Attribution Error Bias Case Study

Decision making biases played a devastating role in the Deepwater Disaster. The biases that were present are; representativeness heuristic, overconfidence bias, confirmation bias and escalation of commitment bias. Based on my findings, to some extent, each of the following biases contributed to the Deepwater Disaster.

The dilemma that could be identified with the BP Oil spill is no one wanted to take the blame when it first

Notably, the fundamental attribution error is a personal bias that is problematic in society. To emphasize, the fundamental attribution error is when individuals have the tendency to attribute people’s behavior to components of their character or personality, even when situational influences are producing the behavior (Textbook, page 171). An example of the fundamental attribution error operating in daily life is when a driver avoids hitting a pedestrian and causes an accident. In this

There is a lack of knowledge regarding the use of the Garrity warnings. The Garrity warnings have been misinterpreted and misapplied in numerous cases throughout the United States and caused various investigations to be dismissed and also caused some employees to lose their jobs behind statements they provide during

In the text, Kreitner and Kinicki (2013) states that decision making is one of the primary responsibilities of a manager, and the quality of one’s decisions can have serious consequences. As the title of this cause study shows Faulty Decision Making is the Cause of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. Faulty decision making or lack of any decision making is the key to this disaster.

The fundamental attribution error intrigued me while reading the book because I came across the example about Hurricane Katrina. I lived through this experience so I felt it was only right that I talk about my take. The definition of the fundamental attribution error is assuming someone’s personality based on their actions, even when there are powerful outside forces that can be influencing them. Hurricane Katrina was a horrible natural disaster that no one could have predicted would happen but none the less it happened. I remember my family and I watching the news together and coming to the crippling conclusion that we had to leave everything we had behind. Of course, we were used to this because we lived in what they call “the soup bowl” and we were used to emergency evacuations for hurricanes. There was no

traced to a series of identifiable mistakes made by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean” and “The decisions

MEJRI, Mohamed, and Daniel DE WOLF. 2013. "Crisis Management: Lessons Learnt From The BP Deepwater Horizon Spill Oil". Business Management And Strategy 4 (2): 67. doi:10.5296/bms.v4i2.4950.

Applying the theory of Utilitarianism to the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill we see that BP’s decisions in this case don’t appear clearly ethical. The harms to human and environmental stability caused by the spill seem to weigh heavily against the benefits to the local and U.S. economy of deepwater drilling itself.

Recently, oil spill management has become a serious concern and subsequently, it has become a big issue as it takes a large, specifically trained team effort to solve the devastating problem. It also requires consistent efforts of the workforce. The Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico was perhaps another major contributing factor to highlighting the need for Oil Spill Management to be addressed. The director of the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, Michael Bromwich stated that this oil spill proved that oil and gas organizations were not prepared to deal with oil spills. (Merolli, 2010).

The series of ethical issues that took place leading to the disaster are complex, and other factors such as economic and political issues arose after the catastrophe happened. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ethical issues that took place before the disaster happened, and investigate the moral obligations, social responsibility and justice at an individual and organizational level. The ethical dilemma is broken down into three categories, which include the company’s management priority to reduce costs and time, neglecting safety issues addressed by staff, human misjudgment and errors in neglecting pressure reading; and finally, overlooking the technical design flaws that were not tested by BP before installing to use. The

More specifically, they were trying to avoid the blame and further their individual motives. When I saw the film I thought to myself there’s no possible way this happens in real life, but the article shows two examples. The Challenger case as well as the Macondo Well blowout showed that even though engineers might have noticed a problem, in the end management or other engineers decided that it was safe enough to proceed. Then during the investigation, the leaders of the company or project managers decided to play innocent and ignorant. The other thing that I found interesting is the “practice defines facts” model. If correlations are found, then they become facts until they are disproven; this is the problem with the model. A fact should not be able to change, if a fact is truly a fact then the evidence should always support it. When we spread misinformation by stating a correlation is fact, it can lead to many people thinking that it is the truth. It goes back to the first articles we read in class about misleading information in science. Not only does the Macondo/Challenger article tie into the film that we watch it also ties into other topics that we learned about ethics. People in certain situations have an innate self-interest that hurts

Although the accident was caused by a mechanical failure, it spiralled out of control because of an insufficient safety system. BP acted inefficiently and their carelessness cost the lives of people and damaged the environment, nevertheless this does not mean they acted in an unethical way as

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 resulted in considerable damage to the environment, economy and human livelihoods. While BP, as one of the parties involved in the operation of the oil drilling on Deepwater Horizon rig, suffered huge financial loss and reputation loss, it was found to be the one to be mostly blamed due to its lack of risk management. As poor risk management can lead to an astonishing disaster like this, it appears to be necessary for every business to learn from BP’s mistakes and try the best to prevent such disaster from happening again. This report studies this case, focusing on two issues identified in BP’s risk management practices, namely its sloppy preparation for risks and its inappropriate communication strategy after the crisis happened. No evidence showed that BP had a sufficient emergency plan for the worst-case deep-water oil spill although the depth of the oil drilling was one of the deepest. BP’s unseriousness towards safety was also indicated in their attempt to shift blames to its contractors and the unaccountability shown by the words of BP’s executives during interviews. Based on the examination of BP’s deficiency in risk management, the lessons that can be learned from it are discussed. In brief, firstly, accurate risk assessment and appropriate emergency plan should be available before the operation is started. Secondly, post-crisis communication should show the world that the company cares and is accountable

Yes, there were cognitive biases at Level 3 and other companies as well as the investors during 1997-2001. The biases were…