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Introduction
With a historically tarnished reputation of oil spills and land disturbance, the petroleum industry is struggling to find ways to engage their stakeholders in a transparent, honest, and credible manner to determine what kind of industry society wants it to be. Unfortunately, because of past disregard for the environment, information coming from companies is generally held in low esteem and deemed insincere and misleading. However, one Canadian company, with over a decade of experience in environmental and social reporting, has gained a reputation for striving toward transparency and openness in its reporting as well as its actions. Shell Canada has been actively involved in sustainable development initiatives since the late 1980s. Of interest is that Shell Canada published one of the first sustainable development reports[1] in the world and, of course, in Canada, several years before Royal Dutch Shell, its parent company. This reversal of the lead by a subsidiary (Shell Canada) as a role model for its parent company is worth examining.
The authors have had an interest in environmental sustainable development and conducted research in 2001 on environmental initiatives undertaken within the oil and gas industry in Calgary, Alberta. One way to gauge how companies have progressed in their environmental initiative is by accessing and reading all information a company publishes on environmental reporting.
Methodological approach
Shell Canada and Royal Dutch Shell's historical public reports and documents were reviewed in order to get an overview of Shell's (both parent and subsidiary's) environmental reporting history. Examples of these published documents include Annual Reports, Sustainability Reports, newsletters, and speeches. One interview session was conducted and data gathered from two of Shell Canada's executives in the sustainability department at headquarters in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 2001.
In undertaking this research in 2003 we noted that Shell Canada was one of the first companies to publish an environmental report, and this is the reason for further investigation about Shell Canada's motivation for being a forerunner in environmental reporting. This article investigates what motivated and continues to motivate Shell Canada to be a leader in reporting. It also offers advice to other companies as to how to improve their corporate communications regarding their environmental and eventually their sustainability performance.
In Calgary (the Canadian city ranking second in...