Drilling their Own Graves: How the European Oil and Gas Supermajors Avoid Sustainability Tensions Through Mythmaking

Abstract

This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors' ''CEOspeak'' about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: (1) regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, (2) fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and (3) projecting, or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change.

Paradoxical tensions and corporate sustainability: A focus on circular economy business cases

“…With proactive strategies firms embrace the tensions and decide on changes triggered by this competing situation, whereas defensive reactions maintain firm legitimacy and produce only slight changes from the past management context. In addition, this double classification has been already adopted also by other scholars in the field of paradox theory (Buysse & Verbeke, 2003;Ferns, Amaeshi, & Lambert, 2017;Putnam, Fairhurst, & Banghart, 2016), so we decided to uniform our approach in the investigation of companies responses to contribute to that literature stream. In specific, we consider strategies that are positive in terms of sustainability (i.e., CE choices) as proactive, whereas the management responses to manage the negative aspect of corporate sustainability tension (i.e., the reduction of competitiveness) are considered defensive.…”

Fueling Climate (In)Action: How organizations engage in hegemonization to avoid transformational action on climate change

“…Our findings suggest that BP avoided engaging in effective climate action by, during each stage of hegemonization, incorporating critique (Nyberg et al, 2013). Along with neutralizing immediate threats posed by critiquing stakeholders, incorporating critique obfuscated obvious tensions between being a fossil fuel company and concurrently engaging in environmental protection (Ferns, Amaeshi, & Lambert, 2017 (Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss, & Figge, 2014;Van der Byl & Slawinski, 2015), visible contradictions, tensions, and conflicts stimulate organizational change as they "shape consciousness and action to change the present order" (Benson, 1977, p. 8).…”

Exploring Paradoxical Tensions in Circular Business Models—Cases from North Europe

“…Simultaneously address multiple desirable but conflicting economic, environmental and social outcomes in different temporal (e.g., short and long term) and spatial arenas (e.g., firm level and societal level) [13,14,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]…”