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The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Nigeria’s Delta region and draw a distinction between philanthropic CSR (positive affirmative CSR) and the more demanding duty not to harm the ecosystem (negative injunction CSR). It suggests that for CSR to contribute to sustainable development, oil multinational corporations (MNCs) need to perform the more demanding duties and not only philanthropy.

The method applied is a critical evaluation of the nature and categories of CSR. It thoroughly reviews existing literature on CSR and uses them to identify and separate for analytical purposes, the different obligations arising from the concept.

The paper highlights the inability of oil MNCs in Nigeria to differentiate between philanthropic CSR and the more demanding duty to care for the host communities and their environment. It suggests that this failure, arguably attributable to the “shareholder value” model of corporate governance, appears to lie at the heart of the unrest in the region.

By performing only the positive CSR duties, while neglecting the negative injunction obligations, oil MNCs continue to attract hostility from the host communities who feel that their survival is at stake.

The paper extends the knowledge of the CSR practices of MNCs in Nigeria, by clearly delineating the two CSR duties and by linking the failure of MNCs to perform the negative injunctions to the shareholder value model of corporate governance.

This paper seeks to analyze instances of nonviolent strategies adopted by a class of stakeholders – the women of the Niger Delta region.

It analyzes their successes and failures in terms of a set of prerequisite conditions that must be met for such strategies to be effective. These prerequisite conditions must be present in the environment, the agent, and the methodology of nonviolent action, for assurance of efficacy.

The experience of the women of Niger Delta with nonviolent action indicates that it is possible to meet the prerequisite conditions for assurance of efficacy and for formulation of nonviolent strategies to conflict resolution. It is, therefore, determined that nonviolent action offers a viable alternative for persuasion of the multinational oil corporations in the Niger Delta region.

This paper would be of value to researchers and practitioners, in the fields of corporate communication, organizational communication, public relations, and strategic management, seeking to promote, practice or otherwise influence socially responsible corporate behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how and why international advocacy NGOs (iaNGOs) use counter accounting as part of their campaigns against oil companies operating in the Niger Delta to reform problematic regulatory systems and make visible corporate practices that exploit governance and accountability gaps in relation to human rights violations and environmental damage.

This arena study draws on different sources of evidence, including interviews with nine iaNGOs representatives involved in campaigns in the Niger Delta. The authors mapped out the history of the conflict in order to locate and make sense of the interviewees’ views on counter accounting, campaigning strategies, accountability and governance gaps as well as their motivations and aspirations for change.

The evidence revealed an inability of vulnerable communities to engage in relevant governance systems, due to unequal power relationships, corporate actions and ineffective governance practices. NGOs used counter accounts as part of their campaigns to change corporate practices, reform governance systems and address power imbalances. Counter accounts made visible problematic actions to those with power over those causing harm, gave voice to indigenous communities and pressured the Nigerian Government to reform their governance processes.

Understanding the intentions, desired outcomes and limitations of NGO’s use of counter accounting could influence human rights accountability and governance reforms in political institutions, public sector organisations, NGOs and corporations, especially in developing countries.

This paper seeks to contribute to accounting research that seeks to protect the wealth and natural endowments of indigenous communities to enhance their life experience.

By interviewing the preparers of counter accounts the authors uncover their reasons as to why they find accounting useful in their campaigns.

The paper examines how oil multinational companies (MNCs) in Nigeria framed accounts to dissociate themselves from causing oil spills.

The authors utilised data from relevant corporate reports, external accounts and interviews, and used sensegiving with defensive behaviours theoretical framing to explore corporate narratives aimed at altering stakeholders' perceptions.

The corporations gave sense to their audience by invoking scapegoating blame avoidance narrative in attributing the cause of most oil spills in Nigeria to outsiders (sabotage), despite potentially misclassifying the sabotage-corrosion dichotomy. Corporate stance was reinforced through justifying narrative, which suggested that multi-stakeholders jointly determined the causes of oil spills, thus portraying corporate accounts as transparent, credible and objective.

The socio-political dynamics in an empirical setting affect corporate accounts and how those accounts appear persuasive, implying that such contextual factors merit consideration when evaluating corporate accounts. For example, despite contradictions in corporate accounts, corporate attribution of oil spills to external factors appeared persuasive due to the inherently complicated socio-political dynamics.

With compensation to oil spills' victims only legally permitted for non-sabotage-induced spills alongside the burden of proof on the victims, the MNCs are incentivised to attribute most oil spills to sabotage. On policy implication, accountability would be best served when the MNCs are tasked both with the burden of proof and a responsibility to demonstrate their transparency in preventing oil spills, including those caused by sabotage.

Crisis situations generate multiple and competing perspectives, but sensegiving and defensive behaviours lenses enrich our understanding of how crisis-ridden companies frame narratives to alter stakeholders' perceptions. Accounts-giving therefore partly satisfies accountability demands, and acts as sensegiving signals aimed at reframing/redefining existing perceptions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Shell Nigeria’s Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) promotes corporate-community accountability as a basis for fostering sustainable community development in the Niger Delta.

Shell Nigeria’s GMoU stand-alone reports were analysed through the lenses of accountability and transparency theoretical frameworks to explore the extent to which GMoU, as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, is dialogically embedded and practised. Meaning-oriented content analysis was deductively used to isolate pertinent themes and generate findings from the background theoretical literature.

The authors find that Shell discursively appropriates the meaning of accountability and transparency in a manner that allows it to maintain its social legitimacy and the asymmetric power relations between itself and host communities whilst restricting communities’ agency to hold it accountable. Shell does this by interpreting the notion of participation restrictively, selectively deploying the concept of transparency and accountability and subtly exerting excessive control over the GMoU. Thus, the GMoU’s potential to contribute to sustainable community development and positive corporate-community relation is unlikely tenable.

Accountability and transparency are core and critical to corporate-community relations and for achieving community development CSR objectives, but are often taken for granted or ignored in the CSR literature on the Niger Delta of Nigeria. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by using accountability and transparency lenses to unpick GMoU model and contribute to studies on CSR practices by oil multinational corporations (MNCs) in developing countries. Indeed, the use of these lenses to explore CSR process offers new insights as to why CSR practices have failed to contribute to sustainable community development despite increased community spending by oil MNCs.

This paper explores the historical roots of environmental accountability in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria by focusing on the campaigns for social and environmental justice by writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and the indigenous Ogoni people.

The methods consist of an analysis of books, diaries, letters and poems written by Ken Saro-Wiwa as well as books, reports and audio recordings of panel discussions which capture the Ogoni struggle, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s activism and its impacts. The authors’ approach to the data is sensitised by Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct as it enables the authors to better grasp the creative agency of Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni as they struggle and campaign for political autonomy, environmental justice and accountability.

The authors’ findings illustrate how Ken Saro-Wiwa’s books, letters, poems, diaries and articles provide early accounts of environmental injustices and the absence of accountability in the Niger Delta. They highlight how Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni movement deploy counter-conduct to subvert existing power and accountability structures through innovative strategies, effective mobilisation and communication at local and international levels. The authors’ findings also highlight how these have led to specific forms of accountability for human rights and the environment at local and global levels. They also show how Saro-Wiwa’s activism and the Ogoni struggle have inspired a new generation of environmental activists and new ways of demanding accountability.

This paper presents, for the first time, an account of the historical roots of environmental accountability practices from an African and developing country context. Its focus on the historical roots of environmental accountability is also unique as it expands the view beyond the origins of environmental accounting to look more broadly at the origins of environmental accountability practices.

The Niger Delta is a region in Nigeria endowed with enormous natural resources of which petroleum oil is the most exploited. This petroleum oil has been the engine of development in Nigeria since 1958, providing more than 90 percent of total exports (CBN, 1981) and over 80 percent of Federal Government revenue. Despite this, the Niger Delta people remain poor and underdeveloped. Youth restiveness and violence is the order of the day. As a product of two separate youth forums, this paper recommends good governance, youth impact assessments, youth inclusion in decision‐making, as well as capacity building as a way out of this discord.

This paper aims to explore the question of the role of business in development from a contextual point of view. The context is Nigeria and its development challenges contrasted with the Nigerian oil industry, which dominates the Nigerian economy as the core resource. It examines the country's attempt to reconnect the oil industry business with development through the Nigerian Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).

This paper primarily examines the attempt to re‐orient the oil industry in Nigeria through the Nigerian PIB. It adopts a conceptual approach analyzing the current debates and delays surrounding the bill in line with themes of human development and corporate social responsibility (CSR). It therefore examines and questions the linkages between business, development, law and governance.

The main findings suggest that development is best viewed in context of the needs of the relevant country and therefore if corporations through CSR are to engage more meaningfully with the developmental agenda then it must move beyond “self‐interested” models of CSR and engage meaningfully and fairly with facilitative frameworks in the “local” contexts, including the use of law.

This paper is an exploratory discussion that examines the potential and limitations of linking business to development agendas in an ongoing context. This is because the Nigerian Petroleum Industry Bill, originally drafted in 2008, has not yet passed into law at the end of 2011. This is the result of delays and uncertainty, which is costing the industry and the country significantly at a time when the developmental needs are paramount.

This paper considers the Eurocentric conceptualisation of risk, which reinforces language, culture and business practices that are in conflict with Africa’s own traditional business methodologies. It attempts to identify the rent-seeking methods and resource-seeking strategies that sustain the hegemony of global corporations in Africa.

The paper explores non-linear historical narrative around the concept and construction of the idea and language of risk. It follows discourse analysis to identify how the Eurocentric concept of risk was exported and incorporated within the language of international business in non-Western business traditions. The fundamental research question driving this paper is: To what extent does the conceptualisation of risk perpetuate the African continent as risk-ridden?

The rent and resource-seeking strategies used by multinational corporations (MNCs) are central to “manufactured” risks, and this negatively creates impact for post-independent Africa. Whilst the state is inconsistent in its approach to dealing with this crisis, global corporations continue to do business, extract resources and expand their capital and market base in Africa.

The paper, therefore, proposes a further full empirical and theoretical enquiry to examine the nature of manufactured risk from an African perspective on the discursive psychological methodology to investigate how African leaders report on risk as the authors believe that risk theories in the Western-based theories are exaggerated and discursively shaped by their own ideals which do not necessarily apply to the contextual realities in Africa.

It is imperative for African governments to implement a nationalist-modernising strategy whereby initially the levels of export from local businesses could be proportioned to the levels of MNC resource-seeking activities. This approach would ensure the proliferation of local business groups that could gain access to local and international capital to maximise local production. In this sense, the government would not have to deal with manufactured risk and the challenges that emanate from the flight of capital.

There are political implications for the nation-states, as MNCs use the instabilities and weaknesses of governments on the continent to seek and exploit resources to maintain their competitive advantage at the global level. On the economic implications side, weaker governments cannot have a proper development programme for their countries, thereby perpetuating a cycle of uncertainty and unemployed younger graduates. Instability in economic realms leads to social unrest whereby governments are constantly and fully blamed for the inadequacies in social equality.

The philosophical basis of risk and its historical foundations in the African context are presented. Neo-colonial business methods, languages, cultures and strategies are explored and consideration is given as to how African governments could address the issue of co-option, as well as how to respond to the risks arising by MNCs’ business practices. The paper adds to the theoretical narratives by arguing that when considering entry into the marketplace, MNCs must ensure they integrate African perspectives (native categories) into their operational strategies. Moreover, management practitioners might consider addressing the essential topics of language, culture, business systems and business practices using ethnomethodological lenses.

The topic is examined with a view to ascertaining the various methods by which indigenous oil companies can participate in petroleum development contract in Nigeria. Also, the raison d’etre of the policy will be considered to see whether the government has achieved its primary aim and how successive government has approach the issue with a view to determining the best policy to adopt. The challenges facing this policy will be considered with a view to unfold whether the Petroleum Industry Bill proffers solution.

This methodology of research is doctrinaire and analytical. The author used the available statute and case law in extrapolation of the views expressed in this paper; where necessary, secondary data as sourced from existing literature was used.

This paper revealed that the existing laws in Nigeria do not support public participation in the petroleum sector. so much is in the hands of the government. The paper also found that this government's monopoly of the sector is one of the reasons for the slow level of development in the sector.

This paper is original to the extent that it focusses on a relatively new area of public participation in the upstream petroleum sector in Nigeria. Most papers have often focussed on the downstream sector; however, this study seeks to re-direct the debate to the upstream sector.