Six Big Reasons

Why Corporations Fail to Do the Right Thing

The Atlantic

Christine Bader, whose job at BP was to “assess and mitigate the social and human rights risks to communities living near major BP projects,” was not able to help prevent the Deepwater Horizon disaster or the 2005 BP refinery explosion in Texas City. This despite doing important work for a company that seemed committed to social responsibility. In her quest to figure out why good corporate intentions don’t prevent tragedies, Bader uncovered six themes that get in the way of making progress. Among them: People lie. No one gets rewarded for disasters averted. Customers won’t pay more. And no one really knows what corporate responsibility actually is. Bader points out that we all have a role to play in making things better: The general public must “recognize the real costs of safety and sustainability,” and companies have to “bear witness to their impacts, improve internal communication, reduce incentives to lie, and reward prevention.”