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Bp Business Strategy Essay

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BP’s general strategy Oil companies were the worst performing brands in the world market. There was no brand in the oil industry that had created positive perception in the public. During the late 1990’s BP has decided to change this perception for their brand. The main idea was to create a symbolic capital for BP. The definition of symbolic capital is given by (Bourdieu, 1974/1977 sited in Holt & McNulty,2008,p.76) as “ the resources by which authority and credibility are established amongst employees, peers, customers, regulators and other organizational constituents through the capability to articulate legitimate judgments and actions from a specific institutional position”. This could be a powerful tool in certain conditions. The …show more content…

This was the main paradigm inside the company and as stated by Johnson (1992,p.32) that paradigm was shaping the general decision making inside the company. There was great trust to the brand and this trust was creating illusion inside as well. There had 760 safety violations of BP and there was only 1 violation of Exxon. Exxon had received more protest than BP. These figures prove that BP’s symbolic capital was in a good shape, but on the other hand there were serious violations of safety in the operations. Therefore new CEO did not need a radical change in the strategy. It was much an evolutionary change for the company at that period. Hayward can be called as a good manager, rather than a leader. As explained by Weick & Quinn, the change inside the company and the change in the strategy were done by incremental changes. The entire employee and the decision makers in the company were thinking the position of BP so robust and powerful that, investing only in the PR could save the company and prevent disasters. Psychologist Irving Janis developed the groupthink model in the early 1970s. According to Janis, if there are certain conditions exist, then intelligent people can make foolish decisions. One of the conditions was a powerful and influencing leader in a group could cause the groupthink. All the company and people around CEO did not see the realities of the world outside. The leadership of Browne after many

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