Entine and Jennings refer to companies espousing environmental concern as practicing a form of business they call “rain forest chic” (Jennings, 2012, p. 101). Entine and Jennings find this this to be nothing more than capitalizing on peoples concern for the environment as a marketing strategy. This done by comparing their company against another company believed to unfriendly to the environment. This amounts to, we are good and they are bad so, you should buy from us (Jennings, 2012, p. 102). This comparison could be far from the truth in many instances. Bragging about green practices doesn’t make the company socially conscience. Friedman and Freeman certainly don’t believe that claiming to be environmentally conscience constitutes social conscience. In many cases espousing environmental concern is nothing more than marketing. However they do believe that if it is in the best interest of the stakeholders of the company operate in a green manner then they should do so, as that is their social responsibility to the stakeholders (Jennings, 2012, p. 102).

            Damian Miller wrote an article for Energy Policy describing how oil giants BP and Shell attempted to move into the Solar renewable energy market. In 1981 BP bought Amoco, another large oil company that owned fifty percent of Solarex, a major solar power manufacturer. BP bought the remaining half of Solarex from Enron in 1999 making BP one of the largest manufactures of solar power in the industry. Due to intense competition in solar energy from China, BP was forced to slowly reduce solar manufacturing due to the inability to make a profit as solar prices dropped. By 2011 BP had exited the solar energy market. BP has continued to invest in wind energy and biofuel spending nearly $100 million to buy Verenium, a biofuel company in the United States and $680 million to buy eighty three percent of CNAA an ethanol producer in Brazil (Miller, 2013, p. 53).

            Shell had a similar experience as BP when in 1997 shell invested $500 million in Holland based R&S Solar, later renamed to Shell Solar. Shell Solar entered a joint effort with Siemens in 2000 and in 2002 Shell had completely absorbed both companies. Shell was at this point the fourth largest producer of solar panels. By 2006 Shell Solar ran into trouble due to a shortage of silicon required to make solar cells causing Shell Solar to reduce production by fifty percent. Shell slowly started moving out of the solar industry but retained a fifty percent interest in an R&D venture with Saint-Gobain. It was estimated that by 2009, shell had invested over $1.25 billion in solar, wind and hydrogen energy (Miller, 2013, p. 53-54).

            BP and Shell as well as Amoco and Enron have been derided as being environmentally unfriendly simply because they are oil companies. Were these oil companies trying to show the public they were ecologically concerned or were they just trying to be profitable in the energy industry? The answer is yes on both accounts. These companies do want to be recognized as having social and ecologic ethics and do so at great cost and true effort. However, they also have a responsibility to protect the interests of the stakeholders and make a profit requiring these companies to perform a difficult balancing between these two ethical standards.

References:

Jennings, M. M. (2012). Business Ethics: Case Studies and Selected Readings, (7th ed.). 

Retrieved from http://www.coursesmart.com/9780538473538/firstsection#X2ludGVybmFsX0J2ZGVwRmxhc2hSZWFkZXI/eG1saWQ9OTc4MDUzODQ3MzUzOC9paQ==

Miller, D. (2013). Why the oil companies lost solar. Energy Policy, 60(), 52-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.05.043