The article in the url link below undoubtedly presents a subjective view of the corporate world, but it also makes for interesting reading:
“As we compiled the Multinational Monitor list of the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008, it would have been easy to restrict the awardees to Wall Street firms. But the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and we didn't want them to escape justified scrutiny.”
Identifying the Top 10 firms in any category, by definition, reflects the biases of the people doing the ranking (and CorpWatch certainly has its biases), but it is also hard to defend the actions highlighted in the article. One example:
“In 2001, Chevron swallowed up Texaco. It was happy to absorb the revenue streams. It has been less willing to take responsibility for Texaco's ecological and human rights abuses. In 1993, 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians filed a class action suit in U.S. courts, alleging that Texaco over a 20-year period had poisoned the land where they live and the waterways on which they rely … . Chevron had the case thrown out of U.S. courts, on the grounds that it should be litigated in Ecuador, closer to where the alleged harms occurred. But now the case is going badly for Chevron in Ecuador -- Chevron may be liable for more than $7 billion. So, the company is lobbying the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to impose trade sanctions on Ecuador if the Ecuadorian government does not make the case go away.”
Have a good weekend
David
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008
January 9th, 2009
What a year for corporate criminality and malfeasance!
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15275
