Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Case Study: Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

By

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My thanks go out to all who have helped me complete this study and with whom this project may have not been possible. In particular, my gratitude goes out to friends, facilitator and family for extensive and helpful comments on early drafts. I am also deeply indebted to the authors who have shared my interest and preceded me. Their works provided me with a host of information to learn from and build upon, also served as examples to emulate.

DECLARATION

I, [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

Signed __________________ Date _________________

BSTRACT

In this study we try to explore the concept of Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility in a holistic context. The main focus of the research is on Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The researcher addressed the following question during this research Do companies implement CSR as a corporate desire or as a corporate strategy? Are all stakeholders of a company treated fairly and equally? Is priority treatment given to any company stakeholder? Do companies implement corporate responsibility in developing countries? Is there a difference between the behaviour and actions of Trans - national companies in developed countries and their actions is developing countries? Does practicing of social responsibility have any effect on the financial performance of a company? And does corporate social responsibility affect employees' performance and consumers' commitment?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

ABSTRACTIV

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Introduction1

Background of the Problem1

Statement of the Problem2

Research Questions and Objectives3

Purpose4

Significance of the Study4

Scope and limitations4

Limitations5

Summary5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW7

Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility9

Socially Responsible Investing15

Diversity17

Environmental Regulation and Ethics20

Importance of CSR20

Shell fails to implement CSR23

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY25

Methodology25

Research design29

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION32

Company profile32

SWOT analysis32

Strengths32

Weaknesses33

Opportunities34

Threats34

Research question 1:35

Research question 2:37

Research question 3:38

Research question 4:39

Research question 5:42

Research question 6:43

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION45

Recommendations49

REFERENCES51

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, ...