Corporate So-called Responsibility
by Matthew
Last week we reported on Anglo-French oil company Perenco’s plans to invade the lands of uncontacted tribes in Peru.
Spotted on their website:
“Social outreach is an integral part of Perenco’s approach to conducting business. Wherever we operate, every effort is made to improve quality of life while preserving traditional culture and values…”
Perenco’s methods of ‘preserving traditional culture and values’ have so far included briefing its workers on how to behave when encountering uncontacted tribes. Exploration teams were told to shout, through megaphones, ‘We haven’t come here to look for women, we have our own women in our own village’.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of corporate social responsibliity, where words are all it takes to fulfil voluntary codes of practice.
January 24th, 2009 at 3:44 am
Yes, CSR is nonsense. Corporations think they can say whatever they think their shareholders will believe. And it’s true. Because no one is out there checking to see if what they write is what is actually happening.
That’s pretty well across the board.