Channels, Fall 2018

Page 100 Thompson • Seeing Green response to private stakeholders, which is often in contrast to the state policy of building energy security and developing trade relations with China. Thus, private stakeholders are actively engaged in shaping a NOCs policy, whether it be profits in general or specifically environmental sustainability. Within the private stakeholder individual level of analysis, there are two general trends of theories which attempt to explain the cause for voluntary disclosure of an NOC’s policy of environmental sustainability. The Voluntary disclosure theory assumes those with high performance records will choose to share their achievements while low performers will seek to disclose less because of the greater cost. In contrast, the political economy theory, legitimacy theory, and stakeholder theory are all similar in their predictions of a negative correlation between environmental performance and the amount of publicity since only low performers are facing pressure and seek to reduce such threats by publishing their environmental practices. Often times the local government level and private stakeholder level of analysis will overlap or jointly influence each other. Canadian and Brazilian authors Silvestre, Gimenes and Neto (2017), joint-publishing for the Journal of Cleaner Production , discuss the need for private companies to develop policies that will complement government regulations to fully ensure protection of the natural environment. It will often be factors, such as health and safety concerns, at the individual company level, which will promote and lead to new health, safety, and environmental regulations by the local government as well as international bodies. Thus a government policy may not be enough to change individual views towards environmental protection, and the company itself must be actively engaged in making a change at the individual level. Elkington (1998) makes mention of the government and government agencies as another alternative for increasing environmental sustainability when engaging in partnerships with NOCs. He combines two schools of thought: voluntary submission of practices to stakeholders and the role of government in determining the environmental sustainable development of companies. Despite these similarities and commonality between both the private investors and local government, it is vital to maintain distinctions between national objectives and commercial objectives (Braga & Szklo, 2014). Ramirez-Cendrero and Paz (2017) trace the development of NOCs in Brazil and Mexico and the importance of political and institutional factors. They conclude “national” and commercial” objectives can indeed coexist, but only during times of high oil prices. Furthermore, as is most often the case, the prevalence of national objectives will hamper the potential of a NOC and its commercial objectives. This opposition between state and institutional objectives is notable with Gazprom’s external energy policy. Putin’s New Energy Policy seeks to limit foreign investors in Russian state-owned companies, secure sovereignty over natural resources, and strengthen its role in the energy sector. While being utilized by the Russian government to achieve these ends, Gazprom also responds to private stakeholder concerns for economic growth and profits (Koďousková and Jirušek, 2016). The government plays a significant role in implementing policy and regulation to determine the production and exploration of natural resources. Petrobras’ discovery of the