Crisis in world politics. Corporate roles and responses in the Ukraine war and beyond

Abstract

For some time, Global Governance has made the case that multinational enterprises (MNEs) have become so involved in multistakeholder provisions of public goods that they should be considered as global governors. Their involvement and whether it improves governance, however, remain fiercely debated. In this context, MNEs are frequently framed and discussed as entities sui generis, pursuing private interests while reconciling with broader public expectations. The article argues that the concept of crisis, if adequately theorized, offers a new perspective into this discussion. To do so, I draw from American Pragmatism to introduce crisis both as a challenge for an actor but also a lens into the beliefs expressed throughout for the researcher. Against this dual use of the concept, I develop a typology of crises and relate this to the roles and responses of MNEs that are likely to follow from different crises. As a lens into corporate beliefs, I illustrate the conceptual potential of crisis by looking into how Shell and ExxonMobil respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As an exogenous, rather immediate crisis, the article discusses to what extent their responses reveal a broader acceptance or rejection of new corporate responsibilities. Based on careful reconstruction, the article concludes that neither productively solved the crisis. More specifically, as Shell remains reluctant to engage with it and ExxonMobil outright rejects to do so, ambiguities remain. This is discussed in the broader context of what role MNEs play in world politics as the article ends with the potential of and need for reconceptualizing these actors.

Keywords

Global governance crises multinational enterprises American pragmatism beliefs as rules-for-action Ukraine

“We talk of particular crises; we talk of things that are alleged to be ‘in crisis’, but there is comparatively little discussion about ‘crisis’ as such.”

(Milstein, 2015: 141–142)

Introduction

The fact that corporate actors have increased in numbers, size, and influence in a globalized world economy has been widely recognized and stated in International Relations (IR) (Mikler, 2018). Global Governance specifically has made the case that multinational enterprises (MNEs) have become so involved in multistakeholder provisions of public goods that they should be considered as global governors (Avant et al., 2010; May, 2015; Ougaard and Leander, 2010).¹ Their involvement and whether it improves governance, however, remains debated (Hofferberth, 2019a). In these debates, MNEs are frequently framed and discussed as entities sui generis, pursuing private profit while responding to and reconciling with public expectations (Mende, 2022; Wolf, 2008). On one hand, MNEs are institutionally obliged to meet shareholder expectations and are thus driven by profit, however defined and understood. On the other hand, MNEs have been engaged in discourses on corporate social responsibility (CSR), and, as the embodiment of global capital unleashed, face public scrutiny. Accordingly, the business of business can no longer be just business as profit maximization has been contextualized in social and environmental terms. This has consequences as the regulation of MNEs has shifted to a new paradigm of regulation with MNEs (Ruggie, 2018). However, how and to what extent MNEs meaningfully reconcile public expectations against private profit remains contested. Unlike any other global governors, IR thus holds reservations against MNEs as their voluntary engagements and governance contributions are frequently discussed as purely rhetorical in nature or as attempts of whitewashing against a weak CSR discourse to present themselves in better light (Berliner and Prakash, 2015).²

This article relates to this debate, albeit with no intention to solve it. Rather, I want to develop a typology of crises which challenge MNEs to respond to diverging expectations to consider the extent to which these global governors embrace new responsibilities. While corporate action has been studied in its regular operations (e.g. Kristensen and Zeitlin, 2005) and in crises (e.g. Schoenberger, 1997), it is arguably the latter in which we can best see whether and how MNEs reconcile with changes in their normative environment. In other words, corporate responses to crises are important because they reveal the shifting CSR discourse around MNEs and the extent to which they have or have not become engaged global governors (Crane and Matten, 2021). However, while presumably living through the age of polycrisis (Tooze, 2022), crisis as a social science concept remains analytically underdeveloped in IR. It is a label often put on real-world dynamics but with little analytical precision—there are plenty of crises in world politics but little conceptual discussion on what crisis means for actors involved and how it might advance our understanding of them. More specifically, different ideal-types of crises in global governance have not been spelled out in detail. Drawing on American Pragmatism, I define crises as moments when beliefs held by an actor are challenged and their capacity to act upon a situation falter. Crisis in this sense is more than a moment of uncertainty. It is an opportunity as well as a challenge for an actor to engage in the “production of something new in the world, a solution to a technical or scientific, an artistic or indeed an everyday practical problem” (Joas, 1996: 255). In other words, crises push an actor to reconsider their beliefs and their analytical value lies in the fact that they offer a lens into potential change in terms of what defines future agency (Hopf, 2018: 700).

Given the salience of crises in world politics—real and in the pragmatist sense—it is most productive to use such moments to reconstruct how actors respond to the world around them. Developing an ideal-type heuristic of different crises and applying it to MNEs, I argue that crisis dynamics matter (i.e. how quickly do they unfold?) in terms of how they challenge an actor and what responses one can expect. As such, whether crises unfold over a longer time, such as when Shell and other MNEs, for years, were accused of environmental degradation through constant oil spills in Nigeria (Idemudia, 2017), or whether crises happen immediately, such as when BP had to respond to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, makes a difference in terms of how they challenge an actor. Furthermore, whether a crisis originates endogenously from activities defining the actor (i.e. core business) or exogenously to the actor also makes a difference. In other words, crises differ to the extent that they are brought upon by the actor. As such, the origin of a crisis (i.e. are they endogenous consequences of economic activities or caused by exogenous shocks?) matters. Volkswagen faced a different type of crisis when their practices of massaging emission figures were revealed then when state legislation passes stricter emission standards on them (Siano et al., 2017).

Taken together, I contend that the dynamics and origins of a crisis determine how one responds to them and this, in turn, determines the future role an entity plays in global governance. Crisis is thus a productive concept to consider global governors and the ways they make sense of and act in the world-out-there (Koselleck and Richter, 2006; Milstein, 2015). Dealing with a crisis of one’s own making and, in response, contribute to governance is important. However, crisis management in this sense is likely to remain reactive and limited, specifically against a slowly unfolding crisis not prompting the actor to respond immediately. Becoming more engaged as global governors, however, is more likely in response to exogenous and immediate crises fundamentally challenging existing beliefs and routines. Such crises take actors out of their doxastic comfort and call for reflective creativity (Schmidt, 2021). Responses to a crisis thus reveal shifts of boundaries in terms of what it means for MNEs to engage (or not) in global governance (Jackson, 2003). In the following, I illustrate the conceptual potential of crisis by looking at MNEs as a specific group of global governors. For these, I argue that the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a fundamental crisis. As a potential turning point for the liberal order that sustains current manifestations of global governance, it not only unfolded rather quickly. Equally important, it also pitted MNEs in (geo-) political conflict. Immediately after the attack, MNEs were called upon to leave Russia and by now over 1,000 companies have announced to reduce or altogether cease their operations in Russia.³ Such divestment is consequential for MNEs and, if justified and expressed in new beliefs, potentially reflect deeper commitments and changing corporate responsibilities in global governance. Justifications in light of the crisis thus reveal broader corporate self-images in global governance and can be reconstructed as such through engaging with corporate documents.

The paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces the concept of crisis in IR and provides a pragmatist reframing of the notion. The second session then introduces a typology of different crisis and discusses how different corporate responses reveal the extent to which MNEs accept new roles and responsibilities in global governance. While all types of crises challenge MNEs, exogenous crises unfolding quickly provide the best litmus test to gauge whether new corporate responsibilities emerge. The next section spells out why and how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks such a fundamental crisis for MNEs and hence offers a productive lens into corporate beliefs in and of global governance. Looking at two MNEs from the extractive sector, historically notorious for their involvement in human rights violations and operating within authoritarian regimes (Rangan and Barton, 2010; also Sampson, 1975), the next section introduces the cases and the sequential analysis methodology for reconstructing corporate beliefs in crisis. It also discusses the empirical findings of Shell and ExxonMobil responding to the crisis. As expressed beliefs guiding future corporate action, I discuss these in terms of implications for CSR and the broader role of MNEs in global governance. These will be summarized in the conclusion to expand our understanding of MNEs in global governance through the concept of crisis as a means to reveal and make sense of their action and contributions to world politics.

Crisis in world politics—a pragmatist reframing

Although MNEs are frequently included as global governors in textbook accounts of world politics (e.g. Karns et al., 2015), their exact role in and commitment to global governance remains debated. More specifically, while welcoming the input of other non-state entities such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), IR remains skeptical about the idea that MNEs, due to their profit-seeking nature, can contribute meaningfully to global governance. Whelan (2012), for example, contends that “the managers of (Western) MNCs tend to engage in Political CSR activities for profit-focused reasons, and/or, to promote their ‘core’ business interests” (p. 711), arguing that our understanding of MNEs in global governance remains flawed if we do not reconcile with this apparent truth. Against their core interests, corporate contributions to global governance by definition then remain instrumental as MNEs are unable to respond to public responsibilities that go against their nature as private profit maximizers. Given the empirical record that feature cases where MNEs seem to be acting on different motivation, though, the prominence and determinate effects of profit as the sole, absolute goal of corporate action has been problematized by constructivists and business ethic scholars alike (Brühl and Hofferberth, 2013; Flohr et al., 2010; Kollman, 2008; Weber, 2018; Woll, 2010). While heterogenous in their conclusions, this literature argues that the intent to maximize profit remains too generic and void of required context to guide corporate decision-making, and hence, cannot be essentialized. Rather, it is the consequence of situational and oftentimes post hoc sense-making. Instead of taking profit as the only motivation for MNEs and their ability to rationally maximize it as the given modus operandi, research should consider how MNEs communicate, frame, and justify their socially contextualized, potentially diverse action (Hofferberth, 2017: 144–148).

This unpacking of corporate agency is important for the discussion of global governance because they raise important questions such as what drives MNEs, how they are affected by changes in their normative environment, and whether their motivations to act in light of collective problems can change over time to reflect more authentic, meaningful contributions (Geppert and Dörrenbächer, 2014). Consequentially, in order to understand what role MNEs, or any other actor for that matter, play in global governance, we need to conceptualize them as dynamic and complex actors not only and absolutely driven by a priori defined interests. Rather, the boundaries of their action and what MNEs are potentially shift over time as new beliefs emerge against situations which present themselves as novel and critical. This includes but is not limited to the question whether corporate actors are public or private in nature—consider, for example, the role the British East India Company played historically and how this organization related to British public interest (Srivastava, 2022: 70–111). It also pertains to what exactly defines profit, which externalities should be considered in the pursuit thereof, and how these might change over time. In other words, it is important to de-essentialize the nature, actions, and interests of MNEs and consider how these emerge in relations (Hofferberth and Lambach, 2022; Kurki, 2020). Instead of charging MNEs with a priori assumptions, their very own sense-making and response to crisis has to become the focus of reconstruction, carving out space to assess potential change in corporate behavior. Just as IR has deconstructed national interests, the same can be done for corporate interests (Woll, 2010).

To assess and explain potential change in corporate interests and action, I pick up on discussions of ontological crisis and insecurity (Ejdus, 2018) but expand them by drawing on the wider tradition of American Pragmatism and what it has to offer for IR (Ralph, 2023). While there is a long tradition in IR to study crisis (Jervis, 1988), these are frequently framed in statist terms and thus remain limited to questions of national security, misperception, and war (Welch, 2021).⁴ Equally important, as a leitmotif of modernity (Luhmann, 1984: 68; see also Koselleck and Richter, 2006), there is a habit to forebode that “something is in crisis” (i.e. multilateralism (Zürn, 2021), the liberal order (Lake et al., 2021), or global governance as such (Albright and Gambari, 2015)) as we freely frame new and challenging developments as crisis—from the Financial Crisis (Tsilimpounidi, 2016), to the Corona Crisis (Johnson, 2020), to the current polycrisis (Tooze, 2022), to name but a few examples. Put differently, there is an inflationary public and scholarly use of the term, undermining its analytical value and leaving us without a clear crisis concept.⁵ Against the absence of a clear definition, we can initially think of a crisis “as an abnormal and discontinuous feature of narrative rather than a permanent fixture” (Holton, 1987: 504). As such, crises mark escalation and, if not adequately addressed, are untenable in the long run. They are not only moments of uncertainty but mark situations in which an order and its functioning, potentially its very existence, are at threat (Steg, 2020: 430–431).⁶

Among the different traditions that expand on crisis conceptually, American Pragmatism stands out and helps us discuss crises from the perspective of the involved actors. As a “theory of thought and action” (Hellmann, 2009: 638, emphasis added), through the classical work of Peirce, James, Dewey, Addams, and Mead, among many others, this tradition considers crises as situations that fundamentally challenge existing beliefs and thus as moments that potentially produce something genuinely new, constituting the social self in the first place (Oevermann, 2016). More specifically, beliefs as rules-for-action, work “on a credit system [. . .] and pass, ‘so long as nothing challenges them’” (James, 1975 [1907]: 80). Crises then are those situations in which a particular function of social life is no longer able to operate on existing beliefs to meet changing social expectations (Dewey, 1927: 15–16). In such moments, whether consciously perceived or not, there is pressure to reconsider prior judgments about one’s social environment and one’s role within to sustain agency. For the actor, a crisis thus appears as a moment of reflection in which we might “discover goals which had not occurred to us before” (Joas, 1996: 154).⁷ Crises for pragmatists then not only indicate “that something in the social world has gone urgently and inexplicably awry, but that some kind of action can and must be taken in response to this situation” (Milstein, 2015: 147). Focused on the reflective actor able to learn and break with old routines (Ralph, 2023: 86–97), pragmatists contend that crises challenge us to reflect upon the way we act(ed) in our social worlds, what made the crisis happen in the first place, and what new beliefs we can develop to stabilize the situation again. A crisis thus pressures us to reconsider our prior beliefs and judgments about who we are and how we relate to others. This puts the pragmatist concept of crisis beyond the colloquial idea of crisis as a situation of complexity and immediacy. Rather, reflection, developing new beliefs or ongoing commitment to old can take time. Either immediate or slow, crises push actors to consider new beliefs and create something new to continue to act in their social world. In other words, “the urgency for action at the practical level is coupled to a loss of foundation at the doxastic level” (Milstein, 2015: 148).

All of this puts crisis center-stage to the Pragmatism since such moments not only stimulate change but also provide a lens to reconstruct whether and how this happens through the actor. In the first sense, crises are important stimuli for change since routines and existing rules fail to stabilize and return the situation to normal. As we act upon crises, knowingly or not, we likely create new beliefs in order to continue to be able to act and stabilize those into new routines (Roos, 2015: 183–4). As such, crisis can produce something genuinely new (Joas, 1996; Oevermann, 1991). In the second sense, if we can identify whether a situation is a crisis for the involved actors, we can reconstruct their beliefs and determine whether and how they change within.⁸ In order to do so, we need to find those situations in which one’s capacity to act is undermined. In other words, a crisis is not just a moment of reevaluating different courses of action in light of risks against one has to act but rather a moment of doxastic uncertainty that fundamentally challenges agency and the beliefs on which an actor acts (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; see also Beckert, 1996). Drawing on a “sociological optic,” Nelson and Katzenstein (2014: 366–368) emphasize that uncertainty is indeed such an integral part of crisis that actors have to devise creative solutions and strategies beyond simple risk calculations to sustain their agency. This opens space for different normative assessments of crisis—while we generally do not welcome crises and the struggle, contest, as well as the need to make judgment and decisions against them, such situations have also been hailed in critical approaches as “opportunities for transformation or even transcendence” since crises call for something new (Milstein, 2015: 142).

MNEs in crisis—a pragmatist typology

With the notion of crisis introduced in conceptual and normative terms, we can now consider how likely MNEs find themselves in crisis and how it affects them. As entities sui generis, MNEs pursue private profit while challenged to reconcile public expectations as the same time (Mende, 2022; Wolf, 2008). Unlike any other actor group, as archetypes of rational profit maximizers, MNEs epitomize the opportunities and ambiguities a globalized world economy presents. On one hand, they capitalize on governance and wage gaps between states. Their cross-border operations, so they assumption goes, are optimized to minimize costs, hence representing the most efficient form of economic activities. On the other hand, operating in at least two different contexts, MNEs face diverging social, cultural, and legal expectations. As “local players in global games” (Kristensen and Zeitlin, 2005), they have to respond equally to public demands in their home and host country as well as reconcile with transnational watch dog NGOs scrutinizing corporate activities at home and abroad. Their “in-between” existence has further been aggravated by their exposure to and increased involvement in global governance. Given their growth in numbers, size, and influence, it has been argued that MNEs should embrace (more) social responsibilities and play a different role in global governance (Scherer and Palazzo, 2011). However, while frequently involved, corporate governance often remains voluntary. MNEs might be involved, but it is less clear how they engage and whether their involvement has consequences (Hofferberth, 2019a).

While the impact of corporate involvement in global governance remains debated, the very fact that these actors engage in different contexts and relate to others global governors such as intergovernmental organizations (e.g. through the UN Global Compact) or NGOs (e.g. through multistakeholder initiatives such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights) exposes them to new expectations and thus makes crises in the ontological sense discussed earlier more likely. These interactions, whether organized around binding rules or not, have an impact on MNEs since they open space for debate on basic questions such as what defines proper corporate action. In other words, corporate involvement in global governance increases the chances of MNEs experiencing crisis in the pragmatist sense simply because the meaning and scope of their responsibilities is being constantly reexamined and potentially renegotiated. Instead of interacting with shareholders, customers, and competitors, MNEs find themselves in debates on human rights, environmental issues, and labor standards with NGOs and other entities. Instead of being able to limit their action to profit and justify it with shareholder value maximization, these very notions are challenged and renegotiated in light of broader corporate social responsibilities (Woll, 2010).

Against this background, global governance is ripe with moments in which MNEs find themselves in crisis. These come in different ways and can be organized in a 2 × 2 ideal-type matrix in terms of crisis dynamics and crisis origins (Table 1).⁹ In the first dimension, based on the disciplinary recognition and growing research on how time matters (Hom, 2020), I distinguish between crises that are slowly evolving from those that are affecting MNEs in immediate fashion. In everyday language and personal context, we are familiar with the latter notion—crisis as “sudden change, a temporal interruption of a condition of normality” (Tsilimpounidi, 2016: 13). Crisis in this sense is the unknown and unexpected, something that surprises us in unforeseen ways. The affected entity in this perspective is likely to become aware of the crisis since it hits with a sense of urgency and unfolds over a short time horizon (Pierson, 2003: 177–178). As discussed earlier, however, neither urgency nor awareness is required for an actor to be in crisis (i.e. work through the motions of reconsidering and potentially changing beliefs). Rather, crisis can also reflect long-term dynamics beyond a single event as we cannot single out a particular moment but rather need to think its potential for change in the long run (Hopf, 2018). Like glaciers melting slowly, actors can be in crisis for a long time. In such a state, beliefs would remain challenged, and the challenge only exacerbates over time as the actor struggles holding on to old beliefs while simultaneously entertaining new ones. While actors cannot ignore this forever, the crisis would still unfold over time because real-world manifestations occur at a different pace when there is not a single event but incremental increase.¹⁰

Table 1.

The different types of crises involving MNEs.

Crisis originsCrisis dynamics	Endogenous	Exogenous
Slow and long-term	unlikely to engage MNEs in global governance Example: environmental degradation through oil spills in Nigeria since 1960s	moderate chance to engage MNEs in global governance Example: complicity in human rights violations in Indonesia and elsewhere since 1980s
Quick and immediate	moderate chance to engage MNEs in global governance Example: Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico	likely to engage MNEs in global governance Example: Russia invasion of Ukraine in March 2022

As subject to public scrutiny, MNEs are held responsible to legal standards and best practices in their economic activities (Carroll, 1991: 40–41). Thus, in the second dimension, I distinguish crises which are a consequence of business activities from those that are caused by exogenous shocks. Given the volatile and often violent nature of corporate activities, for example, in resource extraction (Rangan and Barton, 2010), it is no surprise that their actions often have negative consequences on local communities, host countries, employees, and even customers. Crises occur if MNEs do not act responsible as an economic actor and manage their externalities in sustainable ways, such as, for example, when oil companies exploited lax environmental regulation in Nigeria and elsewhere since the 1960s (Idemudia, 2017). Established corporate beliefs are more likely to endure in such endogenous crises as the issue relates back to core activities MNEs are engaged in. As such, MNEs can proactively prepare for such crises by foreseeing potential negative outcomes of their economic activities and by placing protocols and routines in place to mediate such impact. However, the increased involvement of MNEs in regulation, through setting global financial and environmental standards, for example (Green, 2014; Vogel, 2008), have expanded the notion of corporate responsibility beyond business activities, arguably turning corporate actors “into political actors, by engaging in public deliberations, collective decisions, and the provision of public goods or the restriction of public bads in cases where public authorities are unable or unwilling to fulfil this role” (Scherer et al., 2016: 276). Against this wider notion, MNEs are likely to not only be scrutinized in terms of their economic activities but brought into question in broader contexts such as COVID-19, working with authoritarian regimes, and (geo-)political conflicts. For example, MNEs were considered complicit in human rights violations as they dealt with protest targeted at their sites and there was significantly more uncertainty how to respond (Ruggie, 2013).

With the matrix established, it is important to remind ourselves that “crisis is a conceptual tool for converting reflexive consciousness of our social world into action” (Milstein, 2015: 155). If one thus combines the two dimensions, we can theorize how likely a crisis triggers different corporate responses in the form of new beliefs and whether and how they matter for future corporate involvement in global governance. Crises stemming endogenously from business activities with little immediacy are unlikely to fundamentally change corporate beliefs. Rather, one can expect that newly emerging beliefs echo the very business logic that created the crisis in the first place as MNEs stay in their doxastic comfort zone (Hofferberth, 2019b). In other words, crises originating in economic activities, specifically against a slow unfolding timeline, are likely to remain limited in their effects on MNEs and not change their role in global governance. Corporate responses likely include voluntary initiatives or engaging in self-regulation rather than committing to anything binding. On the flipside, an exogenous crisis quickly unfolding and cutting right into corporate responsibilities and their role in global governance is likely to foster new beliefs about what it means to be and act as an MNE. Corporate responses are likely to include radical measures such as divestment and engaging in further political activities. These reflect something new and, as such, potentially reveal corporate beliefs to play a more engaged role in global governance. This logic, I contend, is applicable to all global governors, implying that states as well as non-state and intergovernmental organizations face different crises. These crises are likely to play out as crises in the pragmatist sense, meaning that they resolve into new beliefs as rules-for-action, if they unfold quickly and challenge what kind of responsibilities one has to meet. As ontological crises, these critical situations raise fundamental questions for the actors in terms of who they are (Ejdus, 2018: 886–893). The next section will introduce Russia’s invasion as a rapidly unfolding corporate crisis that cut deep, offering us a lens into the changing normative foundations MNEs act upon.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as corporate crisis

While the causes and consequences of the Ukraine War remain debated (Mearsheimer, 2022), its impact on world politics is evident and will likely become a major intellectual reference point for IR in years to come. If and how it matters for MNEs, however, is less clear. As early as 25th February, these were drawn into conflict when Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister as well as Minister of Digital Transformation, reached out, in rather strong tone and with clear expectations, to the CEOs of tech firms such as Apple, Google, Meta, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft and called on them to “do everything possible to protect Ukraine, Europe, and, finally, the entire democratic world from bloody authoritarian aggression”.¹¹ Calls to cease operations and foreign investments in Russia were soon voiced beyond the tech sector and included all MNEs with investments in Russia. In addition, the role of MNEs became more prevalent with each wave of new economic sanctions put into place (van Bergeijk, 2022). Public scrutiny has also galvanized through the Yale School of Management project “tracking the responses of well over 1,200 companies, and counting” to highlight differences between MNEs which “have publicly announced they are voluntarily curtailing operations in Russia to some degree beyond the bare minimum legally required by international sanctions [while shaming others that] have continued to operate in Russia undeterred.”¹²

The pressure of this “shaming list,” in conjunction with solidarity calls and public support for Ukraine throughout the first months of the war, has led many MNEs to pull out of Russia.¹³ Whether such divestment is the best answer remains debated, with those morally inclined arguing that it behoofs responsible enterprises to make business with authoritarian regimes at war while others, potentially more cynical, argue that business is specifically lucrative in such contexts. Either way, given the unprecedentedness of the invasion and the compelling call from Ukrainian officials in its immediate wake, it marked a crisis to which MNEs had to respond in rather short notice. Business as usual, it seemed, was not an option. At the same time, while investing in Russia in the first place was an economic choice, the pressure to divest did not come from any particular business activity but stemmed exogenously from the simple fact that they operated there and that their foreign direct investments supported an authoritarian regime now engaged in a geopolitically motivated war against the West. While conflict, in general, has devastating impact on economic activities (Brück et al., 2013: 9–11), the drawn-out nature of this war and the fact that the Russian population is not directly affected by it in everyday life makes the role MNEs play within even more complicated. Arguably, the normative environment in which MNEs operate has changed rather quickly and decisively through the war. At the same time, it remains less clear what the conflict means to MNEs, what role they play within, and how to respond to it moving forward.

Case selection

The Ukraine invasion marks a particularly compelling crisis for the extractive sector because such MNEs cannot avoid it nor are there any easy solutions. Bound by geographic imperatives, divestments for extractive MNEs like Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, or BP imply long-term loss of profit. In addition, initial investments were large in size, asset-specific, and are non-transferable (e.g. licenses to explore, extraction sites, and refineries), implying an immediate economic loss when divesting away from them. Moreover, extractive MNEs represent large organizations present in consumers’ minds since they are, for the most part, vertically integrated to include the complete value chain from exploration to processing to distribution to sales at the pump. As such, crises of extractive MNEs have invested publics. Finally, extractive MNEs rely heavily on host governments granting rights and licenses for exploration and drilling (Gillies, 2010: 104–106). In the Russian context, the extractive sector thus received and continues to receive specific scrutiny because they cooperate closely with state-owned companies. Taken together, the extractive sector marks a methodologically compelling case to consider how the Ukraine crisis affects MNEs and whether new beliefs emerge from it.

Among the extractive MNEs operating in Russia, Shell and ExxonMobil stand out for three reasons. First, ranked by revenue, both are listed in the Top Ten of the Global Forbes 500.¹⁴ Their size alone gives them a certain weight as their investment decisions enable or cancel multi-million-dollar operations. Second, each of these enterprises has been operating on a large scale in Russia prior to the invasion. This involved close cooperation with different state-owned enterprises. Shell is part of the joint venture into Sakhalin-2 with Gazprom, whereas ExxonMobil has been involved in the so-called Sakhalin-1 fields in cooperation with Rosneft. Both joint operations started in the early 2000s and historically have been massive investments as well as revenue sources for the two enterprises (Bradshaw, 2010: 344–345). Third, the two enterprises operate out of different home countries which contribute to different responses as stated in the above-mentioned Yale School of Management project. While Shell only scaled back operations, ExxonMobil has been graded as withdrawing from Russia. More specifically, ExxonMobil on 1 March 2022, issued a statement to discontinue operations and made no further investments in Russia.¹⁵ Shell, however, has only stated to stop all spot purchases of Russian crude oil while investments into liquefied natural gas (LNG) continued “in a phased manner.”¹⁶ Facing the same retribution from customers and global watchdog NGOs, their respective home country positions to the invasion matter and each is expected to bring up different topics such as regional energy supply versus threats to the global order. The next section outlines how their responses can be reconstructed in methodological terms.

Reconstructing MNEs in crises—Ukraine and beyond

As argued earlier, actors hold beliefs that guide their current and future action. These beliefs originate from, exist in, and over time contribute to a socially shared universe of meaning, determining boundaries of what is acceptable action in any given situation (Mead, 1934 [1967] Section 12). In crises, these boundaries are likely to be reconsidered and potentially shift. As private and public entities facing diverse expectations, MNEs rely on these beliefs to guide their action against the indeterminacy of their existence just as much as any other global governor in world politics. In contrast to other actors, however, MNEs are committed to communicating with their shareholders and customers through corporate statements and reports to distinguish themselves from competitors. Targeted at different audiences including but not limited to consumers, employees, and investors, with the main intention to present the enterprise in favorable terms, these statements and reports are vetted by public relations departments and legal experts before being published. That said, they still express corporate beliefs since they reflect and respond to challenges and constraints MNEs face. As such, corporate documents against crisis, when read critically, represent more than cheap talk. Each document shared publicly, implicitly or explicitly, outlines what the enterprise is, which responsibilities it assumes, which values it holds, how it defines the crisis, how it responds to it, and how it justifies the emergence of new or restabilization of old beliefs (Sabel and Zeitlin, 1997).

To systematically capture all documents, media releases addressing the crisis as well as all business activities of the two cases in Russia between February 2022 and September 2023 were considered.¹⁷ Corroborated and triangulated with data from the Yale School of Management project mentioned earlier as well as through website and social media analysis, this produced seven different official documents for Shell. ExxonMobil, notably, only produced one such piece during the same period. In addition to these immediate and thematically focused responses, both MNEs annually report on CSR and the enterprise’s social impact more broadly. Shell organizes their reporting in three different annual outlets (Annual Report, Sustainability Report, Energy Transition Report), for which respective iterations from 2022 were considered. ExxonMobil, however, organizes its corporate reporting in two outlets (Annual Reports, Advancing Climate Solutions Progress Report). At least for Shell, these also, in one way or another, addressed the Ukraine crisis. By doing so, the reports outlined roles and responsibilities, specified how Shell framed and responded to this crisis, as well as defined how to relate to other conflicts and conflict parties in the future. Arguments made in these documents can be condensed into sets of beliefs that define Shell and ExxonMobil as global governors and demarcate the extent to which they are engaged within.

Documents were read through “sequential analysis” (Maiwald, 2005; Oevermann, 2000). According to this interpretive text method, statements were understood as concatenations of sequences. Each sequence, as the smallest particles of meaning, opens a scope of possible interpretations. In order to derive these, conditions under which the given sequence makes sense are spelled out in detail. This is compared to what sequences could meaningfully follow. By carefully contrasting the first sequence and its potential meaning with those that are realized in consecutive sequences, this close reading allows for the reconstruction of beliefs that have influenced the author to choose particular meaning at the time of producing the document. With every new sequence, promising readings hitherto plausible are ruled out until the concatenation of choices coalesces around recurring beliefs. This particular realization of certain meanings through sequential unfolding can be retraced by the researcher and aggregated into a case structure that reflects a deeper set of beliefs held by the document’s author. As a disciplining method to engage material, sequence analysis forces the researcher to read slowly and critically, challenging one’s initial interpretations, and ensuring that qualitative data are not just mined for pieces useful to advance one’s argumentation. Rather, proceeding sequence by sequence and considering the meaning of each expressed through their specific opening and closing, CSR reports and media releases are analyzed as logged manifestations of how Shell and ExxonMobil understand and respond to the crisis which is spelled out in the next section (Oevermann, 2000: 69–70).

Case findings and implications for MNEs in global governance

In the following, insights from the sequential analyses are presented for each enterprise separately. The documents interpreted are also further contextualized and discussed in terms of their intended audiences.¹⁸ Notably, the analysis includes corporate reports as well as online statements and, in the case of Shell, also a series of tweets. While advanced in different modalities, I argue that each can be read as a manifestation of corporate beliefs and thus reveals whether and how the crisis affected the respective MNE. While Shell responds to the crisis in immediate and routinized communication, ExxonMobil only does so in the timely release of one statement. This does not disqualify ExxonMobil as a case but rather leads to the important conclusion that the enterprise rejects to engage with the crisis for the time being. The immediacy of the crisis, however, pushes the enterprise to respond to the invasion nevertheless while it has yet to find a way to solve the deeper challenges that stem from it over the long-term. In other words, the ExxonMobil case highlights contradictions in how MNEs deal with short-term, exogenous crisis and reveals how incomplete and unfinished they remain as global governors (Hofferberth, 2019a).

“Difficult choices and potential consequences”—Shell’s reluctance to engage the crisis

In terms of immediate crisis responses, Shell issued two press releases (28th February 2022 and 8th March 2022). In-between, the enterprise communicates through a series of tweets (4th March 2022) and issues another statement exclusively shared on social media (5th March 2022). In these statements and tweets, as presented in Table 2, Shell frames the crisis as challenging and complex. The enterprise assumes a limited role within and spells out its own responsibilities exclusively based on an economic logic of supply and demand. This limited engagement is justified by the importance of Shell and the severity of the crisis—in order to maintain energy supply, Shell needs to do what it does best as an enterprise even if that includes unpopular decisions such as the continuation of limited activities in Russia. To unpack this further, throughout the statements, corporate action in response to the crisis is framed as difficult. Ultimately, Shell accepts its inability to contribute to solving the crisis. This inability translates into a reluctance to act upon the crisis and assume broader responsibilities in what is presented as unfortunate developments which Shell cannot stop. It is further justified by the economic contribution that Shell offers, which includes “keeping energy flowing and the world going.” While the crisis marks a disruption, Shell, if allowed to focus on its core business competencies, can mediate its economic consequences and as such at least limit its impact outside of Ukraine. This logic is used throughout to rhetorically justify that Shell cannot become engaged in other ways. Other responses to the crisis remain limited despite awareness that this, in conjunction with continuing business operations, will expose Shell to public criticism. Table 2 translates these beliefs into corresponding rules for action to guide Shell.

Table 2.

Shell’s immediate crisis responses, beliefs, and corresponding rules for action.

Type of crisis communication	Expressed belief	Corresponding rules for action
Immediate responses	Crisis is challenging and corporate agency is limited	• Emphasize complexity and challenges • Accept inability to respond decisively
	An economic logic of supply and demand is the appropriate answer for Shell to the crisis	• Operate within an economic logic • Frame crisis as disruption • Do not cut business with Russia altogether or in rushed manner
	Shell’s economic importance immunizes it against moral and political responsibilities	• Recognize crisis only rhetorically and make sure commitments remain limited • Do not address humanitarian dimension • Accept public criticism for decisions

While these responses were made in publicly available documents or on social media, it is important to consider their potential audiences and how the enterprise frames the communication. All documents were “triggered” by an economic decision such as exiting equity partnerships with Gazprom entities and phasing out of oil and gas production in Russia altogether. Arguably, these are economic frames to begin with and thus help the enterprise express and sustain beliefs informed by logic of supply and demand distinct from political responsibilities. This also echoes with concerns expressed by Western European countries which remain dependent on Russia in many ways and fear(ed) risking their energy supply. In other words, despite the exogenous and rather immediate nature of the crisis, Shell framed its response in ways that are compatible with and relate to societal concerns (Garton Ash et al., 2023: 4). At least in the early stages of the crisis, these concerns were present and Shell caters to them directly. On a related note, the series of tweets seem somewhat more reactive to public pressure and less “streamlined.” Notably, however, on the next day, they are condensed into a full social media statement that expresses the same beliefs found in the other two press releases and thus add up to the same conclusion.

Shell’s regular reporting in its annual reports echoes and reinforces the very same beliefs but also expand on the role of Shell in global governance as it develops a routine to frame the crisis in a particular way. It does so by defining its corporate role and responsibilities in long-term perspective and positions the enterprise in relation to other global governors, taking away the immediacy of the crisis and realigning the experience with existing beliefs. Following the same economic imperatives, Shell limits its responsibility in light of the Russian invasion to keeping energy flowing. With some distance to the immediate events, the annual reports reveal a conservative enterprise rejecting to engage with or contribute to solving the crisis. In lieu of using its leverage against Russia and become involved, Shell constructs a larger environment involving other global governors which are better suited to do so. In addition to its employees, who need to be protected, this includes nation states and humanitarian organizations. Those are better suited to deal with the politics of the crisis and Shell values their guidance and contributions. When cooperating with them, Shell is even willing to support them in their action. At the same time, Shell clearly communicates that its own activities (have to) remain purely driven by an economic logic. To find this in their regular reporting is specifically important since it marks the enterprise’s attempt to transition from crisis back to routine. In this process, the crisis did not fundamentally change what Shell is and what it does. Rather, as summarized in Table 3, the enterprise uses familiar frames and meanings in their regular to make sense of the crisis and attempts to restabilize those going forward.

Table 3.

Shell’s routinized crisis responses, beliefs, and corresponding rules for action.

Type of crisis communication	Expressed belief	Corresponding rules for action
Regular reporting	An economic logic of supply and demand is appropriate to define what Shell is and does	• Do not let the crisis interfere with your primary economic responsibilities • Focus on economic consequences rather than political dynamics or solutions • Keep energy flowing at all costs since this is what Shell does • Limit action to quick fixes and be cautious about other responsibilities
Regular reporting	Shell operates in conjunction with other global governors and each plays a different role	• Commit to your employees and stay out of conflict as much as possible • Confirm responsibility of others such as states and humanitarian organizations • Only step outside of an economic logic when working with others and only do so in very limited fashion

“To ensure the integrity of operations”—ExxonMobil’s rejection to engage the crisis

Given that there is only one statement available, ExxonMobil fundamentally rejects to engage with the crisis. This is noteworthy since the enterprise, according to Yale School of Management project, acted more decisively since it is not only scaled back but completely withdrew from any joint venture or investment with Rosneft. Despite this decision, there are no references to Ukraine or Russia in ExxonMobil’s reports in 2022 and 2023. Hence, the interpretation of the ExxonMobil case is solely based on one statement made in immediate response to the crisis on 1 March 2022. In this statement, it becomes very clear that the world of politics is reserved for nation states and ExxonMobil can only support this through its economic action. Politics and economics are framed as separate spheres and the specific crisis is solely confined to nation states. In other words, it does not affect what kind of enterprise ExxonMobil is and what responsibilities it should exercise despite the fact that it acts quickly. The decision to withdraw is justified solely in economic terms, ensuring the safety of its people and integrity of its operations. There is also hope that this is only a temporary setback and reinvestments into Russia, once they are brought back in into the community of peace-loving states, are at least entertained. In other words, it is not the specific government or the actions Russia took that made ExxonMobil divest. Rather, it is the simple yet compelling fact that economic operations, given the current climate, are not feasible or profitable.

The expressed beliefs and their corresponding rules for action outlined in Table 4 can further be interpreted as intentional move and performative act of silence (Guillaume and Schweiger, 2018: 100–107). Accordingly, the rejection to engage with the crisis implies a non-yielding to its challenge as the enterprise continues to work through it. In other words, the clearness in which ExxonMobil expresses its beliefs does not respond to the ambiguity and uncertainty of the crisis and thus limits the enterprise to only be silent about it. Relating this back to the typology of crises, despite the exogenous and rather immediate nature of the crisis and the fundamental challenges this poses to what kind of enterprise ExxonMobil is, it chooses to avoid such discussions, at least for the time being. Notably, it does not do so by completely ignoring the crisis but by trying to reframe it into an economic logic by restating its existing beliefs to sustain them throughout the crisis. The following section discusses this observation as well as Shell’s case and relates both to broader implications for MNEs and their role(s) in global governance.

Table 4.

ExxonMobil’s immediate crisis response, beliefs, and corresponding rules for action.

Type of crisis communication	Expressed belief	Corresponding rules for action
Immediate response	The crisis is a crisis of states and does not affect what kind of enterprise ExxonMobil is	• Frame operations in economic terms only to not get involved in politics • Emphasize state responsibility to provide for Ukraine and solve crisis • Only play a supportive role and do not accept further responsibilities
Immediate response	The business of business is business and ExxonMobil’s responsibilities are economic	• Pay lip-service to moral sentiments but do not translate them into corporate obligations or specific responsibilities • Divest from the crisis since it is economically not feasible to stay • Seek alternative investment opportunities elsewhere

Case comparison

Despite the theoretical claim that MNE represents private and public entities in global governance and that their responsibilities potentially became blurred recently along these lines (Scherer and Palazzo, 2011), at least in their response to the crisis of Russia invading Ukraine, we see two enterprises very much aware of this distinction, carefully navigating and avoiding broader responsibilities. At the risk of alienating a critical public, beliefs expressed by both Shell and ExxonMobil strongly distinguish political from economic spheres and accept only the later as appropriate for MNEs to operate in. In an eerie reminder of corporate violations of human rights during the 1990s and the inability to accept responsibility for it (Ruggie, 2013), neither enterprise is engaging with the crisis nor allows this event to trigger any wider debate on who they are as enterprises. It almost seems that, despite the immediacy and foundational challenge of the crisis, that 30 years of CSR discourse in-between have not changed how they respond to the invasion (Kinderman, 2012). There is no evidence of broader acceptance of a more engaged role in which either is willing to become involved and contribute to solving the crisis. There is also no discussion of public accountability or allowing other global governors to assess what the enterprises are doing as has been suggested (and demanded) by more explicit CSR frameworks (Ramasastry, 2015).

Notably, there are differences between the two enterprises in terms of how they respond to the crisis in corporate decisions and yet both represent a strong commitment to existing beliefs. In fact, despite the fact that ExxonMobil responded to the invasion in more decisive ways than Shell, their beliefs resonate even stronger with not becoming involved in political conflict. In other words, neither of the two enterprises is willing to let the crisis grow on them in terms of changing their beliefs in light of it. Whether this is attainable in the long run remains to be seen. For the time being, however, it implies a reluctance on corporate global governors to accept any new role and live up to broader expectations the public might express. If not in an exogenous, immediate, and thus fundamental and compelling crisis such as the Russian invasion, it raises the question when to expect MNEs to become engaged global governors and operate on such wider social responsibilities. With Shell and ExxonMobil expressing beliefs that allows them to avoid further scrutiny and use the distinction between political commitments and economic activities in their favor, it leaves them in a comfortable position. As global governors allowed to choose when and how to become involved while otherwise limited to (self-)regulation without binding commitments, it seems that the managerial logic inherent in global governance serves MNEs rather well (Sinclair, 2012; see also Franke and Hofferberth, 2022).

To reiterate the argument, crises hold the potential to change beliefs an actor holds. It is up to the socially embedded, creative actor, however, to allow a crisis to grow on them in such a way or not. We can imagine an actor to make sense of a novel situation by holding on to sedimented beliefs if these are strong enough. As to MNEs, these beliefs imply the prioritization of economic rationales, the desire to stay immunized against public expectations and political conflicts, and not embrace any further, let alone binding responsibilities. What does this mean for the broader involvement of MNEs in global governance? In order to change these actors and engage them meaningfully (i.e. in a sense that they accept and act on shared responsibilities), other actors have to aggravate a crisis by calling out what (and what not) these actors do in response. If the same beliefs creating a crisis in the first place (i.e. profit maximization over public responsibility) help the enterprise to “solve” it by stabilizing old habits and routines, corporate involvement in global governance will remain limited and ultimately with little impact. MNEs might be more involved, but it accounts for little more than new ways of lobbying against voluntary, non-binding self-regulation. At the same time, “to impute to the leaders of industry and commerce simply an acquisitive motive is not merely to lack insight into their conduct, but it is to lose the clew to bettering conditions” (Dewey, 1922: 146). In other words, doxastic uncertainty in crisis can be used to accelerate MNE integration into global governance and make it more meaningful. These and other findings are discussed in the following conclusion in terms of how they matter for IR.

Conclusion and outlook

World politics is ripe with if not fundamentally constituted by the notion of being in crisis. Yet IR in its academic reflections has not spelled out a clear concept. Rather, it often follows the habit of practitioners and pundits alike to call out crisis to describe a new and challenging situation. As such, IR has not taken advantage of crises as lenses into the sense-making of its main protagonists. Specifically, it has not studied global governors in crisis, at least not in the pragmatists sense of the word. Such a focus frames crises as moments in which actors are challenged in their beliefs and allows us to ideal-typically distinguish different crises based on their dynamics and origins. Against such crises, in particular exogenous and immediate ones, how actors respond reveals how they make sense of the world around them. They also provide a window into what the actor deems appropriate for future action. In other words, it is not so much the explicit framing of a situation as a crisis or the perception of crisis as such by the involved actors that matters. As suggested in securitization theory (Balzacq, 2019), a crisis framing is often deliberately used by an actor to justify extraordinary measures in response. A pragmatist reconceptualization of the notion, however, allows the researcher to reconstruct if and how an actor responds to normative change and copes with doxastic uncertainty by either stabilizing old or developing new beliefs (Ejdus, 2018; Roos, 2015). This is particularly fruitful for studying MNEs in global governance, whose action and interests are often taken for granted along the lines of profit maximization but at the same time face new expectations against global publics. Reconstruct their sense-making in and of crisis thus provides a lens into their current role in global governance as well as future action. In fact, a pragmatist-inspired reconceptualization of MNEs helps challenge dominant understandings of these actors as rational and profit-driven by revealing the ambiguities of their role in global governance and help us reconstruct what other contributions to world order they make.

The Ukraine war presents itself as a fundamental and compelling crisis for MNEs to respond to, specifically because of its quickly unfolding dynamics and the fact that it confronts corporate actors with (geo-)political discussions otherwise exogenous to their business activities. As such, this crisis fundamentally challenges corporate beliefs as it did with IR at large (Mälksoo, 2022). The findings of the sequential analyses, however, reveal two enterprises reluctant to frame this crisis in any other way than an economic logic which suits them best to stay immunized against further social expectations. Against 30 years of ongoing discussions on CSR and the inherent claim that MNEs play a different role in a globalized economy (Carroll, 1991; Crane and Matten, 2021), the case studies on Shell and ExxonMobil suggest to be rather cautious about whether and how MNEs respond to changes in their normative environment and new social expectations advanced toward them. Their current beliefs seem to provide them with enough to carry on acting as if the crisis did not happen. This is more than cheap talk, however, since it reveals global governors otherwise unwilling to engage. Despite MNEs being private and public entities, these findings suggest that in order to integrate them meaningfully into global governance, there has to be more than currently exercised in its loose, non-accountable moralizing of corporate actors hoping that their simple involvement changes who they are and on what deeper beliefs they act, in crisis and beyond (Holzer, 2010).

Further research needs to look into other corporate crises to corroborate these findings. While the case selection for this article was driven by the assumption that exogenous, immediate crises are more likely to change corporate beliefs, it would be helpful to consider other crises with different dynamics and origins as listed in Table 1. How, for example, do Shell and ExxonMobil respond to climate change and redefine their responsibilities beyond fossil energy in such debates? Also, while MNEs constitute an important actor group in global governance, there is much ground to cover in reconceptualizing crisis as a heuristic tool for International Relations (IR) to investigate other actors, their crises, and whether they hold on to their beliefs as well. The typology of crises based on dynamics and origins can be used to (re-)classify different contexts to then see whether and how comprehensively different global governors—states, intergovernmental or non-governmental organizations—respond to them. In other words, the pragmatist-inspired focus on crisis allows us to critically reconstruct beliefs from textual representation and thus marks a renewed commitment to interpretive research method(ologie)s. The biggest rebuttal of the cheap talk argument is when we find nuanced differences expressed in beliefs held that add to our understanding of what kind of entities we have in global governance. In the end, we have answers to who governs the globe (Avant et al., 2010), we have an emerging understanding of how they govern the globe (Pouliot and Thérien, 2023), but there is plenty to discover in terms of their foundational beliefs that motivates them as global governors and are used to sustain their agency. Whether these change or not determines whether we should wish for MNEs to be(come) global governors.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-ejt-10.1177_13540661241279787 – Supplemental material for Crisis in world politics. Corporate roles and responses in the Ukraine war and beyond

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ejt-10.1177_13540661241279787 for Crisis in world politics. Corporate roles and responses in the Ukraine war and beyond by Matthias Hofferberth in European Journal of International Relations

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Matthias Hofferberth

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author biography

Matthias Hofferberth is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science & Geography at the University of Texas, San Antonio. His research and teaching focuses on global governance and the emergence of agency and world order(ing) beyond the nation state. This includes a long-term interest in the role of multinational enterprises in world politics. His articles have been published in International Studies Review, Global Studies Quarterly, Global Governance, and elsewhere, while his most recent edited volume, Corporate Actors in Global Governance, was published by Lynne Rienner in 2020. He also serves as the faculty advisor of Model UN, has a strong interest in experiential learning as well as equitable pedagogies, and has led the creation and administration of the Global Affairs MA program.

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