Sustaining the Oil and Gas Multinationals’ Operations Through Corporate Social Responsibility Practices

The objective of this study is to provide empirical evidence from the perspective of prudent corporate social responsibility practices by oil and gas multinationals in emerging economies on how investments in and disclosure of the practices can enhance nancial sustainability. Accounting-based measures on investments, nancial performance, disclosures of activities and panel data set on company size (total assets) over a 10-year period (t) were analysed. Findings show that multinationals with interests in emerging economies take key aspects of their corporate social responsibility practices seriously. There was a signicant positive relationship (p=0.0035<0.05) between investments in corporate social responsibility practices and sustainability of nancial performance. No signicant relationship (p=0.4409 > 0.05) was established between disclosure and nancial performance. The paper concludes, by supporting the preposition with scientic data, that functional corporate social responsibility practices yield sustained dividend by presenting a stronger nancial outlook for multinational oil and gas companies who engage in it. This is prudent for poverty alleviation initiatives and key to achieving the sustainable development goals and targets in emerging economies where they operate.


Introduction And Background To The Study
The oil and gas industry is one that asserts itself towards business ethics for sustainability. Key amongst the evolving code of practices the sector is paying particular attention to include stakeholder rights, environmental protection, product stewardship, nancial transparency, corruption, community relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) [1,2,3]. Per the Global reporting initiative (GRI) and the United Nations' Global Compact Report [4], oil and gas multinationals have demonstrated active leadership roles in developing good corporate practices and codes of conduct in their work environment leveraging different sectors of society where they have interest. The participation of ChevronTexaco, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP-Amoco, ENI, Occidental and Total-Fina-Elf, all with interests and investments in emerging economies [4], attest to this. Their activities can be seen, especially in Africa, as key off-takers of labour, transfer of foreign direct investment (FDI) and agents of skills and technology transfer [4]. These companies account for a large share of state revenues in these economies where their operations persist [5,6]. Thus, development interventions through programmes in education, health, commerce, energy, agriculture, transport, and infrastructure by oil in many emerging countries cannot be ignored [7,8,9,10].
Although one would have assumed that the 'Acts of God' which drive oil companies to act socially responsible are bone out of mere benevolence to society, [11] a rms that these oil and gas multinationals engage in supernormal profitable ventures with CSR as cover-ups. From the stakeholder theory perspective, however, functional CSR will boost a company's external image and leverage its exceptional comparative marketing prawns' merits among the increasing socially conscious consumers, leading to sustained revenue generation of firms in the long run [12]. There is compelling evidence to suggest that oil and gas multinationals could gain financially and in kind from CSR activities [13,14,15,16]. Whilst some promoters of CSR argue favourably for the business pro tability case, another school of thought is of the view that oil and gas multinational, neck-deep in CSR activities, may eventually depart from their main mandate of operating environmentally friendly oil and gas businesses and rather use CSR (economic gains) as a mere superficial window-dressing [17,13,18] to cover up environmental damage and sociatal neglect. Ample evidence, however, abounds to suggest that Tullow Oil Public Limited Company (PLC), as a multinational company, has made signi cant investments in education and local content development to empower local businesses in Ghana and Uganda [13,19,20,21,22]. In Angola, Chevron Texaco and British Petroleum (BP) multinational giants have committed signi cant resources in the development of education and in combating the acquired immune de ciency syndrome (AIDS) whilst Eni, Shell, Chevron Texaco, Total and Petro China have made signi cantly impact on Nigeria's gross domestic product (GDP) growth trajectories. These multinationals in Nigeria also run a number of community development programmes in education, health, agriculture and transportation [23,19,20,21]. BP-Amoco and Shell have leveraged South Africa's economy in terms of capital and technology transfer, market provision for their exports and supply of imports while PETRONAS, ExxonMobil and Eni have been the revenue backbone to Chad, Gabon, Sudan and South Sudan, Gabon, Algeria and Libya's economies with Elf and ExxonMobil serving as the main sources of revenue, major employment off-taker and a strong GDP contributor to the growth of Congo and Equatorial Guinea's economies [20,23,24].
The underlying question this study seeks to peruse is, what is it that motivates oil and gas multinationals to invest so much resources in CSR that needs to be disclosed? The goal of this study is to adduce empirical evidence, from the perspective of CSR activities and practices of multinationals in emerging economies, to ascertain how investments in and disclosure of CSR practices in uence nancial performance of their operations in emerging economies using accounting-based methods. Speci cally, the study identi ed and examined CSR practices of oil and gas multinationals and assessed the relationship between CSR disclosure practices and nancial performance of the multinationals with investments in Africa, and how this can sustain nancial performance. To achieve these objectives, three key compelling questions are raised to elicit responses deemed relevant, as based on the preposition of the study: -(i), What are these CSR practices and activities of the multinationals; (ii), How does CSR disclosure practices in uence nancial performance; and (iii), In what ways will investments in CSR enhance sustainability in nancial performance? Apart from immensely contributing to bridging literature gap on CSR activities in these economies, especially Africa, this study is expected to enhance understanding of the relationship between investments in CSR practices, disclosures and financial sustainability of the companies' operations. Furthermore, the outcome of this study will be useful for managers and decision makers to develop transparent social performance policies that may lead to the sustainability of oil and gas multinationals' operations.
2 Is Corporate Social Responsibility (Csr) Relevant?
With turn of this millennium, the concept of CSR has generated a lot of headlines, and is seen as one, where companies are keen on integrating social and environmental concerns into their business operations and frequent interactions with their stakeholders on voluntary basis [25]. To explain the main idea behind this, [26] argue that although CSR activities tend to re ects both the social imperatives and consequences of business success, with the responsibility lying within the preview of the rm, its implementation and direction of responsibility, would be determined, to a great extent by the discretion of the business's nancial performance. Per this assertion, the mandatory aspect of CSR is invoked, and that businesses have direct responsibility towards engaging society to solve problems [27,28]. In recent times, CSR has been interpreted by another school of thought as one that embraces the triple bottom-line concept; people, planet and pro t (PPP) [27,28,29]. This conception widens the scope of CSR to include a range of criteria useful for measuring the success of an economic entity investing in CSR activities. Thus, beyond oil and gas multinationals maximizing pro t, they are better placed to play critical roles in engaging communities within their jurisdiction of operations to solve societal problems, including poverty alleviation. It is also seen as a differentiation strategy by rms that may have positive effect on value creation for their establishments and bene ts for clients, and with the potential to improve on the rms' own nancial performance in the long run [30,31].

Theoretical concepts
This study has its underpinnings in the CSR instrumental theory (IT) which focus on rms achieving their economic goals through social interventions [32,33]. The goal, according to the proponents, is to maximize shareholders' value in the long term, position social investment in the context of competition and see their dynamic capabilities in the exploitation of natural resources (hydrocarbons) as altruistic and a cause-related marketing tool. This may help to explain why some school of thought see investments in CSR and disclosure of same with the expectation to improve the nancial performance of companies [34,35]. Why multinationals undertake CSR activities, the types of investments they engage in and what is considered as social responsibility (respect for the environment, human and labour rights), may as well, according to [36], be founded on both ethical and integrative theoretical domains of CSR. Ethical theories lay the foundation and entreat rms to do the right thing for the good of society based on universal rights and the common good. According to [32,33], it takes into consideration duciary duties to stakeholders of the business (labour rights, human rights, and respect for the environment). The goal is to achieve human development with consideration of the present and future generations. The integrative perspective builds on a rm's public responsibility, management issues, management of stakeholders and a rm's corporate social performance to respond to how businesses respond to political and social issues, existing policy process and law for social performance, creating a balance between the interest of a business's stakeholders and searching for social legitimacy and ways to give the right response to social issues.
Within the enlightened shareholder (ES) approach, there is also emerging evidence to suggest that rms could gain nancially and in kinds from CSR activities [13,15]. In this regard, oil and gas multinationals need to consider a wide range of social and environmental matters if they are to maximize long-term nancial returns [37]. Critics of CSR, however, have argued on the contrary that rms spending monies on CSR activities may be distracted from their fundamental economic mandate and see such ventures as mere super cial window-dressing [36,37]. They argue that once CSR is not priced, strict compliance expected to have the same rate of returns may be bedevilled with the risk of cost of equity capital [37,38].
To buttress, their argument, another school of thought [39,40], have argued that pricing of CSR issues cannot be given on theoretical grounds only. This paper shares in this reasoning and agrees with the proponents that it will ultimately depend on investors' perception of the relevance of the CSR's goals and principles in the end.

Corporate social responsibility disclosure and nancial performance
The legitimacy theory (LT) of CSR is the foundation of rms disclosing their CSR activities [41]. Oil and gas multinationals are expected to operate in an environment with the implied notion of a social pact on which survival of the companies will thrive [42]. Their legitimacy to operate in the society is signalled by them to engage in and make signi cant disclosure of their CSR activities, which according to [42], also has the potential to serve as a channel for the multinationals to advertise themselves, instil competition, ensure sustainability and maintain a good public image. In other words, CSR disclosures enable rms to avoid adverse selection risks, access the capital markets and gain support of the community and their customers through awareness of products and services promotion [43,44]. In all of these oil and gas multinationals with presence in emerging economies, especially Africa, have demonstrated their potentials.

Measuring corporate social responsibility and sustainability of nancial Outlook
According to [1,5,45,46], measuring the relationship between CSR and corporate nancial performance can be achieved using either the accounting or market-based methods, each with its own strength and challenges. Whereas [1,35,45] choose to perform such measurement using the return on Assets (ROA) ratio, the return on equity (ROE), return on sales (ROS), return on investments (ROI) and pro t margin (PM) nancial ratios [46,47,48] could also be used to measure the pro tability of different companies in establishing a relationship between CSR, nancial performance (FP) and rm size. According to [36,49], these measures help to provide a re ection of the internal e ciency of a company's operations. Although accounting measures are widely employed due to the ease of calculation and understanding, operationalization of the method is based on historical gures of performance and may be subject to bias through managerial in uence and certain differences in accounting procedures [39,49,50].
With the market-based measure, the rm's share performance is used to determine the relationship between CSR and Corporate nancial performance. A study by [51,52,53] evaluated the stock market performance of socially responsible rms by considering a combination of aggregate buy-and-hold portfolios and individual stocks did not nd any signi cant advantage from their CSR in relation to corporate nancial performance. In another study researchers did comparisons between movements in the share price of socially responsible multinational establishments [51,54,55] and non-socially responsible ones based on CSR impact, results did indicate positive share price movements for multinationals that employ effective and credible stakeholder management [53,54]. It can be concluded that market-based measures have the advantage of being less susceptible to managerial in uences [1,45,52]. Again, this method has the advantage of being used to evaluate perceptions of a company's future performance as opposed to historical events. Stock performance may thus be clear indication of how investors view the operations of a company [53,54,55] into the future.

Disclosure of CSR activities and reporting
Comparative analysis of CSR activity disclosures among different types of industries may differ. Very low levels of CSR reporting activities are however recorded in emerging economies [23]. Disclosure levels of listed companies in Nigeria [41] and Ghana's brewery [56] industries were generally low. According to a survey by [21], disclosure of CSR activities by rms increased worldwide from 50% in 2005 to 95% in 2011 and have since become one of the benchmarks for ensuring sustainability in the extractive industry.
Most of the rms reporting on CSR were found within the multinational oil and gas industry and attributed largely to pressure on need for environmental sustainability and high expectations of stakeholders [20,21] to breakeven. However, in spite of the soaring popularity CSR reporting by rms is gaining, it is not clear to determine empirically whether oil and gas multinationals CSR performance data are under or over reported since only few companies have their reports externally veri ed [20,21,22]. There is also little evidence on the effect of CSR disclosure on corporate nancial performance, especially in emerging economies. This gap gives premise for further justi cation for need of this study to be pursued on the topic.

Methods And Context
This study used the mixed qualitative and quantitative research method. Qualitative data on CSR activities of oil and gas multinationals with strong presence in emerging economies were analysed to understand their CSR practices through inductive analysis [57]. Quantitative data on CSR investments and nancial performance of 7 multinational Oil and gas companies with presence in Africa was used to test the hypothesis that investing in CSR leads to improved nancial performance [53,54]. This approach is expected to provide clear understanding of the research problem on how CSR behaviour of oil and gas multinationals with presence in Africa in uence nancial performance sustainability [58,70]. Descriptively, the study explored and explained the effects of investments in CSR and disclosures on their corporate nancial performance through secondary data and examined relationships and correlations between the study variables. Multiple sources of secondary data on multinationals' CSR activities and practices were utilized [55,59,60,61] to offer comparative analysis and contextual setting on how CSR disclosures in uence nancial performance of rms in developing countries. Out of 17 oil and gas multinationals with strong presence in Africa (Appendix 1), 9 were purposively sampled (Appendix 2), based on data availability, spanning 2010-2020 [61]. Information on CSR investments and disclosures, nancial performance and sustainability indicators, published in the multinationals audited nancial statement, sustainability and annual reports were synthesised into a 10-year panel data set to run and test a behavioural model, based on [53,54]. The regression model is stated below as, YP xt = α 0 + α 1 CSRIV xt + α 2 CSRDC xt + α 3 TAST xt + ε xt where, YP xt is oil and gas multinational company x's nancial outlook (dependent variable) at time t, determined as turn in on assets [17]. CSRIV xt depict oil and gas multinational company x's CSR investments at time t, and CSRDC xt connotes oil and gas multinational company x's CSR disclosures at time t. The intrinsic variables for the model are CSRIV xt and CSRDC xt [18]. The natural log of actual spending on CSR activities disclosed in previous annual reports were analysed to regress the rms' current year's financial performance to reflect their true effect on the operations [19]. It is deduced from [14,15,20] that the effect of current CSR investment is expected to show true re ections on the ensuing year's nancial performance of the companies. In this model CSRDC xt is used as a dummy variable and assigned the value '1' if company 'X' vividly discloses CSR activities in its annual report [38,39]. If otherwise, the company is given the value '0'. TAST xt is total asset of oil and gas multinational company X, determined as the natural logarithm of assets at period t [58]. To control variation in the dependent variable, this operationalization is deemed necessary [57,42]. In the model the error for company x at time t is expressed as ε tx, the intercept as α 0 and coe cients for CSRIV xt and CSRDC xt (explanatory variables) of the companies, de ned as, α 1 -α 9 .

Data analysis
Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS, 24 th edition) was used to analyse the panel set of data.
Using the multiple regression analysis model to assess the in uence of CSR and CSR disclosure on nancial sustainability, descriptive analysis was performed to determine the mean and standard deviation measures of the variables. To establish empirical relationship among the variables, the Pearson correlation analysis was performed, and also, to check for multi collinearity disturbances among the independent variables [58,59,60]. The Wallace and Hussain estimator of component variances analysis was operationalized to test the hypotheses of the study. The panel data analysis is assumed to have merits over conventional cross-sectional or time-series data sets [60,62,63]. It also allows for larger data points (higher degrees of freedom) and reduces collinearity among explanatory variables and to test complicated behavioural models [53,54,58]. Content analysis was performed on the annual reports and other secondary information on oil and gas multinational companies, purposively sampled, to determine their CSR activities and practices [60]. Finally, based on [62,63,64], a sustainability benchmarking framework was adopted to assess CSR activities of the sampled companies in 7 core areas; Commitment to CSR, CSR spending, Community, environmental aspects, workplace environment, marketplace and CSR reporting. The core CSR areas of practice and assessment criteria are summarily depicted by Table 1.
The benchmark assessment was based on a likert scale of 1-5 [64,65], where; 1: Does not highlight activities, 2: highlight activities to a low extent, 3: highlight activities to some extent, 4: highlight activities to a high extent, and 5: highlight activities to a very high extent (Table 2).

Ethical Considerations
Due to extensive use of secondary data from oil and gas multinational companies which are published periodically and available to the public, no severe ethical issues are envisaged. Data for the study was accessed from websites, annual reports and other publicly accessible publishing channels of multinational companies with investments in Africa [61,66]. However, in regard to ethical issues on legal access to books, articles and other documents, cited in-text, all have been duly acknowledged through intext citations and referenced [56,65] respectively in the study.

Results And Discussions
Oil and Gas Multinational's CSR Activities and Practices Table 3 depicts how oil and gas multinational companies with interest in Africa, over the decade, have behaved against the 7 benchmark areas of assessment of; 1. Commitment, 2. Spending, 3. Community, 4. Environment, 5. Workplace, 6. Market place and 7. CSR reporting. Their pledges and agendas result on CSR are presented in Table 3. Based on [60,61,62], the sustainability benchmarking framework was adopted to assess CSR activities and practices of multinationals in 7 core areas. Results show that all sampled oil and gas multinational companies with interest in emerging economies, especially Africa, are committed to CSR investments in all 7 identi ed core areas. To a large extent, data showed that they place very high emphasis on the environment (4*, Sum=42) in which they operate (Table 1, 3). Collectively, high priority was also given to other aspects of CSR; spending, the community, workplace, market place and reporting, with each scoring above a 30-score point ( Table 3). The least CSR area of interest, however, was in the market place, which scored 31 points (6*, Sum=31) out of 45. This may be due to historical antecedent of the oil and gas industry and sensitivity of their operations to the environment, communities where they operate and their workers. This outcome supports [37]'s assertion that one of the business entities that can make a strong claim to business ethics and or corporate socially responsible human rights, employee rights, stakeholder rights, environmental protection, community relations, transparency, environmental stewardship and sustainability principles is the oil and gas industry. [54,57] collaborates this assertion and notes that oil and gas multinationals are active and play leadership roles in developing and promoting good corporate business practices and codes of conduct in the work place and engagement with different facets of society in which they operate.
The CSR activities and practices of the multinationals (Table 1) were aggregated and ranked using the CSR benchmarked assessment scale (Table 2). To a very high extent ratings and just one-point difference between Shell and ExxonMobil (Table 3) on aggregate scores, the later multinational ranked rst ( Figure  1) on the scale, as both companies, either registered 'to a high extent' or 'to a very high extent' in their CSR activities and practices as captured in their impact on sustainability operations documents [20,21,22].
Using the same benchmarking framework on a scale of 0-5 (1=Does not highlight activities, 2=To a low extent, 3=To some Extent, 4=To a high extent, 5=To a very high extent), multinationals Eni, BP, Chevron and Sinopec all scored 28 points (out of 35) in the CSR activity and practice performance of their operations rated across the 6 identi ed core areas of assessment (Figure 1). Based on assessment criteria, they ranked 3 rd , 4 th , 5 th and 6 th respectively (Table 3). Relatively, the least performed multinationals are Total, Tullow and Petronas (Figure 1, Table 3), who came 7 th , 8 th and 9 th respectively, an indication that these oil and gas multinationals need to assess their investments in CSR activities and operations and refocus deployment of resources.

Descriptive Analysis
The mean score and standard deviation, together with kurtosis and skewness distributions are presented for the dependent and independent variables speci ed in the model. A left tail position is indicative of negatively skewed distribution and a right tail distribution is indicative of a positively skewed distribution. For kurtosis on the other hand, it can either be atter peak or substantial peak distribution [60,62,66]. From the analysis (Table 4), YP has a mean score of 15.51, suggesting a healthy pro tability margin across the sampled multinationals with interests in Africa. The variable has a right tailed skewness distribution with a attened peak (Skewness= 0.16 and Kurtosis =1.89). The mean score for CSRIV was 3.28, an indication of consistent CSR investment over the period by the oil and gas multinationals. The kurtosis for CSRIV indicates a substantial peak (Kurtosis=5.97) with left-tailed negatively skewed distribution (Skewness= -1.37). The mean score for CSRDC of 1.00 re ects disclose of CSR activities through consistent periodic reporting over the period (Table 4). This is expected to be progressive with improvement on the scope and quality of reporting from year to year by the multinationals [52,55,61,62].
To establish correlation among variables in the model and test for collinearity disturbance, the correlation matrix was computed (Table 5). Result from Table 5 indicate that CSR investment (CSRIV) and the size of multinationals (TAST) are correlated signi cantly with nancial performance (YP), an indication of sustainability (p-value of 0.0052 and 0.0029 respectively). The relationship between YP and CSRIV, and YP and TAST are both negative (r = -0.2967 and r= -0.2788 respectively) as depicted by Table 5. Among the independent variables (TAST, CSRIV, CSRDC), however, there was no signi cant correlation, signifying that no multi-collinearity issues exist, and based on [66], the regression estimates are accepted to be accurate.

Effect of CSR and CSR Disclosure on Financial Performance
The in uence of CSR disclosure on nancial performance was assessed using the model estimation analysis to provide empirical evidence of the effects of CSR investment and disclosure on the nancial sustainability of oil and gas multinational companies operating in Africa. First, the study performed a test to determine whether investment in CSR activities has a positive or otherwise effect on financial performance and, second, tested to see whether disclosure on such activities has signi cant effect on financial performance. The Wallace and Hussain estimator of component variances (a two-way xed effects and random effects panel model) was operationalized at 0.05 signi cance level (Table 6). Based on [54,55,62], the Hausman speci cation test checked for e ciency and for which of the two options are available to use (given if p > chi square > 0.05, random effect model recommended, and if p < chi-square < 0.05, xed effects model, recommended). This also allowed for utilization of variation in the variables over the 10-year period to estimate the effects of CSR investment and disclosure (independent variables) on nancial performance (dependent variable). From Table 6, the Hausman test did not show any correlation between the unobserved person speci c random effects and the independent variables, (p = 0.81423 > α = 0.05), therefore, the random effects model was accepted for the estimation of the panel data model.
The Wallace and Hussain panel analysis were operationalized to test the hypotheses of the study. Table 6 depicts analysis of the results. From Table 7, the analysis show that CSR investments (CSRIV xt ) signi cantly predicts nancial performance (YP) (p = 0.0035<0.05) with a positive relationship (coe cient = 0.602168 and t-statistics = 2.989764), an indication that, investment in CSR activities by multinationals with interests in emerging economies has a positive impact on their nancial performance. However, the results indicate a nonsigni cant positive relationship on the effect of CSR disclosure (CSRDC xt )on nancial performance (YP xt ) of the oil and gas companies (p=0.4409>0.05). R 2 and adjusted R 2 were estimated to assess strength of the predictions of the speci ed model ( Table 7). The values suggest that the speci ed model signi cantly explains variations in the dependent variable (YP). To check for autocorrelation among variables selected in the speci ed model, the Durbin-Watson Test was carried out. According to [70], upper limit for this test is a value of four and the lower limit is zero. A value of two means absence of autocorrelation and values less than or greater than two means the presence positive or negative autocorrelation among independent variables. The result for the Durbin-Watson test was 1.9, implying that the speci ed model for the analysis did not violate the independent residuals assumptions [58,66,67,68] and there was no collinearity problem among the predictor variables.

Conclusions And Recommendations
In conclusion, the analysis has shown that oil and gas multinational companies in emerging economies, especially, those with interest in Africa take all aspects of their CSR activities serious. They are seen to be at the forefront of CSR as they adhere and comply with international standards and best practices in the identi ed 7-benchmarked core areas area of CSR practices (Table 3). There is also indication from their reports that the multinationals continue to strive for improvement in CSR activities annually with positive impressions leading to improvements in their stakeholder relations and environmental impacts. Given the bene ts associated with CSR best practices, pressure is mounting on multinational companies who did not do so well on the scale to adhere to global standards and best practices to boost investors' con dence.
The study has also shown that there is a signi cant positive relationship between investment in CSR and nancial performance of multinational companies with interests in emerging economies. The positive in uence of CSR on their nancial performance of these rms could be deduced from due diligence and consistency attached to CSR practices over the 10-year period under investigation. This has yielded dividend in terms of performance and nancial sustainability. Investment in CSR has also created positive host community and stakeholder relations that allow multinational companies to concentrate on their core business of oil and gas production with the potential to increase output and improve nancial performance for sustainability in the oil and gas industry. Since diligent and consistent investments in CSR could lead to improved nancial performance, hence sustainability of the businesses, the study recommends that oil and gas multinationals, especially those with investments in emerging economies, where most host communities are least developed, continue to invest in CSR so that the interventions can make signi cant impacts in the communities in which they operate. The model for assessing CSR in uence on nancial performance of oil and gas companies are mostly based on accounting measures; investments in CSR and CSR disclosures. For true re ection of performance, the study recommends future researches to broaden this measure to include other CSR areas such as the environment, the community, market place and workplace aspects. Also, the business performance measure of pro tability can be expanded to include market-based performance measures. This enhanced model is expected to broaden understanding of the true effects of adopting good CSR practices by oil and gas multinational companies. Assessment is based on how oil and gas multinational companies manage environmental issues related to their core business in the areas of energy consumptions and emissions, climate change, biodiversity, water quality and depletion, waste, noise, dust, recycling.

CSR spending
Measures spending and reported-nancial commitments towards CSR and monies spent by oil and gas multinational companies on CSR activities.

Work environment
Assessment is based on commitment made by oil and gas multinational companies to their employees in terms of health and safety, human rights, training and development, equal opportunity, diversity, work-life balance, training and development, remuneration and bene ts, child labour issues.

Market environment
Measures the economic and social impacts of the company's products and services, how the business leverages CSR activities to promote its business (reputation, competitive advantage) as wells as relationship with third party entities [63].

The Community
Measures CSR activities that are focused on the communities in which oil and gas multinational companies operate and stakeholder relations.

CSR reporting
Assessment of CSR reporting is based on the frequency to which oil and gas multinational companies report CSR activities and made available to the public through both print and electronic media.     Source: Based on eld data, 2010-2020