Against All Shareholders

Among the most monumental examples of failure regarding corporate social responsibility, that is to "maximize profits within the law" (Dejardins, 2014, p.53), is the Deepwater Horizon blowout catastrophe, occurring April 20, 2010. Historically noted as the single greatest environmental failure in the United States, the blowout of the Macondo well claimed 11 lives, injured dozens more, leaked 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, disrupted ecosystems and communities globally, and economic loss as a result of a phenomenon know as "effective compression" which occurs when there are "extreme pressure differences inside and outside the drill pipes, causing them to buckle", Enerknol Research (2015). Influenced by the article Deepwater Horizon 's Final Hours, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html?pagewanted=all, questions to explore regarding this event are: What was the path to this tragedy? What are the causes and consequences of this disaster? What are the lessons learned? Who is ethically responsible? These questions and more will be examined through first hand accounts of the men and women working on Deepwater Horizon, statements given by Transocean, BP Oil, research firms findings as well research and facts from government and environmental organizations. A number of parties were involved to some degree on the Macondo well blowout, however, I surmise, that as the lead and greatest benefactor that responsibility for the great magnitude of this

Throughout her lifetime, Ida Tarbell served as an outspoken, strong-willed and controversial figure in American History. Her harsh exposés of the Standard Oil Company in McClure’s magazine, later culminated into The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) earned her volumes of attention as an investigative journalist, also known as a “muckraker”. As a Progressive Era reformer she acted out of her appetite to change society, and in her case, squash trusts which were hurting America’s independent businesses. Directed by her father’s experience of being driven out of the oil business by the Standard Oil Company as well as her persistent persona, Tarbell was able to disclose Rockefeller’s corrupt trust through her incessant investigations leading to general awareness of corporate trusts and a major supreme court ruling utilizing the Sherman Antitrust Act. Above all, Ida Tarbell’s ruthless muckraking resulted in society’s awareness of toxic trusts and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company to be crushed.

The monopolizing system ran almost every single oil company out of business putting more and more people and their families through poverty. Finally, in 1904 Ida M. Tarbell daughter of Franklin Tarbell (owner of a targeted oil company that Rockefeller eventually ran out of business) wrote “The History of Standard Oil”, this book exploited all of Standard Oil 's ruthless business practices. In 1911, the corporation was found to be in violation of the Sherman Act and ordered out of business. Yet this wasn’t the only company in violation of the Anti-Trust Act.

While we, as black (Haitians) are working as much as we can on the floor, the other race are not doing as much job we are doing. Yet , George Gonzalez, the manager always come to the  black employees to give the heavy work.  It had been happened plenty of time before based on race discrimination.

The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.

"With reference to the levels and spheres of corporate power discussed in [chapter 3], how did the power of Standard Oil change society? Was this power exercised in keeping with the social contract of Rockefeller's era?"

“After the Spill is gone: The Gulf of Mexico, Environmental Crime, and the Criminal Law [dagger]” covers the deep water oil rig spill in the Gulf of Mexico that took place on April 20, 2010. The most devastating spill to our environment, causing the death of eleven people and three months of oil gushing into our waters harming our environment. There was an estimated 4.9 million barrels (approximately 200 million gallons) of oil spilled. This law review relates to the reading in the Effective Human Relations book, Twelfth Edition, by showing us corporate crime, ethics, morals and whistle-blowing. Environmental and corporate business peaks my interests and is why I chose this review.

Another unfortunate incident happened in 2006 when BP ignored safety warnings that resulted in 267,000 gallons of crude oil accumulating in Alaska’s Bay. This was simply a forecast of what was to come in the future. When the corporation leased the Deepwater Horizon for half-a-million-dollars a day they were forced to speed up operations in order to avoid loosing money and to continue collecting profit. The carelessness in the use of the technology and concentrating strictly on profit instead of responsibly caring for the environment or society caused the oil spill. After suffering backlash from their spill, consumers and market analysis were skeptical of their intensions and corporate social responsibility. Unfortunately, even after the event of 2010 BP was more concerned with how to retain their investors instead of rebuilding their image to keep their customers returning. In reference to a Forbes article stating “Yet virtually every BP press release or CEO commentary about reputation links rebuilding trust to rebuilding shareholder value.” One might pose that the corporation should be rebuilding their image by being more involved in the environment and helping to rebuild the effects of the disastrous event. They should at least be responsible for holding their end of the promise as far as being careful not to cause harm to the environment or society. To no surprise, BP has spent a

This paper will explain some of the effects of three legal issues and three ethical issues surrounding the London-based British Petroleum Company’s involvement in the explosion of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico. There are many legal issues surrounding this disaster, but the three this paper will focus on are the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, maritime laws, and criminal charges

Beyond Petroleum (BP) formerly British Petroleum is a company that claims to be devoted to finding new energy sources with little impact on the environment. Ferrell, Fraderich, and Ferrell, explain in their Business Ethics textbook in 2012 that after several environmental tragedies in the mid-to late 2000’s, the company had to reassess their ethical standards and make changes to repair their image and regain the confidence of their stakeholders. During this time, they began investing in wind, solar, biofuels, and many other new types of energy sources. They also created programs to educate citizens and stakeholders about environmental awareness. Most importantly, though, they also tasked their ethics and compliance team with creating a code of conduct policy and communicate it out to every employee (p.343-345). Considering that BP is a worldwide company, with employees of diverse languages and cultures, this was a very difficult task to complete. Not only would it be a challenge to communicate the new code of conduct out to each employee, but it was even more difficult for the company to enforce it. Because of the lack of understanding on how to deal with ethical dilemmas, managers and employees within the company did not complete proper risk assessment, leading to the worst oil spill in U.S. History. This would come to be known as the Deepwater Horizon spill. BP commonly outsources machinery and companies to complete certain tasks. They did in this case by hiring an oil rig

Chevron began with the discovery of oil north of Los Angeles in 1879 and was originally named the Pacific Coast Oil Company. Later John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil bought Pacific Oil in 1900 to form Standard Oil (California). In 1911, the Sherman Antitrust Act would force the breakup of the parent Standard Oil and Chevron became Standard Oil of California or Socal. Socal would go on to form joint venture with Texaco in 1936 to form Caltex, to develop and market oil in the Middle East and Indonesia. It would then go on to form the Aramco partnership in the Middle East, which composed of Socal, Texaco, Exxon and Mobil but by 1980, Aramco was completely owned by the

Exxon-Mobil, over the last twelve years, has demonstrated a lack of sound ethics and accountability for actions that will it will not be able to repair overnight. The company faces a long hard road of repairing its image and any mistakes along the way will be heavily scrutinized. According to the company’s 2006 Corporate Citizenship Report, small steps are being made to ensure that the mistakes of the past will not be revisited, and that may very well be the best approach for this company to take. By

In theory, both Enron and India would have fared well with the production of a new power plant. Enron was desperate in need of real income and India lacked in sufficient power for its citizens. Littered with bribes, human rights violations, deceit, and many examples of poor moral judgment Enron’s behaviors clearly show what not to do in a foreign investment. However, this paper will focus on the violations of human right during the project using the four-component decision making model to assess the situation, options of what could have been done, and the conditions of the stakeholders involved directly and indirectly.

The role of business in society is multifaceted in that there is an obligation to its shareholders, its clients and its employees. In the instance of Margin Call by J.C Chandor, a wide range of justifications revealed by the upper management level of an investment firm evinces the core values of the firm. Once it is revealed that there is a high probability of the firm being the devalued beyond market capitalization, the firm and its division heads attempt to find a solution to the imminent crisis. Although there is some dissent from Sam Rogers, Head of Sales and Trading, CEO Tuld promptly decides to liquidate the firm’s toxic assets onto the market. However, there is much internal tension between the chief officers in that they individually represent different predicaments. In the end, Margin Call illustrates conviction that the role of business is to engender a certain type of lifestyle for the society through the executives’ justifications and interactions with others.

In the month of April 2010, Deepwater Horizon exploded, killing 11 workers and releasing oil from the well into an ocean. This paper will discuss BP management, ethical and social behavior. BP along with a few of its partners Transocean and Halliburton was involved in the gulf oil spill. The explosion of the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon was the root cause of the oil spill. This paper will focus on BP organization behavioral issues that caused the economic, environmental, and human losses. The research further focuses on what BP leadership could have done as a precautionary measure using highest ethics and management behavior.