After fifty years of intrigue, greed, and environmental obliviousness, can oil, gas and mining companies in developing world situations ever get it right? A new book by Luc Zandvliet and Mary B. Anderson of Boston-based CDA Collaborative Learning Projects suggests it is possible, if the corporate will is there.
Getting It Right: Making Corporate-Community Relations Work is a compilation of lessons learned, based a decade of Zandvliet’s experience and involvement with a wide range of extraction companies and their (sometimes unwilling) host communities.
The book discusses, often in great detail, the pitfalls and risks corporate management can face: misunderstandings compounded by a perceived (often unintentional) lack of respect on the part of the corporate decision makers, the importance of constant and deep two-way communications, the danger of corruption, accidental aggravation of ethnic or security problems, lack of community access to information and transparency, and the internal difficulties corporate divisions face convincing the top brass that such relationships should be more than “just business”. The book also points out the problems of such short–term gifts as unsupported social services like schools.
Getting It Right recommends detailed analysis of the situation by a corporation as far in advance of the project as possible. And it makes a persuasive case for letting the people of the area have input into how problems and issues can be solved. The key to success, Zandvliet and Anderson suggest, is to listen to local people deeply and with an open mind.
It’s great advice and should be required reading for many companies working in the developing world, particularly in areas already prone to tensions or unrealistic expectations. Most groups, when hearing something valuable has been discovered in their area, will hope and try to make it work positively for them — jobs, money, anything. But this rarely happens, leading to disappointment. Several of the successful cases studies tell of corporations going the extra mile to teach locals how to make goods up to company standards, or clearly explaining the requirements of jobs, goods or services the company will need.
But by now, you will have noticed one glaring hole in this book: where is the government in all this? Sure, many of these countries are poor, but they are making money enough from the resource that they — not the corporations — should be building and supplying the school or clinic or bridge or whatever. Zandvliet has said that in many of these places the government is absent, so, because the government cares more about the company than the locals, attacking the company is one of the best ways the people have to get the government’s attention.
There is a limit to what companies can and should be expected to deliver for the local people. It cannot be a proxy for an absent government. As with a stool, it just doesn’t work if one of the legs is missing. Perhaps it will take a larger, more public sector entity, like the UN or the World Bank, to push these governments to step into their role in these often poor areas. Still, an oil, gas, or mining company can do a lot to mitigate the impact of their work. And they should read this book to find out where to start.
