Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Case Study: Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

By

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Introduction1

Background of the Problem1

Major Products and Services2

Statement of the Problem3

Research Questions3

Purpose4

Significance of the Study4

Scope and Delimitations5

Limitations5

Summary6

REFERENCES8

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Investors have started to look for better and safer options to invest or pool their money because of the accounting frauds by the famous companies like Enron and WorldCom. These companies violated the equity market policies by misrepresenting their financial statement. Due to their act, they lost the investors trust and the interest in these companies after the frauds. Lot of profits was made by the trusted brokers and they did so by using the confidential information of the company. The companies violated their social responsibility and did unethical things by misrepresenting the financial. All the blame was put on the economic theory of profit maximization. Incidents like this have created awareness in public about issues like business ethics or corporate social responsibility of the business (Aswathappa 2001 43).

Background of the Problem

The energy industry is a vast and highly diversified global industry with aggregated revenues of more than $2.5 trillion a year. There are many classifications or subsectors of the industry based on different criteria such as type of energy source (nuclear, coal, oil, gas, etc.); service or manufacturing; upstream or downstream; and so forth. This study focused on Royal Dutch Shell Plc within the oil and gas extraction sector of the energy industry. This company provides employment to more than 97000 people, and its annual aggregated revenues are more than $ 368,056.0 billion in the United States alone.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc has lots of investment both the direct and indirect. The company has invested in many companies directly and indirectly. Apart from oil and petroleum, shell is also involved in the renewable energy, chemicals and power generation. Royal dutch shell plc operates in more than ninety countries all over the world and the business of the shell is divided into two main segments called upstream and downstream. With the help of joint ventures, crude oil is recovered and explored in the upstream segment. The natural gas is also liquefied by cooling in the upstream segment and this is then provided to the customers. Cleaner burner fuels are also provided by shell by liquefying natural gas. Natural gas in its true form is also traded by shell. Bitumen is extracted by shell from the mined oil sand and this is further transformed in to crude oil. Furthermore, the upward segment of the royal dutch shell plc generated electricity by developing wind power. The international American business is the part of Royal Dutch upstream segment ((Baxi Prasad 2005 45). This segment operates outside America.

Major Products and Services

 There are many products and services in which the Royal Dutch Shell Plc deals. These products include oil, gas production and exploration, natural gas and electricity marketing, oil products and chemical shipping and marketing. The following are the key products and services of Royal Dutch Shell ...