmental problematic and institutionalization of corporate behaviors that will count as environmentally and socially responsible and responsive. Accordingly, it bears investigation for its ontological and disciplinary force, including its capacity to potentiate more democratic decision-making and communication, as well as new forms of managerial control.

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Engaging stakeholders in corporate environmental governance

Sustainability: Issues, Reporting & Finance

Backer, L. (2007).  Engaging stakeholders in corporate environmental governance.  Business & Society Review, 112(1).  Accessed October 18, 2010, from EBSCOhost database.

Abstract: “The article examines how has Shell responded to institutional pressures relating to corporate environmental governance and what does such corporate response imply for the conceptual understanding of the politics of secondary stakeholder influence. Theories of organizational decision making will be discussed. An analysis on how Shell has changed its corporate environmental decision making in response to the growing institutional pressures relating to corporate environmental governance is presented.”