Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

234 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
competitive advantage and the achievement of a new kind of
legitimacy through their participation in regulatory processes.
For example, support for the Kimberly Process that restricts
the trade of “blood diamonds” from conflict zones in Africa
was financially beneficial to De Beers, which controls the lion’s
share of the world’s diamond trade and benefits from the reduction
in supply, keeping prices high.
Corporations and industries move back and forth through
the different phases of response. Particular corporations
within a given industry may respond differently to critique
and thus may be located in a different phase than their
competitors, and all three phases exist across capitalism at
the same moment. In general, phase 1 is the most profitable
position for corporations to occupy because they are able to
avoid financial liability for costly externalities. Corporations
generally resist the move to phase 2 because of the costs added
by negotiation with their critics. In some cases, however, it
may be strategically advantageous for corporations to move
preemptively into a phase 2 posture in order to manage their
critics. This strategy is promoted by the public relations industry,
which encourages corporations to meet and educate
their critics before conflict arises or even the public recognition
that a problem exists (see Deegan 2001; Hance, Chess,
and Sandman 1990). Corporations can then achieve positive
recognition for being responsible corporate citizens without
engaging in more confrontational relationships that might require
them to modify production or undertake other actions
that might reduce their profitability. The phase 3 corporate
response to critique is typically the last resort for corporations
in which the possibility of collapse, bankruptcy, or illegitimacy
threatens the future of the corporation or the industry.
Corporate Oxymorons
One strategy for neutralizing critical discourse is the
deployment of corporate oxymorons (Benson and Kirsch
2010b). Such figures of speech seek to disable the critical facili-