1st Edition

Evolution of a Corporate Idealist When Girl Meets Oil

By Christine Bader Copyright 2014
    264 Pages
    by Routledge

    There is an invisible army of people deep inside the world's biggest and best-known companies, pushing for safer and more responsible practices. They are trying to prevent the next Rana Plaza factory collapse, the next Deepwater Horizon explosion, the next Foxconn labor abuses. Obviously, they don't always succeed.  Christine Bader is one of those people. She worked for and loved BP and then-CEO John Browne's lofty rhetoric on climate change and human rights--until a string of fatal BP accidents, Browne's abrupt resignation under a cloud of scandal, and the start of Tony Hayward's tenure as chief executive, which would end with the Deepwater Horizon disaster. 

    Bader's story of working deep inside the belly of the beast is unique in its details, but not in its themes: of feeling like an outsider both inside the company (accused of being a closet activist) and out (assumed to be a corporate shill); of getting mixed messages from senior management; of being frustrated with corporate life but committed to pushing for change from within. The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil is based on Bader's experience with BP and then with a United Nations effort to prevent and address human rights abuses linked to business. Using her story as its skeleton, Bader weaves in the stories of other "Corporate Idealists" working inside some of the world's biggest and best-known companies.

    Biography

    Christine Bader is a sought-after speaker, lecturer, and advisor on corporate responsibility. She is a Human Rights Advisor to BSR and a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on the boards of the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre and The OpEd Project. Her work with BP from 1999 until 2008 brought her to Indonesia, China, and the U.K., managing the social impacts of some of the company’s largest projects in the developing world.

    Christine has published numerous op-eds and articles and given talks to conferences, companies, and universities around the world, including a TEDx talk entitled Manifesto for the Corporate Idealist.” She lives in her native New York City with her husband and two children.

    The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist is a quick read, effortlessly gulped during a long airplane flight. The writing is clear and concise, and if the book doesn’t leave one convinced that every multinational has suddenly developed a guiding conscience, it does offer some encouragement that many are on the way." —The New York Times

    “Christine Bader's The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist paints a vivid picture of the changing world of business, the rise of sustainability as a value in many companies, and the author's own awakening to the complexity of corporate responsibility. Written as a lively and compelling narrative, the book goes beyond recounting Bader's ups and downs in a decade at BP to offer deep insight into the central importance of morality in any job, company, or life.” —Dan Esty, Hillhouse Professor, Yale University; author, Green to Gold

    “Business must be part of the solution to the complex challenges facing our planet. This requires authentic and committed leaders at all levels within a company working together to help make this a reality. In The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil, Christine Bader gives us a firsthand account of what it takes to get this right and provides some salutary lessons about what it means when companies get it wrong.” —Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever

    “Companies increasingly recognize that they have a legitimate interest in respecting human rights. Christine Bader has been on the front lines of both setting and implementing human rights standards for business, and provides an engaging narrative of what it takes to ensure that human rights are a reality for all.” —Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland; former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

    “With insight and humor, Christine Bader sheds light on the inner workings of multinational business. The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist is a must-read for all of us who care about ensuring that ethics and morality have their rightful place on the business agenda.” —William H. Donaldson, 27th chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; co-founder, former chairman and CEO, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette

    "For all those who have seen what multinational corporations are doing and wondered, "What were they thinking?" — read this book! Bader takes us deep inside big business, past the slick P.R. and newspaper headlines. Whether you resonate with the title "Corporate Idealist" or think it’s an oxymoron, this book is a fascinating read. Love Big Oil or hate it, you'll never look at it the same." —Annie Leonard, Founder, The Story of Stuff Project

    "Christine Bader writes as she is: genuine, funny, compassionate, on a constant search for truth and impact. The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil is a unique and valuable contribution to one of the greatest challenges of the modern era: how to leverage the creativity and drive of business to achieve a just and sustainable world." —Aron Cramer, President and CEO, BSR (Business for Social Responsibility)

    "Too many companies — and the investors and consumers that support them — still take a short-term, narrow view that is threatening our planet; the 'sustainability' movement has often felt like one step forward, two steps back. In The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil, Christine Bader gives us an insider's perspective on why that is the case. I relate to her struggle between optimism and pessimism, and suspect many others will too." —Jeffrey Hollender, founder and former CEO, Seventh Generation

    "The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist is a deeply personal reflection on a vastly neglected subject: the hopes and successes, disappointments and disillusionments, of corporate social responsibility practitioners in global companies. Christine Bader recounts her own journey, starting with infatuation and fulfillment, to feeling jilted, experimenting with taming capitalism through the United Nations, and ending up back in the private sector, a bit bruised but considerably wiser. This makes for an eminently readable introduction to the bourgeoning field of corporate social responsibility." —John G. Ruggie, Harvard University; former U.N. special representative for business & human rights

    "Girl meets Big Oil, Big Oil breaks girl's heart. So far, so predictable. But Christine Bader's extraordinary, warts-and-all memoir reveals what happens when idealism and business converge in both the heart and the mind." —John Elkington, co-founder of Environmental Data Services (ENDS), SustainAbility and Volans; co-author, The Power of Unreasonable People.

    "Bader’s memoir is a refreshing change from the many business books—including others on the same topic of corporate responsibility and related themes—that consist of faceless management frameworks and to-do lists. There is nothing abstract about her tale of an idealistic young woman falling in and out of love with the BP corporation, and coming to terms with its complexity." —Ann Graham, contributing editor at strategy + business