John Ruggie’s work on business and human rights benefited from experts seconded from industry, including Big Oil
As part of my research on business’s responsibilities for human rights, I found the global debate converging around a Harvard professor named John Ruggie. Ruggie was appointed by United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2005 to “identify and clarify standards of corporate responsibility and accountability for transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights”.
Ruggie started his mandate by having private meetings with companies, governments, and civil society groups. He came to BP and spent two hours with me and my colleague David Rice, interrogating us about our experiences, David in Colombia and me in Indonesia and China, both of us now working with colleagues around the world. Ruggie struck me as the classic professor – avuncular, charmingly intellectual, genuinely curious – and David and I went back to our desks impressed with Ruggie’s pragmatic approach as well as his ambitions for his mandate.
A few months later, David and I headed to the United Nations in Geneva for a consultation Ruggie held on the extractive industries. We filed into the Palais des Nations and made our way through the maze of escalators and hallways to the conference room.
Ruggie took his spot on the dais and a UN official gave a few welcoming words. Ruggie spotted me from his seat and gave me a nod and a smile. I regretted having agreed to speak on a panel that day, unnerved by the grandiose venue and the crowd, which I heard had become quite contentious on previous occasions. I delivered my prepared remarks about my experience managing human rights for BP’s Tangguh project in Indonesia, then steeled myself for criticism that I assumed would come about BP operating in such a sensitive environment.
Ruggie revival
But I need not have worried. No one cared about my talk; everyone was focused on a proposal that had been floated at the United Nations two years earlier, spelling out government-like duties for companies related to human rights. That proposal had been set aside by the Commission on Human Rights, much to the relief of the business lobby, which felt the proposal put an inappropriate burden on the private sector. But a few campaigners were still vigorously promoting the proposal with Ruggie in the hope that he would revive it, and representatives from companies and lobbying groups were expressing just as vigorous opposition.
Ruggie let everyone have his say, asking just a few clarifying questions. At the end of the day he stated his appreciation to everyone for taking the time to help inform him. I was impressed with how he managed to soothe the angry crowd and intrigued by this motley assortment of people who had travelled from near and far: Filipino indigenous representatives in traditional dress, British company executives in three-piece pinstripe suits, European campaigners with tattered backpacks.
A few months later, in early 2006, Ruggie issued his first interim report just as I was finishing the BP guidance note. The clarity of his report far exceeded that of other UN documents I’d tried to read. Ruggie had taken these nasty debates and found clarity based on evidence and logic that seemed impossible to refute. In doing so, he continued to establish his own credibility and build trust among this very diverse group of stakeholders. It occurred to me that he was the kind of man I might like to work for someday.
Around that time, Nick [Butler, BP’s then group vice-president for strategy and policy development] starting encouraging me to look for my next role within BP.
“You should really look for a commercial role,” he said, echoing the advice others had given me. “No one rises in this company without having run a business.”
“What about you?” I asked. He smiled and changed the subject. Nick started working with John Browne in 1989 when Browne led BP’s upstream business, and managed to move with Browne as he climbed the BP corporate ladder. Nick certainly wasn’t the first person to shape his career by hitching his career wagon to someone else’s, but I appreciate that he intended to give me sage counsel based on what he had seen over the years.
Secondment suggestion
Soon after that conversation I had lunch with Calli Webber, a BP friend who had just finished a three-year secondment to the World Bank. BP had paid Calli’s full salary and benefits while she was on loan to a Bank project to examine ways to reduce natural gas flaring, and promised to have a job waiting for her when she returned. About 15 BP employees were loaned out at any given time to government agencies or embassies, nonprofit groups, or industry associations. The exchanges were a way for employees to broaden their horizons and BP to give in-kind to worthwhile organisations while gaining valuable expertise.
It occurred to me that John Ruggie had been given no staff and minimal budget and support from the UN, as is standard with such appointments; consequently, many of the appointees treat them as desk-based research jobs. Yet he seemed determined to have a big, positive impact on the world, and I wanted to help him.
I e-mailed him, congratulating him on his interim report and letting him know that the BP human rights guidance note was out. I wrote that I knew that the UN gave him minimal resources to carry out his mandate, and he knew a bit about my experience and interests – would he like any free help? He wrote back five hours later from his BlackBerry: “YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES.”
I drafted a proposal for Nick, saying that John Ruggie’s interim report was being praised by many as a sensible way forward, and that he was conducting his mandate with so much outreach and consultation that his reports would both reflect and shape expectations – and maybe even legislation – that would impact BP for years to come. Wouldn’t it be a great thing for us to support, and given that I had corporate experience both in the field and in headquarters, wasn’t I just the person to do it?
I gave the memo to Nick and we sat down to discuss it the next day. He seemed surprised; at the time I thought he was impressed by my initiative, but I wonder if he knew this was the beginning of the end of my time with the company.
“Let’s start it as a part-time project,” Nick said. “We don’t quite know how it’s going to go, and I still have work for you to do here.” I wrote up a memorandum of understanding that John Ruggie and Nick agreed to, and I started working part time for Ruggie in April 2006. Some NGO representatives expressed concern about my secondment granting Big Oil too much access to him; he responded in an open letter about his work plan that “It is important to have someone on the team who has actually worked in a company. By the same token, I would be delighted if human rights organisations also were able to second an expert to support the mandate.” (The NGO Global Witness later took him up on his offer, seconding one of their staff to develop recommendations for businesses operating in conflict zones.)
It was hard for me to imagine life getting any better. I had just moved in with the lovely English gentleman I’d started dating two years earlier. At work I was still amidst the buzz of headquarters, working with colleagues around the world on issues that mattered, while also contributing to a United Nations effort to make an impact on a global scale.
How long could this ideal state of affairs possibly last? About ten months, as it turned out.
Transition
In the fall of 2006, Nick resigned from BP to establish a new centre on International Energy Policy at Cambridge University. It seemed like a terrific opportunity for him, but I was surprised that he left while his close ally and friend John Browne was still leading the company. At the time I had no idea that even bigger surprises were to come.
Not long after that, my boyfriend was offered a transfer from London to New York with his company. With Nick’s departure and an increasing amount of my time spent on the UN mandate, I figured I could come home to New York, be in the same time zone as John Ruggie at Harvard, and be with this man whom I suspected would become my life partner.
My new boss was a BP executive whom I had known for years, though I had never been sure whether he supported my work on human rights. I feared that he wouldn’t see the value of my UN work.
The day before our first formal meeting I sent him a memo explaining my role, and that I would be moving to New York to continue it since my partner was being transferred there. I walked into his office the next day with a copy of the memo printed out two pages per sheet and double-sided, as I always do to save ink and paper.
Seeing the small font, he said, “Gee, you really take this sustainability thing seriously, don’t you?” I stared at him, not sure whether he was joking. He stared back at me. We were not off to a good start.
Next he said, “New York won’t work.” He went on to say that the office is small and out of London’s sights, home to only a few investor relations staff and a visitor services team to organise board meetings and occasional senior visits. He doubted that I could be useful to the company from such an outpost.
I couldn’t tell whether he was serious or just testing whether I’d stand up to him in the first meeting of our new working relationship. Either way, I had decided that my commitment to my relationship outranked my commitment to BP, and therefore I had little to lose.
“Let’s start again,” I said. “I’m moving to New York because that’s where my partner will be – and where I will no longer be an expensive expat like I am here. If you pull me off this UN project, it will attract more negative attention than you want right now. So why don’t we start from there?”
He raised an eyebrow, and I thought I saw a flicker of a smile. He asked a few questions about the UN work – which human rights NGOs and governments were involved, what they thought of BP, what I thought the implications of John Ruggie’s work would be for our industry – and within half an hour we were discussing my move date. I don’t know that I convinced him of the value of my work, but at least he was letting me continue it.
A few weeks later, I flew to New York with the man whom I would marry one year later. I settled into BP’s New York office and continued to do some work for the company, but was spending an increasing amount of my time with John Ruggie on his UN mandate.
This is an excerpt from The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: when girl meets oil by Christine Bader, published by Bibliomotion in March 2014, and reproduced with permission.
