Exxon and Guyana

The prompt we had to discuss this week for class was: If we consider that individuals are shaped by institutions and organizations that intersect in their lives—such as family, education, career, workplace, and government—explain how organizations serve as instruments of domination.

Our text book for this class discusses "organizations as domination" and you should see the notes I've written in the margins of this chapter. I'm not a fan of this worldview for large corporations.

 I am particularly eager to answer this question if only because I thought of my industry when I read in Morgan (2006) that "in the view of many analysts, the multinationals virtually rob their host countries of resources and labor power. At the same time, they engage in modes of strategic management that increase the dependence of these countries on their continued presence. Industrial accidents, occupational disease, pollution, and general degradation of the people and the land continues to occur at a level that vividly reproduces the conditions of raw exploitation and human despair" (p. 292).

As I've mentioned before I work for a non-profit safety council that is designed to help train contractors in petrochemical and refinery operations to be safer. Two years ago I had the chance to go to Trinidad and Tobago and to Guyana to discuss their safety council operations. Compared to our 30 year history with safety in this sector Trinidad and Tobago who have a brand new council, were just beginning their journey . . . moving from crawl stage to walk. Guyana was a different story. Exxon had just moved into the country to try and help develop their offshore oil resources. What I found was that Exxon was providing a service to the society and the people of Guyana that was the opposite of what Morgan expresses. Exxon was funding and supporting the installation of a safety council and development of safety standards that far exceeded what they population was used to. They were also making sure that any contractors that they worked with had the same safety culture that the US adopts. In a society where one death per day was acceptable, Exxon was promoting and enforcing standards (and pay wages) that were far more beneficial to the overall community and to the individual worker than they had previously had.

Additionally, Exxon realized that by creating a safety council they were making it easier for competitor organizations to move in and make use of the systems they were setting up. The same was true for the infrastructure they were creating. However, Exxon's behavior based safety system was so strong, and so ingrained in their culture, that they could not move forward without setting up systems to keep the worker safe that were on par or working toward what they commonly had in the states. I was there to help them understand how a safety council can deliver training effectively and enforce standards. It was an eye-opening trip! 

Could this be seen as domination? Perhaps. Exxon was enforcing work and safety rules through their presence and money that would not have been there without them. However, the benefits in safety and health to the contract worker could not have been more starkly positive.

References

Morgan, G. (2006). Images of Organization (Updated Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.