By Thomas Oliphant, 4/7/2002
FOR A POST-Sept. 11, post-Enron agenda for corporate behavior, how does the following strike you?
A ban on contributions from company funds to support political activity and political parties.
A policy of unambiguous transparency on financial information.
A ban not only on the payment of bribes where bribery is common, but also on its first cousin, the ''facilitation'' payment.
An environmental policy of reducing the emission of greenhouse gases by 10 percent below the level in 1990 and of the stabilization of emissions at that level as growth continues.
From a political leader or a nongovernmental organization, the agenda would probably be considered somewhere between utopian and leftist. But this is policy, or internal law, at one of the world's largest corporations - an unreconstructed advocate of globalization.
John Browne raised eyebrows globally at the helm of international oil behemoth BP for much longer than there has been a war on terrorism and a crisis of confidence in business honesty, but the events of the last seven months have stimulated a fresh need for solid examples of world leadership. The Harvard Business School requested a speech on leadership in this context last week, and he more than obliged.
Oil is a business accustomed to long lead times, which makes it especially hospitable, in theory, to mature thinking about societal health. In practice, however, that has not often been true. As Browne noted, he spent part of his childhood 50 years ago in Iran, where his father was with the Anglo Persian oil company, a predecessor of British Petroleum. Its relationship with the shah was, as he put it, ''of its time - colonial in spirit, paternalistic in style, predominantly well intentioned but in the end doomed to fail.''
The company Browne leads is today very large in strife-torn Angola, which he says will soon be producing more oil than Kuwait or Nigeria. Its anticorruption policy there, with the government's support, is to publish details of all the payments it makes as Angola's immense reserves are developed.
Transparency seems a simple matter, but Brown cited the views of human rights organizations that disclosure ''is the most effective way to ensure that the wealth we and others are generating benefits the whole population of one of the poorest countries in the world.'' It has also been one of the most violent.
Corruption, he argued, is not inevitable, and shunning it ''can begin to renew trust not just in corporate activity but in the whole development process.''
Pollution shouldn't be inevitable, either. All the evidence is not in, but from the close-up perspective of the energy business, Browne has evidently learned enough. BP's remarkable achievement with greenhouse gases came about at no net cost while politicians were still arguing over the Kyoto protocol. Similarly, stabilizing the firm's emissions as it grows - a possible doubling of its sales volume this decade - can be done through efficiencies and new, low-carbon products that offset emissions.
Browne also displayed a healthy understanding of the importance of a company being an energetic participant in civic society while avoiding the temptations of money politics. He's taken his stand, he said, not because the political process is unimportant - ''quite the reverse, but because the legitimacy of the process is crucial both for society and for us as a company working in that society.''
A company that behaves in this fashion is far more likely to be listened to on topics closest to its economic interests. In the long run, credibility is more important than muscle. When Browne argues the case for international investment, open markets, trade, even for oil imports and the competitive benefits of mega-mergers, he occupies a far loftier perch than, say, Kenneth Lay.
For all the remaining problems in the world, he is on solid ground in noting that gross domestic product per capita rose twice as fast in the second half of the 20th century as in the first, while population was exploding at a rate more than three times higher. One of the major reasons had to be the explosive growth of world markets and of trade, which skyrocketed by 1,700 percent.
For those trying to make globalization work for everyone, it is conceivable that ethics and civic good behavior are not simply concepts for public relations departments and after-dinner orations. Enron demonstrated just how important credibility is in today's economic environment and how rapidly a firm can be bankrupted when it throws it away.
As Senator Joe Lieberman put it in another speech on business ethics last week at NYU: ''The force that's kept America's economy strong for the past two centuries isn't just the invisible hand. It's the credible handshake.''
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com .
This story ran on page C11 of the Boston Globe on 4/7/2002.
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2002 Globe Newspaper Company.