Communities and Shareholders: The impact of how ExxonMobil manage their interaction

Exxon-Mobil is the world’s largest privately owned multi-national oil and gas company (Skjaerseth 2003). For companies as large as ExxonMobil, which possess considerable capital resources and are able to exert considerable power and influence, society is increasingly demanding that they behave in a socially responsible manner (Diara, Alilo, and McGuire 2004). There is a growing expectation that companies will adopt a business approach that illustrates responsibility to society above and beyond the economic function and legal performance of the firm (Gibbs 2009). This expectation can be understood as an implicit social contract. One of the underlying …show more content…

commercial fishermen and recreational users) impacted by the disaster. In the legal aftermath of the spill ExxonMobil had little choice in making settlement with the state and federal governments. This included a civil settlement of US$900 million to restore the natural resources, criminal restitution of US$100 million, and a criminal plea agreement of US$25 million (Cleveland 2008). This settlement was necessary in order to continue business in the USA and therefore to continue to generate profit for shareholders. However, through successive appeals and oral arguments in various US courts, the corporation has managed to considerably delay individual and class action settlements with a number of community stakeholders. These include stakeholders across a wide range of community interests: commercial fishermen, Alaska Native corporations, land owners, area businesses, municipalities, tenderers, cannery workers, processors, recreational users among others (Hirsch 1996). Through their access to extensive legal resources, the corporation has been able to significantly diminish the monetary awards for actual and punitive damages to these parties (Egelko 2006), while recovering US$250 million for cleanup expenses and acquiring US$161.1 million in