Corporate Hegemony through Sustainability : A Study of Sustainability Standards and CSR Practices as Tools to Demobilise Community Resistance in the Albanian Oil Industry

Sammanfattning: Many critical business scholars have disregarded sustainability standards and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities as mere window dressing, operating as a smokescreen to hide illegitimate corporate practices. Others have pointed to these activities as hegemonic articulations, as a way to strengthen corporate alliances with and dominance over other actors in society. In this study I take an autoethnographic approach and focus on my previous employer, the oil company Bankers Petroleum Ltd. (Bankers) and their operations in Patos-Marinza, an area in south-central Albania where oil extraction facilities and residences lie close to one another. Through the lens of the Gramscian concept of hegemony and Political Discourse Theory, I examine three grievances raised by Patos-Marinza residents and Bankers’ response to these complaints. My analysis shows how community demands, that could otherwise have put pressure on improved corporate practices, were isolated and silenced in the name of sustainability and corporate responsibility. My conclusion is that rather than disregarding compliance to sustainability standards and CSR activities as window dressing, it is important to examine what these do in specific empirical contexts. As sustainability discourses continue to expand in the corporate world, this study highlights the need to critically examine if they foster change away from harmful business models or simply function as legitimising mechanisms that allow corporate power to grow stronger.