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Governance from below: contesting corporate environmentalism in Durban, South Africa
Author(s) -
Van Alstine James
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
business strategy and the environment
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.123
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1099-0836
pISSN - 0964-4733
DOI - 10.1002/bse.639
Subject(s) - multinational corporation , environmental governance , corporate governance , institutionalisation , environmentalism , oil refinery , institutional theory , business , political science , environmental resource management , sociology , economics , politics , social science , finance , law , chemistry , organic chemistry
Abstract Multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in developing countries face increasing social and environmental risk. Previous work on how MNCs seek to mitigate these risks has often failed to recognize the complexity and interaction between international, home and host country governance mechanisms. Here, however, changes in corporate environmental behaviour at the site level are evaluated in terms of the dynamics of local and cross‐scale institutionalization processes. The subject of the paper is the contestation of industrial pollution at Shell's Sapref oil refinery in Durban, South Africa. Using a novel research design, institutional and organizational theory is combined with social network analysis to explore how and why Sapref's environmental performance has changed over time. The analysis highlights mechanisms of institutional change and how MNC environmental performance can be contested and constructed from the bottom up, thus calling into question the effectiveness of the global environmental governance processes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.