Sara Persson defends her thesis “Corporate Hegemony through Sustainability. A Study of Sustainability Standards and CSR Practices as Tools to Demobilise Community Resistance in the Albanian Oil Industry”.

Sara Persson

Doctoral thesis: Corporate Hegemony through Sustainability. A Study of Sustainability Standards and CSR Practices as Tools to Demobilise Community Resistance in the Albanian Oil Industry External link, opens in new window.

Subject: Business Studies
Research area: Politics, Economy and the Organisation of Society
Graduate School: The Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS)
External reviewer: Alison Pullen, Professor of Management and Organization Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Language: English

Abstract:

Many critical business scholars have disregarded sustainability standards and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities as mere window dressing, operating as a smokescreen to hide illegitimate corporate practices. Others have pointed to these activities as hegemonic articulations, as a way to strengthen corporate alliances with and dominance over other actors in society. In this PhD project I investigate how corporate hegemony and the implementation of sustainability standards and CSR practices are linked at the local level, focusing on the Canadian oil company Bankers Petroleum Ltd. (Bankers) and their operations in Patos-Marinza, an area in south-central Albania with residences in close proximity to oil extraction activities.

Between 2010 and 2015, I was involved as a consultant and staff member working in Bankers’ Community Relations Department at Patos-Marinza. In this dissertation I take an autoethnographic approach, meaning that I write about and analyse my own role in the subject I am studying. Through the lenses of the Gramscian concept of hegemony and Political Discourse Theory, I examine two competing discourses in Patos-Marinza. The discourse describing company operations as an ‘investment’ was Bankers’ hegemonic narrative, giving meaning to company activities and incorporating various groups in Albanian society into a corporate alliance. The ‘investment’ was a narrative aiming at closure, of incorporating ‘all’ as beneficiaries of the oil industry and thus trying to reduce grievances and requests from society by satisfying them. However, the remaining demands from the communities of Patos-Marinza endangered this all-encompassing vision; the constant appearance of grievances interrupted the corporate narrative, threatening to create an antagonistic frontier between the company and local residents. During this period, a counter-hegemonic discourse describing company activities as an ‘invasion’ began to emerge: grievances were filed, protest groups formed, oil deposits vandalised, and roads blocked.

To deepen my analysis of this antagonistic dynamic I study three specific grievances raised by the communities of Patos-Marinza and Bankers’ response to these complaints. These three grievance areas highlight how Bankers’ implementation of international sustainability standards supported the extension of a corporate alliance, breaking potential chains of equivalence between various community demands and controlling truth claims through dialogues, technology and experts. My conclusion is that rather than disregarding compliance to sustainability standards and CSR activities as window dressing, it is important to examine what these do in specific empirical contexts and how grievances, which could otherwise be mobilised to demand improved corporate practices, are isolated and silenced in the name of sustainability and corporate responsibility.