---
product_id: 286370
title: "Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil"
price: "120.40 DT"
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reviews_count: 11
url: https://www.desertcart.tn/products/286370-evolution-of-a-corporate-idealist-when-girl-meets-oil
store_origin: TN
region: Tunisia
---

# Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil

**Price:** 120.40 DT
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- **What is this?** Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil
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## Description

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.

Review: ...at least we're on the right track - It's all in here. The corporate lawyers terrified of disclosure. The failure of some executives to see either the business or the moral cases for securing social licence to operate, and those executives somehow always being slightly senior to the ones that do (the great and visionary John Browne being a notable exception). Transparency and its admitted risks versus benefits. Procurement departments that just don't get it. Pushing the message up the supply chain. The futility of shouting "ethics!" at a spreadsheet. The great high-level corporate policies, made in plush head offices, that somehow seem impotent at the muddy boots level, especially on the minor projects in out-of-the-way places where NGOs and the press are unlikely to tread. All in all, a superb outline of the debates, battles and small victories along the way. The section on the U.N. illustrates that small - OK, sometimes even big - victories are possible, even in the context of that fundamentally flawed organization. What's missing - and what I think is required for the big picture, is an insight into the world of the CSR contractors who prepare impact assessments and the like. In years of working for such contractors I have only heard consultants rewarded for being profitable by swiftly producing light-weight impact assessments, for successfully avoiding public hearings, for giving the client the report they need to present to (sometimes suspiciously un-rigorous) local permitting authorities. Never once for achieving what a social impact or human rights assessment is supposed to - i.e. to level the playing field between a powerful oil and gas company and the disempowered locals that have to play host to it. On one job I was informed by the project manager that my report was only impartial "in theory" as we were being paid by the client. Such is the realpolitik of those who seek to make a living in the business of assisting multinationals to improve their performance. As Christine points out "we want to rock the boat, but we also need to stay in it". This is punchy and very readable. A rare thing - a business book which manages, at least for us idealists, to be an exciting page-turner. Fabulous. And its conclusion is heartening - that although we may be tearing our hair out at our failures, and at times the work can seem futile, the small successes we achieve collectively move the corporate responsibility message forward. At least we're on the right track.
Review: An engaging and fascinating read - (Full disclosure: Christine Bader and I went to college together (overlapping one year) and she is a friend.) Christine Bader has written an engaging, brutally honest, thought-provoking book about her experiences, first with BP and later with the United Nations, as what she calls a Corporate Idealist. (This term is used throughout the book and always capitalized, as if it were an official title.) She defines the term in her prologue as referring to members of "a global army of people fighting for better social and environmental practices inside multi-national companies -- with mixed success." I came to the book a decided skeptic about whether major corporations ever see it in their best interests to commit resources towards socially and environmentally responsible practices, particularly when there is often such an obvious profit motive in ignoring such issues in favor of doing everything as efficiently (i.e. cheaply) as possible. Bader, as one would expect, makes a convincing case that corporations ignore these concerns at their peril, and does a fine job outlining the hidden costs of ignoring the social consequences of corporate actions. (She frequently uses the example of how much money can be lost when business operations have to be shut down, even just for a couple of days, due to protesters who are objecting to the business' practices.) The detailed accounts of her work for BP in Indonesia and China are fascinating and, at times, inspiring, as the reader sees how Bader and her fellow Corporate Idealists were able to achieve concrete successes that served both the interests of BP and the communities in those countries in which it was operating. I still count myself somewhat skeptical on the issue, but Bader shows that it can at least be done on a micro level. By the time the Deepwater Horizon disaster thrust BP into the international headlines, Bader had moved on to a position at the United Nations. Although her disappointment in BP's response to that incident is palpable within the pages of the book, I myself was disappointed not to read a more detailed criticism of the way in which BP addressed the disaster and what it said about the company in general. It's possible I wanted more inside politics than Bader was willing to deliver. The final chapter of the book, in which Bader surveys several of her fellow Corporate Idealists in a sort of State-of-the-Revolution summary, reads like a manifesto for anyone interested in this line of work, and indeed for anybody who is frustrated that more companies don't seem to pay attention to any motivation other than the almighty bottom line. The statements of Bader and her other CI's are candid about how difficult and frustrating it can be to battle against corporate policies and practices that have been in place for decades or even centuries, but these declarations are tempered with appreciation of how far this movement has come. You don't have to be an idealist (corporate or otherwise) to enjoy this book. Christine Bader has a lot to say about how major corporations should operate and the obligations they owe to the communities in which they operate and the world at large. Even if you don't agree with what she says, she will force you to think about the role of corporations in contemporary society. It ought to be required reading at business schools around the country, if not the world.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #2,556,231 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #236 in Green Business (Books) #277 in Business Infrastructure #348 in Business Ethics (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 97 Reviews |

## Images

![Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61-+NTKBOuL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ...at least we're on the right track
*by B***R on February 2, 2015*

It's all in here. The corporate lawyers terrified of disclosure. The failure of some executives to see either the business or the moral cases for securing social licence to operate, and those executives somehow always being slightly senior to the ones that do (the great and visionary John Browne being a notable exception). Transparency and its admitted risks versus benefits. Procurement departments that just don't get it. Pushing the message up the supply chain. The futility of shouting "ethics!" at a spreadsheet. The great high-level corporate policies, made in plush head offices, that somehow seem impotent at the muddy boots level, especially on the minor projects in out-of-the-way places where NGOs and the press are unlikely to tread. All in all, a superb outline of the debates, battles and small victories along the way. The section on the U.N. illustrates that small - OK, sometimes even big - victories are possible, even in the context of that fundamentally flawed organization. What's missing - and what I think is required for the big picture, is an insight into the world of the CSR contractors who prepare impact assessments and the like. In years of working for such contractors I have only heard consultants rewarded for being profitable by swiftly producing light-weight impact assessments, for successfully avoiding public hearings, for giving the client the report they need to present to (sometimes suspiciously un-rigorous) local permitting authorities. Never once for achieving what a social impact or human rights assessment is supposed to - i.e. to level the playing field between a powerful oil and gas company and the disempowered locals that have to play host to it. On one job I was informed by the project manager that my report was only impartial "in theory" as we were being paid by the client. Such is the realpolitik of those who seek to make a living in the business of assisting multinationals to improve their performance. As Christine points out "we want to rock the boat, but we also need to stay in it". This is punchy and very readable. A rare thing - a business book which manages, at least for us idealists, to be an exciting page-turner. Fabulous. And its conclusion is heartening - that although we may be tearing our hair out at our failures, and at times the work can seem futile, the small successes we achieve collectively move the corporate responsibility message forward. At least we're on the right track.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ An engaging and fascinating read
*by D***N on July 31, 2014*

(Full disclosure: Christine Bader and I went to college together (overlapping one year) and she is a friend.) Christine Bader has written an engaging, brutally honest, thought-provoking book about her experiences, first with BP and later with the United Nations, as what she calls a Corporate Idealist. (This term is used throughout the book and always capitalized, as if it were an official title.) She defines the term in her prologue as referring to members of "a global army of people fighting for better social and environmental practices inside multi-national companies -- with mixed success." I came to the book a decided skeptic about whether major corporations ever see it in their best interests to commit resources towards socially and environmentally responsible practices, particularly when there is often such an obvious profit motive in ignoring such issues in favor of doing everything as efficiently (i.e. cheaply) as possible. Bader, as one would expect, makes a convincing case that corporations ignore these concerns at their peril, and does a fine job outlining the hidden costs of ignoring the social consequences of corporate actions. (She frequently uses the example of how much money can be lost when business operations have to be shut down, even just for a couple of days, due to protesters who are objecting to the business' practices.) The detailed accounts of her work for BP in Indonesia and China are fascinating and, at times, inspiring, as the reader sees how Bader and her fellow Corporate Idealists were able to achieve concrete successes that served both the interests of BP and the communities in those countries in which it was operating. I still count myself somewhat skeptical on the issue, but Bader shows that it can at least be done on a micro level. By the time the Deepwater Horizon disaster thrust BP into the international headlines, Bader had moved on to a position at the United Nations. Although her disappointment in BP's response to that incident is palpable within the pages of the book, I myself was disappointed not to read a more detailed criticism of the way in which BP addressed the disaster and what it said about the company in general. It's possible I wanted more inside politics than Bader was willing to deliver. The final chapter of the book, in which Bader surveys several of her fellow Corporate Idealists in a sort of State-of-the-Revolution summary, reads like a manifesto for anyone interested in this line of work, and indeed for anybody who is frustrated that more companies don't seem to pay attention to any motivation other than the almighty bottom line. The statements of Bader and her other CI's are candid about how difficult and frustrating it can be to battle against corporate policies and practices that have been in place for decades or even centuries, but these declarations are tempered with appreciation of how far this movement has come. You don't have to be an idealist (corporate or otherwise) to enjoy this book. Christine Bader has a lot to say about how major corporations should operate and the obligations they owe to the communities in which they operate and the world at large. Even if you don't agree with what she says, she will force you to think about the role of corporations in contemporary society. It ought to be required reading at business schools around the country, if not the world.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Terrific Resource for Realistic Idealists in Business
*by T***N on July 29, 2014*

I teach business ethics and leadership at Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. So many of our students love business and are equally passionate about making a positive difference in the world. They are not comfortable with business focusing solely on increasing shareholder wealth, at the expense of people, the planet and the fundamental moral virtues. Most of our students don't want to compartmentalize -- to strive to be ethical human beings in their non-work lives, while submitting to an amoral life at work. Many of our students wonder whether they need to work at nonprofits in order to meet their own moral standards for their lives. They want to feel proud about themselves, their work and their companies. Is this realistic or idealistic? Christine Bader's book, The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist, is a terrific resource -- not just for our students, but also for all of us who are striving to help business achieve high financial performance and also high "social" performance. I found her book realistically encouraging. Yes, we can make a positive difference within businesses, but it's very difficult and not a given. After much hard work, we will experience minor, incremental advances, significant setbacks, and now and again transformations. Overall, if we are sufficiently committed and persistent, we can make progress. Christine points out in a section on Career Paths that it is not easy to figure out how to get into the role of CSR and "Corporate Idealist." She astutely encourages Corporate Idealists to determine the fundamental tension points between the core business of a company or industry and the best interests of society. Where, specifically, does doing well for a company pose threats to the well-being of people and the planet? The upside of there not being one, official career path for Corporate Idealists is that there are multiple ways for people of diverse backgrounds, skills and interests to make a difference. Another encouraging take-away is Christine's highlighting the large and growing community of sister/fellow Corporate Idealists. It is easy to feel alone, to feel like an outsider, in any particular company. Her book reminds us that there are thousands of "realistic idealists" in business who are connecting with each other in myriad ways. They share encouragement, ideas and resources. Disclosure: Christine generously agrees to speak annually to our ethics class at Fuqua. The students love her! She exudes a deep character of compassion and she embodies the mature, realistic optimism so evident in her book.

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