The significant oil leak disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is closely associated with the activities of the British Petroleum (BP) because the company could not prevent the disaster, and it could not overcome its negative consequences adequately because of the lack of the effective contingency and crisis management plans.
To provide the compensation to cope with disaster’s consequences and to overcome the issues associated with the consumers’ boycotts, BP implemented the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust and provided the necessary financial initiatives to support the ecological and environmental investigations connected with the disaster.
However, these initiatives and attempts to compensate the problem cannot be discussed as enough to change the consumers’ attitude to BP because the company had the similar problems earlier, and the absence of the necessary plan to predict or overcome the challenge supports the idea that the further disasters can be possible.
It is important to note that BP failed to recognize such ethical questions as the negative experience of the previous disasters and safety violations because the industry experts drew the company’s attention to warnings on the company’s safety.
Furthermore, the necessary conclusions were not made, the safety was not improved, and the effective crisis management plan was not developed. As a result, the company’s workers were killed, and the threatening situation for the environment was created because of BP’s rather negligent behaviour and ignorance of warnings.
Being one of the leaders within the industry, BP contributes to its further marketing success while using the company’s effective reputation. The success of such a company within the industry highly depends on the previous effectiveness and reputation because of the importance to attract consumers with references to the quality of the services and products provided.
he oil leak disaster resulted in worsening the company’s reputation significantly, and the fact led to boycotting the products because the previous reputation was questioned.
The organization’s reputation significantly depends on different ethical issues and the company’s abilities to overcome them. For instance, Kraft Foods Inc. failed to respond adequately to the ethical issues associated also with social problems during the 2000s. The company was discussed as producing and promoting unhealthy products for children.
To save profits and to meet the company’s needs, Kraft Foods Inc. chose change the advertising policies and approaches rather than to respond to the social and legal claims (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, 2011, p. 84). Thus, the ethical behaviour was violated as well as the response to the customers’ interests.
The other company, T-Mobile USA, identified the risks of the unethical behaviour in time and provided the possibilities for educating the employees in order to cope with the results of the unrealized merger with AT&T and its negative effects. The higher ethical standards were proposed to change the situation within the company for better, and T-Mobile USA preserved the status of one of the highly ethical companies in the United States (T-Mobile’s strong ethical culture, 2012).
Nevertheless, the question about the future challenges related to the corporate social responsibility of BP remains to be open. Thus, it is possible to answer it with references to the known facts and previous experience of the company. If BP does not change the approach to ethical standards and safety policies associated as well as the approach the corporate social responsibility, the further disasters will ruin the company’s reputation.
References
Ferrell, O., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2011). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases. USA: Cengage Learning.
T-Mobile’s strong ethical culture. (2012). Web.