Examining the accounts of oil spills crises in Nigeria through sensegiving and defensive behaviours

Purpose: The paper examines how oil multinational companies (MNCs) in Nigeria framed accounts to dissociate themselves from causing oil spills. Design/methodology/approach: We utilised data from relevant corporate reports, external accounts and interviews, and used sensegiving with defensive behaviours theoretical framing to explore corporate narratives aimed at altering stakeholders’ perceptions. Findings: The corporations gave sense to their audience by invoking scapegoating blame avoidance narrative in attributing the cause of most oil spills in Nigeria to outsiders (sabotage), despite potentially misclassifying the sabotage-corrosion dichotomy. Corporate stance was reinforced through justifying narrative, which suggested that multi-stakeholders jointly determined the causes of oil spills, thus portraying corporate accounts as transparent, credible and objective. Practical implications: With compensation to oil spills’ victims only legally permitted for non-sabotage-induced spills alongside the burden of proof on the victims, the MNCs are incentivised to attribute most oil spills to sabotage. On policy implication, accountability would be best served when the MNCs are tasked both with the burden of proof and a responsibility to demonstrate their transparency in preventing oil spills, including those caused by sabotage. Research implications: The socio-political dynamics in an empirical setting affect corporate accounts and how those accounts appear persuasive, implying that such contextual factors merit consideration when evaluating corporate accounts. For example, despite contradictions in corporate accounts, corporate attribution of oil spills to external factors appeared persuasive due to the inherently complicated socio-political dynamics. Originality/value: Crisis situations generate multiple and competing perspectives, but sensegiving and defensive behaviours lenses enrich our understanding of how crisis-ridden companies frame narratives to alter stakeholders’ perceptions. Accounts-giving therefore partly satisfies accountability demands, and acts as sensegiving signals aimed at reframing/redefining existing perceptions

The Therapeutic Efficacy of Domestic Violence Victim Interventions

Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Guest Workers in the Underground Economy

Guest-worker programs have been providing rapidly growing economies with millions of foreign workers over the last couple of decades. With the duration of stay strictly limited by program rules in some host countries and wages paid to guest workers often set at sub-market levels, many migrants choose to overstay and seek unauthorized employment. The model we develop examines how the wage of illegal aliens and the flow of guest workers transiting to undocumented status are affected by the rules of the program, enforcement measures of the host country, and market conditions facing migrants at home and abroad. Lengthening the duration of official work permits is found to decrease the stock of undocumented workers, but it has an ambiguous effect on their wage. An expansion in the allowed inflow of documented guest workers has a negative impact on the wage of undocumented workers and an ambiguous effect on their stock

Developing a health and human rights training program for french speaking Africa: lessons learned, from needs assessment to a pilot program

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The importance of human rights education has widely been recognized as one of the strategies for their protection and promotion of health. Yet training programs have not always taken into account neither local needs, nor public health relevance, nor pedagogical efficacy.</p> <p>The objectives of our study were to assess, in a participative way, educational needs in the field of health and human rights among potential trainees in six French-speaking African countries and to test the feasibility of a training program through a pilot test. Ultimately the project aims to implement <it>a health and human rights training program most appropriate to the African context</it>.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p><it>Needs assessment </it>was done according to four approaches: Revue of available data on health and human rights in the targeted countries; Country visits by one of the authors meeting key institutions; Focus group discussions with key-informants in each country; A questionnaire-based study targeting health professionals and human rights activists.</p> <p><it>Pilot training program</it>: an interactive e-learning pilot program was developed integrating training needs expressed by partner institutions and potential trainees.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Needs assessment showed high public health and human rights challenges that the target countries have to face. It also showed precise demands of partner institutions in regard to a health and human rights training program. It further allowed defining training objectives and core competencies useful to potential employers and future students as well as specific training contents.</p> <p>A pilot program allowed testing the motivation of students, the feasibility of an interactive educational approach and identifying potential difficulties.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In combining various approaches our study was able to show that training needs concentrate around tools allowing the identification of basic human rights violations in the health system, the analysis of their causes and coordinated responses through specific intervention projects.</p