Do Companies Have Personalities (and Does It Matter?)

CCSI has launched an interview series on “company personalities” looking in particular at how a company’s personality determines its negotiation strategy, the contractual provisions it pushes for, and the overall relationship between the company and its host governments. The interviewees are senior experts who have many decades of experience in advising governments in resource rich countries.

Company personalities can express themselves differently and may be influenced by a company’s nationality, culture, history, its home country priorities, activity type, and/or the stage of the project. Each expert shares a different perspective of how she or he experienced different company personalities. Together their views give valuable insights into how companies can differ in their strategies and behaviors and how governments can orient their own strategies in response and under different contexts (negotiation, renegotiation, arbitration threats, routine engagement with company during the life of the project, etc..).

Alongside the interviews, CCSI has created a hypothetical walk-through of the learning process involved in preparing for company negotiations. In the story, a minister grapples with the question of company personalities. Check that out here.

Interview with Tom Mitro, Co-Director of the Graduate Certificate in Global Energy, Development and Sustainability at the University of Houston

Interview with Anthony Paul, Principal Energy & Strategy Consultant

Interview with Lou T. Wells, Herbert F. Johnson Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Interview with Salli Swartz, Partner at Artus Wise

Interview with Joe Bell, Pro Bono Senior Counsel at Hogan Lovells

Complementary to understanding a company’s personality, due diligence into a company’s recent record of actions and violations is crucially important to be well prepared for negotiations and long term engagement. CCSI has teamed up with Kroll, a leading global provider of risk solutions that regularly performs Reputational and Integrity Due Diligence (RIDD) on investors, to develop a guide on (1) how to decide when to conduct RIDD, (2) how to conduct basic checks, and (3) when and how to engage with third parties to conduct a RIDD.

CCSI has also developed an online negotiation support portal to assist host country governments with planning, negotiating, implementing, and monitoring large-scale investments: NegotiationSupport.org