Caucasus and Central Asia in the Globalization Process
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the program are capacity increase for all the
participants and the economic and social benefits
for the stakeholders.
The impact for BP
“I was an engineer at Shell and I lost my job after
Brent Spar… We (BP) need to be socially responsible”
3
The famous incidents of Shell involving Brent
Spar and Nigeria in 1990s are called for re-
examination of the stakeholder relationship for the
oil industry because the consequences are too
costly for the companies. Transformation of the
industry standards is still an on-going process, but
it is not easy to change the norms and habits of the
oil industry. Among the eleven oil companies in
the BTC consortium, there are only two other than
BP that actively participate in the program.
The internal social context that constrains and
guides BP’s management in making and imple-
menting strategic decisions about the RSDP is
bounded by the culture of the company which is
traditionally strongly technological and rationa-
listic. The sustainability of the RSDP can only be
maintained if the internal context of BP encourage
and award the initiatives.
The traditional voluntary contribution of the
oil companies to the communities did not allow
them to gain the institutional knowledge from
such activities and valuable information was lost
because the activities were outsourced. Evidence
proves that BP wants to keep such information in-
house this time. In addition, the experience gained
from BTC pipeline can be transferred to other
countries. Another benefit is that by having such
institutional knowledge, BP is becoming more
experienced in how to react to circumstances as
they arise including the criticism of the pressure
groups.
BP not only acquired knowledge and experience
regarding the social investment program during
the last two year, but they also realized the
necessity of spreading the knowledge and attitude
to construction and oil partners. For example, BP
was held responsible for the destruction of
archaeological findings by an Azeri worker from a
subcontracting company. The short term solution
is to deal with each individual problem as they
arise and the long term solution is to invest in the
capacity and the governance of the country to
avoid future problems.
“Each donor has a personality”
4
BP developed a unique personality and they
are not categorized as a traditional donor. They do
3
From the Field Note, Kars , Turkey
4
From the field note, IMC, Baku, Azerbaijan
not act as a humanitarian or grant-making organi-
zation valuing the process, but instead they
managed the program with a private sector
mentality. As an example, the development
partners have contract agreements with BP, but
partnership agreements with other donors. In
addition, BP requires highly detailed financial
reporting from its partners and they are too tightly
controlled on their financial side of the operations
compared with the other donors. BP also
encourages competition among the partners by
using shorter term contracts than the other donors.
Despite the disagreements over its strategies, BP
is described by every stakeholder encountered as
an open and trustworthy partner who keeps its
promises.
The CIP experience has an impact on the RDI
strategy. This time, BP is focusing on its core
capabilities and by doing so is clearly sending
signals that they have no intentions to subsidize
the government and RDI is not a policy-making
initiative but another investment. BP is also look-
ing for cooperative arrangements with govern-
ments and international organizations in order to
reduce the dependency of the program on BP.
The Impact for Stakeholders
In order to implement the CIPs, BP developed
relationships with many stakeholders and the
program affected all of them. The first stakeholder
group is the NGOs. The four international NGOs
developed strategic partnerships with BP and the
relationships are likely to grow further. On the
other hand, opposition to BP, continued by BTC
campaign participants such as Friends of Earths
(FOE). The relationship with national NGOs is
also complex. In Azerbaijan, the majority of the
NGOs in the monitoring group appreciate BP’s
effort and openness and some others are totally
against the BP strategies in the country. The
national NGOs who oppose have close relations
with the international groups who oppose BP and
they received capacity building and training by the
support of these international NGOs. In every
case, it is a win situation for the international
NGOs because even the anti BTC NGO’s
existence depends on BTC activities.
On the other hand, there is a conflict of
interest between the international and national
NGOs as a result of the BTC social investment
program. International NGOs criticize national
NGOs for not having professionalism, and not
understanding the big picture. On the other hand,
national NGOs argue that international NGOs lack
local knowledge and do not understand the
mentality. As a result of this competition, the
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