Research Paper on:
Brent Spa and Shell Fiasco

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
pressure and indirectly as a result of the negative media coverage of the company and the way that they were portrayed by Greenpeace. We may argue that the underlying structure  of Royal Dutch Shell and its subsidiary Shell UK was one which facilitated this clash. If we consider how this structure should be changed to prevent future clashes of the  same nature we first need to consider what the structure was at the time. There had been a restructuring of the company in early 1995 (Winter and Schweinsberg, 1996). This  had effected the company globally, and centralised many decision processes, and reduced the importance of input for the different countries. The company was placed into five sections based on their  product, such as research and development, oil products, gas and coal. The idea was to streamline operations and we may argue that this structure was one that embodied the shareholder  wealth maximisation model. If we consider this model and how it impacts on the decision processes we can argue that if the company had adopted a different corporate governance structure,  that of corporate wealth maximisation then this mess may have been avoided. The school of shareholder wealth maximisation sates that it is  the shareholder who is the principle concern of the organisation (Dobson, 1999). A proponent of this school of thought was Milton Freidman, a highly regarded economist, capitalist and Nobel prize  winner. Friedman had a simple view on the responsibility of a company (Chryssides et al, 1999). Friedmans argument was that business have only one social responsibility and that is the  responsibility to their shareholders or owners; the increasing of their profits (Chryssides et al, 1999). This is the Shareholder wealth maximisation model. Milton Friedman was a capitalist and an