The Journey of a Corporate Idealist
Anyone familiar with the business and human rights community likely knows Christine Bader. Respected by business officials, government leaders, and NGO activists alike, she made a name for herself directing sustainability issues at BP, as an assistant to John Ruggie, while he drafted the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and more recently as a business and human rights educator and an advisor to BSR. Christine recently presented her new book, The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil, to a diverse crowd at Foley Hoag’s offices at an event co-sponsored by American University’s Human Rights in Business Program and the International Bar Association. If you have not had a chance to hear Christine speak in person, do so. She is a dynamic and engaging speaker, who not only conveys her fascinating personal journey as a “Corporate Idealist,” but also draws out themes and lessons learned from the paths of her fellow business and human rights advocates located in companies, NGOs, and governments around the world. Christine utilizes the analogy of a love affair to describe her relationship with “my” BP, characterized by a honeymoon period, followed by the requisite ups and downs, and ending with a realistic understanding of her partner’s strengths and shortcomings – the latter phase driven in particular by the change in leadership from her mentor John Browne to Tony Hayward and the subsequent Deep Water Horizon accident. Her love affair raises an interesting question about the nature of the corporation. Is it one consistent entity with a singular personality or can it morph and change over time? In other words is BP the same BP everywhere, all the time? On the one hand, Christine is clear on BP’s strong commitment and dedication of resources to managing risks associated with projects in Indonesia (Tangguh Liquefied Natural Gas project) and China (Shanghai Ethylene Cracker Company), on the other hand, investigations into the Deep Water Horizon accident revealed that the company’s safe working procedures were applied inconsistently from refinery to refinery and even within refineries, leading Christine to note, “Perhaps my BP wasn’t the only BP after all.” That even the best companies make mistakes and can be inconsistent in their commitments to high standards and applying lessons learned across their operations came to the fore in her conversations with other Corporate Idealists. Based on her own experience and conversations with other Corporate Idealists, Christine draws out some lessons for those seeking to promote rights-respecting corporate practices. She highlighted key ones during her talk. Perhaps frustratingly so for Corporate Idealists, good practices cost money to implement and no one gets rewarded for something that doesn’t happen. She conveyed the story of a fellow Corporate Idealist who got frustrated when watching a colleague receive an award for managing a crisis well, when her ongoing and successful efforts to avert such crises in the first place went unnoticed. That being said, Corporate Idealists often are heard and play the important role of bearing witness to the truths on the ground. In another vignette, she described how one Corporate Idealist captured the attention of the CEO with pictures of the poor working conditions in a plant, which he found particularly disturbing and made his personal mission to address. When making the case for socially responsible business practices in particular in the local operating environment, Christine noted the importance of listening to local partners and creating ownership. For example, while human rights talk may not immediately resonate in the Chinese context, the desire to be a world class project did. One reason local partners may not reach the level of standards expected of them is the fear of losing business. This can lead them to hide bad news, which makes the job of Corporate Idealists coming from headquarters challenging. But here again, the importance of building relationships and trust come to the fore. Bader’s mix of stories of successes, but also abysmal failures, as companies seek to adopt and adapt to the growing international normative consensus that they must respect human rights wherever they operate, leaves one wondering if we are making progress. In the end, Bader remains an optimist and believes that, while transformational change is needed, incremental change moves the ball forward to more sustainable business practices. As she puts it, perhaps in a bit of a macabre fashion, “saving one finger at a time” is important