Calgary-based Griffiths Energy International Inc. (Griffiths) was created in August 2009 to obtain oil and gas production sharing contracts in the Republic of Chad. Within two years, the corporate leadership had changed, the corporate founder Griffiths was dead, and the company faced a major corruption scandal. In November 2011, when it was conducting due diligence […]
Teachers Talk LawNow – Corporate Social Responsibility
LawNow magazine is an incredible resource for teachers. Each issue offers engaging articles about law in language suitable for students. Teachers Talk LawNow is a series of lesson plans for teachers based on these articles. LawNow Articles Relating to Corporate Social Responsibility: What is Wrong with Corruption? – Peter Bowal and Christopher Bowal The Ethics […]
The Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility
What is Corporate Social Responsibility, and what is not? Companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) when they confer benefits on the communities located in or near where they work which are neither required by law nor an integral part of their primary, profit-oriented operations. Consider the mining company which offers to build a road […]
International Corporate Political Corruption: the Case of Niko Resources Ltd.
Founded in 1987 as a publicly-traded junior Canadian natural gas company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Niko Resources Ltd. (Niko) enjoyed a reputation as a gutsy natural gas explorer and producer by taking on projects in politically volatile and economically less-developed regions of the world. The company found early financial success, growing in market capitalization in […]
What is Wrong with Corruption?
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. … Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow . . . – Abraham Lincoln quoted in Jack London’s The Iron Heel The first sign of corruption in […]
Lessons Learned from the British Petroleum Disaster
During the summer of 2010 the world was absorbed in live footage of the Macondo oil prospect bleeding 4.9 million barrels of oil into the surrounding ocean. Many months of helplessness followed the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform; an oil rig owned by Transocean but ultimately under the control of British Petroleum (BP). The […]
