Prosjekt/Project

Over the last decade BP has received much support and acclaim for its ‘proactive stance ’ on environmental issues, most notably for its position on global climate change and efforts to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. The role of BP is often highlighted in stark contrast to companies that have been accused of lobbying intensively against efforts to mitigate the risk of global warming. Alongside heated debates about global environmental issues and corporate responsibilities in that respect, the last decade has also witnessed the emergence of a potentially much wider and broadening social agenda, oftentimes framed by the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or corporate citizenship. The objective of this report is to explore how BP has faced up to the challenges posed by the emerging and broadening CSR agenda. The report starts off with a brief overview of BP’s history and involvement in countries with poor performance on social and poverty-related indicators. Second, the report provides empirical evidence of accusations raised against BP, followed by an assessment of BP’s external communications on CSR issues. In brief, the report argues that BP puts strong emphasis on communicating to the public what it perceives as the key CSR-issues and how BP aims to ac