The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility

Tag Archive for ‘Deepwater Horizon’

‘Spillionaires’: Profiteering in the Wake of the BP Oil Spill

The oil spill that was once expected to bring economic ruin to the Gulf Coast appears to have delivered something entirely different: a gusher of money. So many people cashed in that they earned nicknames – “spillionaires” or “BP rich.” Meanwhile, others hurt by the spill ended up getting comparatively little.

Self-Deception and Challenges for Leaders

Columnist Gael O’Brien examines several recent crises and finds a common trait: self-deception by leadership. It “reflects an image that allows leaders to disengage and disconnect from their actual impact on others,” she writes. “Aside from the damage it does to those affected, it creates an understandable gap in trust, which is the very thing leaders want to re-build after a crisis.”

Crisis Management and Your Board – Five Lessons from BP

No board of directors should feel smug about how well their company has prepared for a crisis, writes Betsy Atkins, an independent director of several publicly-held companies. Instead, she says, a board needs to insure there’s an effective crisis management plan in place – one that can protect shareholder value and the value of the corporate brand.

How Much Oil From Deepwater Horizon Is Still on Sea Floor?

It’s true that oil from BP’s Deepwater Horizon fiasco is still sticking to and covering parts of the sea floor for some 80 miles or more around the site of the now-capped well. In early September, researchers from the University of Georgia found oil some two inches thick on the sea floor as far as 80 miles away from the source of the leak, with a layer of dead shrimp and other small animals under it.

Opinion: BP puts costs ahead of environment. Are we surprised?

BP’s failure to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history is indicative of a much larger problem with companies that have embraced one of the central ideas in management today: stakeholder theory. The idea that companies can meet the needs of “stakeholders” leaves them open to moral abuse without normative principles at its core.

NY State Fund Seeks to Lead Class Action Against BP

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, trustee of the $132.6 billion Common Retirement Fund for state employees, said the Fund will seek lead plaintiff status in the class action lawsuit against BP Plc for damages arising from the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill

Measuring Environmental Impact of Gulf Oil Leak

Oil from 1989’s Exxon Valdez mishap slicked 11,000 square miles of ocean surface and 1,300 miles of pristine Alaskan coastline while killing hundreds of thousands of birds and marine mammals and untold numbers of fish and fish eggs. But the impacts of the ongoing Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf may be far worse given that much of the loose oil is actually in the water column, not on the surface.