Social and Environmental Disclosures and Reputation

Discuss about the Social and Environmental Disclosures and Reputation.

Introduction

An increase in the emphasis of the business ethics for the last three decades has increased the sufferings for this field and there are various troubles faced due to absence of appropriate direction and is also struck into various problems like logic and reasons (Weiss, 2014). As per the previous reviews about the companies and their ethical problems in business, it was connected to the administration of the rules and regulations in the organizations. The disastrous incident, which took place in the Gulf of Mexico where around 200 million gallons of crude oil was spilled off. The oil was washing up the shores even after the gushing well had been capped. This incident led to the death of 11 people and 17 of them were critically injured.
Oil spill in the Gulf

The entire world is still recovering from the devastation, which took place because of the disastrous oil spill in the Mexican gulf. The drilling rig being exploded, the deepwater horizon and to work on a well for an oil company BP last year led to continuous spilling of oil in the gulf for 86 days. All the contents were leaked by the well, which included 5 million barrels of oil  which expanded from the Mexican coast to Florida (Lamendella et al., 2014). However, due to the oil spill there was a vast devastation of the environment and the wildlife and it is not known for how long the consequences will last. There were various cleanup operations taken by BP and the philanthropy events to repair the reputation, which was hampered. The ethical issues involved here are mainly concerned with the destruction of human and wildlife and even the environment in and along the coast of Mexico. The effects of the businesses and the environment are noticeable in the years to come. It has been revealed that the subcontractors and the BP have taken various timesaving steps to properly assess the hazardous risks (Passow et al., 2012). This is regarded as unethical because the company tried saving the money instead of ensuring that the oil drilling process used was safe. The result of which was that the environment was devastated and the company had to bear various unnecessary expenses for the businesses set up around the gulf.

The different decisions possible regardless of the ethical stance

For soothing the anger of the Americans, BP aired a national TV spot which was a multimillion-dollar in the month of June were Hayward says that “we will make this right”. He even vowed that the BP will clean up the oil and bring the shoreline back to its original state. The ad even stated that the company did not follow its internal guidelines related to the damage control after any spills (Crane & Matten, 2016). According to the crisis management experts the only way to regain the tarnished image of BP would be to plug the hole from where the oil is still leaking out. It will nearly take 3 months before stopping the leak and around 5 months before declaring the well effectively dead (Arora & Lodhia, 2017). According to the public relations experts BP ran its crisis communications in the same “ham-fisted” manner that they have started off with the cleaning operation in the Gulf. The way BP has handled the oil spill crisis will be one of the greatest example in the history of how bad communication can make a situation worse. There was a combination of lack of transparency, lack of talking straight and absence of sensitivity for the victims. Managing an environmental disaster not only involves managing the problem but it also includes managing the stakeholders.

Different stakeholders who would be affected by the decision

It has been argued that the decision makers of BP employ unethical practices. They not only fail to take into consideration all the stakeholders but even exploit many for increasing the efficiency and cutting the expense of safety. BP ignores the sustainable image and publishes a CSR to build up the prestige for the ethical behavior (Kessler, 2017). As per the theory of the stakeholders, it is a concave ethical policy, which is more appropriate to the ethical theory of Friedman’s theory of business where the main motivation is shortsighted profit. BP’s business actions are very much complicated and they have implications for all the stakeholders. Senior managements will reduce the target date that will enforce the decision makers to cut the corners. However, a variety of ethical perspective is required to conclude whether the explosion on the Mexican gulf and the other events are the result of some unethical decision making or some unethical hardships of good business practice for pursuing the global improvements. After a serious disaster in the oil, BP tried recovering its image. The stakeholders are now concerned about the hazardous emissions, rise in prices of the gas and pollution that creates a very unpleasant image of the oil industry on a whole. Therefore, the campaign chosen by BP mainly focuses on global warming, emission of the greenhouse gases and supports the future generation for achieving a green and a clean environment along with that saving the scarce natural resources, which can be used by the later generations. It has been raising the range of the alternative energy sources being offered. It has become the first global energy company to address the problem related to climatic changes. BP is helping the environment by spreading awareness among the people about the carbon footprint. The BP educational service had started off by distributing the carbon Footprint Toolkit (Grabowski et al., 2017). It was a program of appreciation, which provided help to the high school students for better understanding of the effects of the climate change. Build up in collaboration with the teachers and the BP’s experts the toolkit helps the students in examining the footprint of the school’s carbon and develop carbon reduction plan for the schools (Kleinnijenhuis, 2015). The federal government was ordered by Barack Obama to postpone the issuing of new offshore until a thorough review has been determined whether there is a need for more safety systems. The oil spill was considered as one of the most worst environmental disaster, the BP will have to compensate the damage their company had caused, and all the necessary steps would be taken to help the people of Gulf to recover from this tragedy. BP had to face huge amount of criticism from both US and around the world for the act of oil spill. New outcry were inspired against the off-shore drilling which included the Greenpeace protest in which the activists painted “No Arctic Drilling” where they had squandered the BP oil on side of the ship. The news media had spent a considerable amount of time in reporting the incident (Davies & Hope, 2015). The government however porttered the entire incident in social terms rather than in environmental terms and build the event within the broader huddle of ecological modernization, which emphasizes on a more holistic approach.

Clean – up methods

When there is oil spill in the ocean it becomes even more difficult to clean it up. Cleaning up 3.19 million barrels becomes even more difficult. geographical environmental circumstances have a big role to play like currents, temperature, water temperature and presence of ice affects the spread of oil and how the cleanup workers can access the spill area. The basic method of cleaning up is controlling the spread of oil by making use of the physical barriers. When there is an oil spill in the water, it floats on the surface and than spreads out forming a thin slick, which is just a few millimeters thick (Bandura, 2015). Clean up workers initially surrounded the slick with floating booms in order to avoid it from spreading to the harbors, beaches or the biologically important areas like the marshes. Various different tools can be used to remove the oil being collected. They might even drive the skimmers, boats that would skim the spilled water from the water’s surface with the help of the slick. After removing oil from the bonnets, the laborers made use of the sonnets to mop the trance amount, which was left. Sonnets will either soak the oil or adsorb it, which would mean that the oil is sticking to the shoal. Another way is Dispersants, which is used when the laborers want the slick to prevent from being stretched to a protected area like or a marsh (Fingas, 2012). This has been regarded as a boon for the animals who are found on the surface and the coast like the seabirds, marine mammals and those found in the Gulf’s mangroves because the oil moves out of their habitat. However, the dispersants might enter the food chain and harm the wildlife. Dispersants help in exposing more oil to bacteria and the waves, which helps in breaking down and making the oil even more attainable to the wildlife. A huge amount of research is required for understanding the long-term effects of the dispersants on the region and on its dwellers and the way they move through the food chain to impact the largest predator which includes the humans. Researchers have been developing new dispersants that will cause less environmental damage for the next spill.

Companies those are responsible for the BP Oil Spill:

Although, it has been argued that due to misguidance of the leaders British Petroleum has faced this deadly consequence like BP oil spill, there are some other companies those were associated with British Petroleum, such as- Drilling Rig company Transocean, Cement firm Halliburton and Aandarko and so. These companies are equally responsible for the Gulf Oil Spill as they are also involved in this operation. American government has filed lawsuit against all the companies due to their negligence. These companies have not followed the risk framework while extending their association to the British Petroleum. As per the reports, due to weak links in the drilling rigs of BP oil plant, it fails to manage the pressure of the oil and oil spill occurred (Arora & Lodhia, 2017).

Major associates Transocean was known for its high quality performance before the BP oil explosion. However, due to its negligence it has faced many challenges after the oil spill. It reflects the falling of the quality. To avoid the responsibility, the organizational management of Transocean has put all the blames on other associates and British Petroleum.

As mentioned in the report, poor quality cement is another major reason for the Mexican Gulf oil spill. The cement company Halliburton is considered another villain of this of accident. The organizational management of Halliburton has not followed the risk framework. Otherwise, they may apply prevention to avoid such occurrences.

Aandarko is another petrochemical company that was associated with the British Petroleum during Mexican Gulf Oil Spill. It has not also followed the risk framework otherwise it may prevent the BP management to adopt unethical practices (Crane & Matten, 2016).

Conclusion

The organization should focus on promoting the reputation of the organization by using different mechanisms, which aims at helping the response strategy and the target, and the goal, which has been set. This could be achieved by executing various processes of public relations by evaluating, finding the implementations, communication and collection of data. The focus of the organization should be on community interaction development with an aim of achieving direct and indirect stakeholders engagement during the oil spill. The strategy should focus on the minimization of the oil spill influences. This could be achieved by reducing the days taken through the government agencies and a communal integration in relation with the environmental and health protection. Adopting and implementing proper tools of public relations is important for BP to respond to the various issues.

References

Arora, M. P., & Lodhia, S. (2017). The BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill: Exploring the link between social and environmental disclosures and reputation risk management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, 1287-1297.

Bandura, L., Franus, M., Józefaciuk, G., & Franus, W. (2015). Synthetic zeolites from fly ash as effective mineral sorbents for land-based petroleum spills cleanup. Fuel, 147, 100-107.

Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2016). Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.

Davies, A. J., & Hope, M. J. (2015). Bayesian inference-based environmental decision support systems for oil spill response strategy selection. Marine pollution bulletin, 96(1), 87-102.

Fingas, M. (2012). The basics of oil spill cleanup. CRC press.

Grabowski, J. H., Powers, S. P., Roman, H., & Rouhani, S. (2017). Potential impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on subtidal oysters in the Gulf of Mexico. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 576, 163-174.

Kessler, S. R., Mahoney, K. T., Randolph-Seng, B., Martinko, M. J., & Spector, P. E. (2017). The Effects of Attribution Style and Stakeholder Role on Blame for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Business & Society, 0007650317717495.

Kleinnijenhuis, J., Schultz, F., Utz, S., & Oegema, D. (2015). The mediating role of the news in the BP oil spill crisis 2010: How US news is influenced by public relations and in turn influences public awareness, foreign news, and the share price. Communication Research, 42(3), 408-428.

Lamendella, R., Strutt, S., Borglin, S., Chakraborty, R., Tas, N., Mason, O. U., & Jansson, J. K. (2014). Assessment of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill impact on Gulf coast microbial communities. Frontiers in microbiology, 5.

Passow, U., Ziervogel, K., Asper, V., & Diercks, A. (2012). Marine snow formation in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmental Research Letters, 7(3), 035301.

Sarbatly, R., Krishnaiah, D., & Kamin, Z. (2016). A review of polymer nanofibres by electrospinning and their application in oil–water separation for cleaning up marine oil spills. Marine pollution bulletin, 106(1), 8-16.

Weiss, J. W. (2014). Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.