Bp’s Ethical Culture Essay

We will go through the BP business context and culture, safety aspect, organization capability, responsiveness and risk assessment aspects of their ethical culture, result from the management and caused the disaster. BP Business Context and ethical culture: From the BP management employer aspects, they are not follow some mechanical level, safety procedure over and ignored which required by Act (e.g. Clean Air Act) over 8 year for their production. At the end the huge explosion occurred in March 2005. Because of the hydrocarbon liquid leakage and vapor, the ignition explosion result of the accident. They failed to give the safeguards protection tools to protect employees, this accident killing employees and injured people in Texas oil refinery. And the other issue of the Alaskan oil pipelines leaked; their culture also reflect the safety negligence in their operation and management. Not check the pipelines by routine maintenance. BP management did not doing any corrective action on the contract worker discovered the first pipeline leak in March of 2006, (e.g. whole stop the pipelines operation for checking details), still waiting the leakage happen on August 2006. And in October 2007 another spill in Prudhoe Bay, once again showing that BP was ignored the maintenance equipment and the safety level of the production. In 2010, violations again at BP facilities (at Ohio factory), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that workers might be exposed to injury or death should explosive or flammable chemicals be released at an Ohio factory. The BP working environment have the characteristic that is resistance to change, lack of trust and motivation; unclear expectations about supervisory and management behaviors, led to rules not being followed consistently and no initiating improvements. Management did not set or consistently reinforce process safety, operations performance and systematic to reduce the risk. e.g. neglected the safety protection tools. (Reference 01) Organizational Capability: poor management and communication in the complex organization, high turnover of refinery plant managers which will affect their consistency of responsibilities. Inability to see the risk, poor level of hazard awareness and process safety knowledge, e.g. the temporary worker doing wrong on the hydrocarbons to atmosphere with unclear control in the high risk and safety industry practice. Lack of early warning system in the refinery plant; e.g. poor communication, poor performance-management process and deteriorating the work standards. Means that BP allows the defective process in their production refinery and pipelines channel. Even though the project was carried out before the extensive research to identify any potential environment risks of the pipelines stretched to their network From the BP investor aspects, even a huge amount of fines, criminal penalties were paid again. They just only concern the profit rather then the employees, environment, base on their short term focus with high level oversight on prevention or improvement and safety management. Even the production was shut down a month for repairing; they just focus on resume the production which means profit as a priority. From the interest group, e.g. National Fish and Wildlife, the state law and act. BP was neglected their monitoring role, just paid the fund or fines to be a remedy, but still running at their loosen management culture. From the BP employees aspects, insider trading and fraud document (mail fraud and wire fraud), and reward from the manipulate the propane market at a high prices Integrity of the BP management, also lack of monitor and alert of the internal control. As the National oil company, the management let company making loss on violate Act, not setting a well control system for employees for prevention. These parts clearly showing the history of disregarding the well-being of stakeholders not follow the law and high level operation and maintenance level of BP. Different refinery plane have their own safety management system, and they did not share their best practice with others. So doing the same work but running at different safety system level. And as the employees of BP, from the result of the explosion, oil leakage and fraud issue all of them are affecting their society and economic damage. They know and maintain these BP culture but they do not concern until the accident or issue occurred. From these aspects of the BP ethical culture, and still no solid continues improvement, then it was caused the Gulf Coast oil spill disaster. At the beginning, BP tried to shift their responsiveness to the contractor Transocean, Ltd., loosen and negligence management style (know but not concern style), lying on the accident real situation to public. And delay the recovery work which subject to their management decision and style.