The BP Case
With all that it has gone through, BP’s
reputation is surely in a bad state. This is more so in the context of how it
handled the Deep Water Horizon scandal in the Gulf of Mexico (Case 4 348-350).
Whether it succeeds in regaining its reputation, the only certain thing is that
it will be a long process. Not all is, however, lost for the company.
An appropriate starting point would be an
understanding of the various components of an organizational reputation. One
model identifies four such components (Dietz and Gillespie 6). First, an
organization must exhibit ability by way of technical competence to carry out
its activities. There is no question regarding the technical competence at BP
in carrying out most of its ventures. The company has been ahead of its peers
in some of technological breakthroughs in the energy sector. Secondly, the
company must also strive to convince its various stakeholders that it is
benevolence. This simply refers to how stakeholders view the company as
genuinely concerned about them. The repeated incidences of ethical breaches at
BP may as well have negatively impacted this aspect of its reputation (Case 4
350). There are those, especially people around the Gulf of Mexico, who may be
viewing the company as totally unconcerned about the negative effects of its
practices on the surrounding communities. Furthermore, BP is also facing
challenges to its integrity as doubts have been cast on its moral commitments. For
instance, revelations that senior people at BP knew of problems days before the
Gulf of Mexico incident have created the impression that the company has no
consideration for moral imperatives. It is a perception that the company has to
change. In addition, whatever positive change that the company manages to
effect must be seen to be predictable. It is the consistent occurrences of
negative incidents that have reinforced the negative reputation of the company.
Any change for the better must, therefore, be consistent.
Besides improving on the various components
of reputation, BP must also conduct a serious overhaul of its ethical
practices.It apparent from the case study that the company had been pursuing a
reactive approach to ethics management (Schoeman 65). This must change to a
more proactive and regular approach. There is no merit in BP using the code of
conduct to appear good while nobody in the company complies with that code. A
prerequisite to any proactive ethics management is knowledge on the part of the
leadership of the ethical status of the organization. This knowledge enables
the leadership to deal with real ethical issues as seen by the stakeholders as
opposed to what the leadership perceives to be the problem (Steinberg 94-96).
Thus, the management at BP should know the ethical strengths, weaknesses and potential
weaknesses at the organization. They can achieve this by collecting views of
all categories of stakeholders in a survey.
The other aspect of proactive ethics
management that BP should pursue is the improvement of the level of ethical
awareness especially among its employees (Schoeman 65). Just as visible
policing reduces the levels of crime, a heightened level of ethical awareness reduces
ethical misconduct even as it promotes ethical behavior due to its tendency to
always act as a constant reminder. BP can achieve this by ensuring that all
employees appreciate the role of ethics in business practices.
Works Cited
Case
4. “BP Struggles to Resolve Sustainability Disaster.”
Dietz,Graham and Nicole Gillespie. “The
Recovery of Trust: Case Studies of Organizational Failures and Trust Repair.”Institute of Business Ethics 5(2012).Print.
Schoeman, Cynthia. “Leadership Cracks.” Ethical Living 2012.Web.Retrieved 6 June
2013, from www.ethicsmonitor.co.za/Articles/leadership-cracks.pdf
Steinberg, Richard. Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance: It Can’t Happen to Us- Avoiding Corporate Disaster While Driving
Success.Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley&Sons
Inc., 2011.Print.
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