Could a proactive environmental strategy on the part of Shell UK have prevented the Brent Spar debacle? Case 15B.1 Shell’s environmental management strategy Since the early 1990s, Shell’s reputation has been battered by corporate social responsibility problems such as the Brent Spar controversy and the Ken Saro-

Wiwa trial in Nigeria. (Ken Saro-Wiwa was the environmentalist who was hanged and whose death some attributed in part to Shell.) Shell gradually realized that dismissing environmental and social issues could seriously hurt its business. It started to develop a company-wide environmental policy in the late 1990s, in spite of its heritage of being a rather decentralized firm with highly autonomous operating companies. As a result of this autonomy, environmental management approaches at Shell’s international subsidiaries varied substantially and depended on the direction chosen by subsidiary managers.

Subsidiary discretion led to inconsistencies, especially between operations in developed and developing countries.