Are oil companies “morality-free zones”? In a recent article here on Guardian Sustainable Business, Jonathon Porritt, founder of Forum for the Future, suggests they are. And in a move that mirrors SustainAbility’s decision to stop working with Monsanto in the 90s, his organisation has decided to no longer work with Shell and BP.
Interestingly Shell’s CEO, Ben van Beurden, gave a speech last week, responding to increasing pressure on energy companies to leave fossil fuels in the ground. Unsurprisingly, his take on the situation is different: “The issue is how to balance one moral obligation, energy access for all, against the other: fighting climate change.” Shell, he argues, is being driven by a moral imperative.
So which framing holds true?
I think there is a problem with Porritt’s line of argument. And it is a big problem. Conflating the fact that some people subscribe to a different moral framework – ie they don’t agree with you – with them living in a morality-free zone is a common but dangerous simplification.
The issue at stake is not that big corporations – or any organisation for that matter – are morality-free zones, it is that they create their own powerful moral belief systems that justify particular worldviews. Just like Forum for the Future, Greenpeace and WWF.
As long as there is no deeper appreciation of the opponent’s motives and reasons for acting in certain ways, the debate will inevitably lead to accusations of companies having no morals (as above) or campaigners being “naive”. Confrontation is inevitably a component of progress but as a strategy in its own right, it is incomplete.
The blame game
I had the joy of studying what companies’ moral belief systems look like, how they come into being and how they translate into practice for my doctoral research. I spent several months working (unpaid) for a major oil and gas company, embedded in the team tasked with identifying, monitoring and managing the social impacts of big extractive operations. There, I worked with some of the smartest and most informed people I have ever met.
This yielded some practical insights into the strategies employed by people to justify their behaviour in the face of criticism; consciously and unconsciously. The key strategy was one of “unethicising”. Organisations (and individuals within them) develop sophisticated repertoires to offload blame onto others.
Unfortunately, my research is embargoed for another few years, so here is a constructed example of what this may look like in practice: If you go to an oil company and tell an employee that what they do is morally indefensible, they will say that everyone, without exception, uses fossil fuels. This is difficult to argue against. The placement of moral indefensibility then becomes much more granular: how and where is the oil extracted? Under what circumstances? What is the company’s stance on renewables?
For each of these areas – and many more – “good” employees will be able to identify and give examples of worse performance. Switch to renewables? Get real. Spills? Need I mention Exxon Valdez. Our human rights record? Take a look at China National Petroleum Corporation. The curse of oil? Weak institutions, there is little we can do about those.
For every line of attack, guilt can be passed on. This creates endless chains of blame, potentially justifying just about any kind of behaviour. These defensive repertoires of legitimisation are always evolving and become part of the corporate vocabulary.
The strategies of unethicising are not restricted to companies with vocal opponents. All companies create their own narrative to justify their existence and behaviours. One can only imagine what went on in the run up to Co-op’s fall from grace and its transformation into an “ungovernable” organisation.
The innocence of campaigning organisations can also be questioned. My research revealed a certain disregard for many NGOs. Like companies, big NGOs have their own stakeholders to satisfy, motivated not so much by profits but by creating headlines for maximum pressure. Rarely do they target the worst performers, but rather the ones that are likely to cave in. Effective? Undoubtedly. Fair? Questionable. Fifty Shades of Grey might just work as a title for a documentary on the politics of campaigning, too.
So, returning to Porritt’s thesis that we will reach a stage where it becomes morally unacceptable for oil company employees to carry on with their work. That is never going to happen. It is not a bet worth taking.
What is the solution? Are we better off turning our back on the big oil companies to pave the way for a low-carbon future, as did Forum for the Future?
As Porritt suggests, any argument will need to be far more nuanced and complex than a short article like this can ever be. My view is this: as long as companies are on the right side of the law it is worth engaging with them, however uncomfortable that may turn out to be. Rejecting them and their employees as lacking morals will only lead to unproductive trench wars sustaining the mythical unethical enemy.
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