CONTINUATION OF LITERATURE REVIEW

2.2.2 The Petroleum Act of 1969

          The 1969 Petroleum Act was drawn up in full recognition of the necessity to force the oil companies in Nigeria to train Nigerians to man the industry. The Act required holders of an oil mining license to ensure that within ten years from the granting of the licence, the number of citizens employed by them in connection with the licence at the managerial and professional grades shell, at least reach 75% of the total number of persons employed. This appears to be a very lofty goal. Yet the compliance to this part of the petroleum act is suspect, shell, for example, claims that more than 2,900 of her staff or 57% of the workforce are from the oil producing state due to the fact that Shell’s operations are expenditure intensive, rather than staff intensive.

          The point made here is that the issue of employment in the oil industry is a highly controversial one. This as it were, is predicated on the fact that the Niger Delta has an army of well-educated youths. Yet, the youths are employed by the oil companies to do causal and ad-hoc works that involve clearing of bush paths for seismic lines, rolling and carrying of pipes and cleaning of the boats. These workers are recruited at each sites and promptly discharged after their transient jobs are completed. There is no job security. This could be a contributory factor to the spate of sabotage in form of deliberate damaging of oil equipment, in the absence of secured jobs, young men engage in this possibly in order to get compensation from the oil industry. While there was an element of satisfaction with regard to the few indigenes employed. This consentient began to wane because of the tendentious and overt collaborative roles of the few indigenes employed by the oil firms.

          The point made here is that the few employed local princes are used toward the interest of the oil firms. The oil firms in Nigeria have always advanced the argument that youths in the Niger Delta do not possess the requisite educational qualifications hence they have slim chance for employment in the oil industry. This probably explains the educational support of the oil firms to their host communities.

2.3 Empirical Review

          Organizations that believe they should give something back to the society have embraced the concept of corporate social responsibility. Empirical studies in corporate social responsibility have it that, views are varied on the issue of corporate social responsibility, thus different schools of thought exist. The first school of thought is of the opinion that businesses through their managers as agents of shareholders are by obligation expected to maximize increase in profit. This view is supported by the fact that economic performance is organization’s primary social responsibility, thus, where organizations do not satisfy shareholders as first obligation, they will not be in the position to satisfy the society; especially as profit as reinvestment factor is required to catalyze economic growth and development. It also argues that profit making is sine-qua-non to corporate success.

This school of thought concludes that corporate social responsibility distracts businesses from their basic economic roles, it is nothing more than superficial window-dressing aimed at pre-emptying the role of governments as watchdogs over powerful tricop corporations.

The second school of thought, supporting the call for corporate social responsibility draws its arguments from the principles of corporate governance, which states that the corporations may take into account ethical considerations that are reasonably regarded as appropriate to the responsible conduct of the business (Ferrel and Fredrick 2007). They however, have exception to the use of “may” as ethical actions are not considered optional but mandatory.