The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Crisis Handled In A Socially Responsible Manner?

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A crisis handled in a socially responsible manner?

Social Responsibility and Organisational Ethics
ICM-ETHICS-10
W. van Dam

Introduction

The development of one of the world’s largest ever environmental disasters, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill has demonstrated the intensity in which a crisis such a great impact on the industry and others affected.This crisis has allowed this project to look in an in-depth and informative manner at how the crisis was handled and look at the impact upon those affected and on a global level at how the damage can be repaired. The methodology in which we employ must consider looking towards stakeholders and how there is a correlation between them despite their different positions on the crisis. In order toadequately address the question of ethics in this crisis, we must evaluate the positions of three stakeholders, all of whom have different agendas when observing this crisis. It is important to stress that each of these stakeholders are subject to a different amount of pressure in regards to the crisis, so it can be assumed that their prospective of the crisis is therefore different.Furthermore we must consider the using the International Organisation for Standardization’s project 26000 as a basis for helping us understand the key issues and causes for how each stakeholder handled the crisis. This ISO 26000 details an organization’s social responsibility and as such this has a grave impact on the crisis as we can keenly observe how each stakeholder was treated in regards to socialresponsibility. Furthermore we can also assess the level of regard in which BP and its other partner companies on their level of operating at a socially responsible level. It is important to maintain this at all times because it is necessary find the contrast between a well functioning company and that which is the opposite.

Stakeholders Research

BP´s actions and behavior during gulf ofMexico´s oil spill. Why choosing BP as a stakeholder to study? Because BP is, in the eyes of the people, the main causative of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. It’s the company which was using the oil rig for extracting the material, and therefore the easiest entity to fight against when speaking about the Oil spill.

The first consequence of the event was the fact that the explosion killed 11 menworking on the platform and injured 17 others. But from the point of the mass media this wasn’t very relevant.

Here comes the first ethical problem. How important is an environmental disaster if 11 people have died? From a human being point of view, is it more important a number of died employees died or a thousand animals? The truth is that the problem is not only the dyed animals or people.Thousands of jobs have been affected, because the oil spill has destroyed the environment, so the tourism has been heavily affected, and ecosystems have been incredibly deteriorated.

From BP, they are working for helping locally to solve each problem. They set up a $20 billion fund to compensate victims. From USA’s government they insist that BP have to pay each € spent in solving the problem.In the other hand, BP is fighting against Halliburton, a company that was working in cementing for BP’s extractions, accusing them of destroying thousands of documents to avoid their responsibility in the process. BP thinks that Halliburton is the causative of the oil spill and BP wants them to pay all the expenses of the environmental restoration. But can BP say this right now? Shouldn’t they havetaken care of this before? To ask for responsibility first you have to act in consequence. The truth is that BP was paying for a service so maybe they are right in asking for responsibilities.
Another fact is to know why BP lied in the first hours and days of the incident. It’s not ethically correct, but individually thinking, the managers had a great responsibility: in one hand they should...