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Royal Dutch Shell: Company Strategies for Dealing with Environmental Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Keetie Sluyterman
Keetie Sluyterman
Affiliation:
Professor of business history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands
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Abstract

The intricate interplay among environmental pressure groups, oil companies, and governments is revealed from the perspective of the Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell. An examination of three environmental issues demonstrates the company's awareness of such problems and describes its efforts to contain potential damage to the degree permitted by existing technological and economic constraints. The industry view is that government measures should create a level playing field and should be effective and economically feasible. While pressure groups are skilled at calling attention to environmental problems, industry highlights the tradeoffs between different societal aims that are entailed in tackling these problems. Governments are left to fi nd the best ways to weigh conflicting interests.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 84 , Issue 2: A Special Issue on the Oil Industry , Summer 2010 , pp. 203 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2010

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