2007, Uwafiokun Idemudia / Lancaster University
This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of different community development partnership (CDP) and poverty reduction initiatives for the Niger Delta, Nigeria, in the corporate-community relations strategies of Shell, Exxon Mobil and Total.
The volatile nature of corporate-community relations has shifted the acquisition of a "social licence to operate" from the periphery to the heart of strategic business thinking within the Nigerian oil industry. TNCs are responding to this challenge with partnership strategies as a means of contributing to community development, building mutually beneficial relationships with local communities, and reinventing themselves as a force for good in their host communities.
A number of issues emerge from the discussion and call for the need to re-examine the tacit assumptions that underpin the idea of partnership and its relationship with development at the micro-level. These include: "bottom-up" corporate partnerships appear to be a much more efficient and effective means for oil TNCs to deliver on their affirmative duties than any alternative approach partnership that is not based on a reconciled corporate community worldview, and does not pay sufficient attention to the psychological
contract between communities and companies, will do little to ameliorate corporate-community conflict part of the problem with existing partnership initiatives is government failure, either in terms of failure to adequately address its partnership responsibility or to ensure an enabling environment for Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR).
