Reflections on CSR of Russian Energy Corporations from the Viewpoint of Biblical Ecology
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Lee Kyong-Wan 
Published: June 2018

Corporate Social Responsibility(hereafter, CSR) was institutionalized as a cutting-edge corporate management strategy by multinational corporations in the lead in 1990s, when modern national states seemed to hand over their original responsibility to the corporate governance in the globalization regime. Additionally, there were external motivations for the rapid introduction of CSR by corporations: multinational corporations which violated human rights, social and ecological justice in the third world were threatened to lose their good reputation and successively consumers at markets. The corporations planned to offset with CSR introduction the criticism for their contribution to climate change, frequency and intensification of natural disasters, environmental pollution, which actually threatened their corporate profitability per se. However, after 20 years have passed since the active introduction of CSR strategies, the majority of them have been criticized for their “greenwashing” and preference of profitability and competitiveness to social or ecological responsibilities per se. As a result, now it is time to search for path-breaking alternatives to CSR models based on neo-liberal worldviews and economic model.
This paper aims to suggest a biblical ecological worldview, economic ethics and CSR principles as alternatives to modern anthropocentric equivalents. The biblical CSR principles are characterized by faithful obedience to principle, zeal for mutual trust and pure relational identities among stakeholders, publication of CSR reports with genuine motivations and without exaggeration and idealisation, and differential treatments of energy resources, taking into consideration their intrinsic properties as public goods given by God.
According to these principles, here were assessed CSR strategies of 3 Russian energy champions which will be main operators at big energy projects in East Siberia and the Russian Far East: Gazprom, Rosneft and TNK-BP respectively. The conclusion is that they established their own CSR strategies within the neo-liberal economist framework. Specifically Gazprom and Rosneft, state-run corporations grafted Russian statism and resources nationalism to the neo-liberal CSR framework, emphasizing the welfare service for corporate personnels, which is acceptable and feasible, given the deteriorated welfare system in Russian society. Independent TNK-BP introduced its parent enterprise, BP's CSR model which is based on modern humanism and neo-liberalism. As a result, TNK-BP's CSR model is more advantageous in introducing advanced technology and management structure, which is more appropriate to international standard of CSR. However, it is far from the biblical CSR principles and has not been put into practice faithfully.
Now Russian government set the environment-friendly energy development as national goal. To reach the goal it professed the long-term energy strategy up to 2030, which set the improvement of energy efficiency and energy saving as top priorities. In that light, Russian government may require energy corporations to take CSR strategies especially in regard to energy efficiency and saving to meet environmental, social and economic needs at local societies where they proceed energy projects.
The biblical CSR principles could be reliable alternatives, guaranteeing the success of Russian energy goals, if they are put into practice faithfully by energy corporations. And interdisciplinary researches on the practical way to apply biblical CSR model to concrete energy projects will be very conducive to the sustainable energy development in East Siberia and the Russian Far East through institutional cooperation by all energy stakeholders in governmental, corporate and academic fields.