Corporate Response of a Multinational Oil Company to Non-violent Activism by Niger Delta Women

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In the Niger Delta, multinational oil corporations acquire lands that promise oil, with concurrence of the Nigerian government. These lands are crucial for the subsistence of the indigenous population. These lands, along with water and air, are polluted by oil exploration, which have not benefited the indigenous populations. They have continued to exist in abject poverty to this day. In efforts to secure concessions from the oil companies that would benefit the people of Niger Delta, rebel populations kidnap corporate oil workers, occupy the various oil facilities by the force of guns and damaged the pipelines. Corporations counter these violent resistances with overt military actions involving both Nigerian government forces and corporate security guards. Violence breeds deadly violence, and this cycle of violence continues. With this back-drop, the need for a different approach to activism was recognized by a class of stakeholders – the women of the Niger Delta region. They developed a non-violent strategy to confront the multinational corporations. This paper analyses the successes and failures of the Niger Delta Women, and corporate response to their strategies. It illustrates how a set of prerequisite conditions that must be met for non-violent strategies to be effective. These prerequisite conditions must be present in (a) the environment, (b) the agent, and (c) the methodology of non-violent action for assurance of efficacy. The paper demonstrates through the transacted interaction between the women of Niger Delta and the multinational oil corporations that it is possible to meet the prerequisite conditions for assurance of efficacy and for formulation of non-violent strategies to corporate conflict resolution. It demonstrates that non-violent action offers a viable alternative for conflict resolution and multinationals meeting their corporate social responsibility, in Niger Delta, Sierra Leone, Borneo, and other regions.

Stream: Economic Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Professor Krishna S. Dhir is the Henry Gund Professor of Management at Berry College in Mount Berry, Georgia, in the United States. He has taught at various other universities including University of Hawaii, University of Colorado, Pennsylvania State University. He has had corporate experience with CIBA-GEIGY AG (now Novartis) in Switzerland, and Borg-Warner Chemicals in the United States. Dr. Dhir has published extensively in the fields of Operations Research, Engineering Management, Linguistics and Sociology. He is a Fellow of the Operational Research Society of U.K., and holds a Ph.D. in Management Science and Administrative Policy from the University of Colorado, an M.B.A. from the University of Hawaii; an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University, and a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.