CSR in the Norwegian Context

In this chapter, we sketch the rise of explicit CSR in the Norwegian context by focusing on the extractive industries’ entry into a global market and the resulting legitimacy challenges arising from this transition. Explicit CSR, in the sense of expressing social and environmental responsibility and voluntarily committing to promote societal benefits, can be viewed as a strategy by which the companies attempt to fill the governance gaps of global capitalism. We review two major Norwegian companies, Hydro and Statoil/Equinor, and argue that while their CSR strategy has been quite successful, it is challenging to reconcile the role of a socially and environmentally responsible company with being an actor in the global extractive industries.