...Exxon Valdez Case Study Executive summary The ethical issues faced by management of corporations, and Exxon in particular, originate from the objective of cost cutting with the purpose of profit maximization. As was seen in Exxon’s case, where the disaster could have been prevented if the proper mechanisms and equipment were put in place. Conflict of interest is also a major ethical problem faced by management as well as employees in corporations, as human beings always look to benefit for themselves above others. Respect to others is another major aspect ethical aspect that should be present in organizations. Exxon Valdez allowed happenings which were seen as common practice. In any other situation this would taboo and not ethical. There was conflict of interest in the safety of the crew and the environment as seen with the emergency training and planning and the captaining skills which resulted in a natural disaster which should have been prevented. An analysis of the traits of a profession evidently suggests management would arguably not be classified as a profession. Ultimately managers therefore do not adhere to the same level of ethical standards as professionals. For Exxon managers to be ethically responsible in their commercial roles they need to find ways of balancing the needs of the company and satisfying their own personal interests with that of the organisation. One way of achieving this is to strictly adhere to the organisations...
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...Current ethical issues on Oil Spill Today, with the continual and rapidly growing need of energy demand by big nations like United States and China continuing to furnish their domestic consumptions of oil have led to increased prices of gasoline whereby alternative forms of energy production are sought. With this in mind, offshore drilling can be a viable option for satiating the need of oil and also to boost the economy of the nation. In this report, I am going to discuss how the current Deepwater Horizon rig explosion has led to disastrous oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico causing environmental problems and also discuss how the oil spill if resolved and with safe and secure drilling techniques, the economic impact of offshore drilling can outweigh the environmental issues. Concerning the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20, 2010, which escalated into a massive amount of oil spillage from the well reservoir as the oilrig sunk killing eleven crewmembers on board. The key players related to the rig explosion are British Petroleum (BP), Transocean, rig owner, and Halliburton. BP is one of the world's largest energy companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday items. (“BP at a glance,” 2010) Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor and the owner of Deepwater Horizon rig, provides the most versatile fleet of mobile offshore drilling units to help...
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...approximately 3.8 million barrels of oil and gas per day and possesses 22,400 service stations over the world. However, the oil disaster called as BP oil spill or the deep water horizon oil spill was occurred on April 20th, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico recording the greatest oil spill compared to other oil spill accidents in our history. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion caused deaths of 11 workers, 17 workers injured as well as a tremendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, this case has been described as a complex accident including a variety of issues ranging from environmental to economic, politics and even ethical issues. The goal of our research is to find any ethical issues since this disaster happened is closely related to ethics which is concerned with moral obligation, social responsibility and justice (Carolyn Wiley, 1997) either individual (‘bad apples’) or organizational (‘bad barrels), which should be evaluated to verify this case. Firstly, the ethical issues can largely be divided into three categories, namely (1) technical design which has had some testing flaws before the actual usage and insufficient guidelines against the negative pressure test, (2) human factors including misjudgment, errors and a failure in duty, (3) organizational system such as taking risk procedures to save time and money and refusing the advice of staff and contractors as well as slowness to react in the accident. Thus, the ethical issues in BP oil spill case relevant to the individuals...
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...YJ Oil and Gas Industry Introduction YJ Oil and Gas Ltd. in UK is one of emerging company in recent years which is prospering steadily in past couple of year on the back of Initial struggle by founding CEO Oliver Penn. This success came on the back of specialists hired by Oliver Penn. Those specialists while working on three fields of Oil and Gas named “AAA”, “BBB” and “CCC” has explored the reserves with such great ability that led Company to increase its supply, ultimately maximizing the revenues and Profit in FY 2013 & 2014. YJ Ltd. is using method “Upstream” relates to Exploration & Production (E & P). YJ Ltd. has applied for four Licenses in order to meet corporate objectives, shareholders expectations and market demand of Oil and Gas. YJ has implemented IT system in 2005. Which includes multi-currency nominal ledger, a fixed assets register, Survey and scanning software packages, Health, safety and environmental (HSE) and Production of Environmental Impact. Since and IPO of YJ Ltd, it has applied for eight licenses and four of them are in waiting list. YJ has won the bid in fields of DDD, EEE, FFF while cannot grab license of GGG field. YJ Oil and Gas Ltd. has been successful to secure the bid in three licenses. YJ Ltd, at initial will work to explore, appraise and develop those exploratory wells in order to meet share and stake holders’ interest and keeping execute goals in front Global issue is decreasing of Energy resources which comprises Gas and...
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...Ethical Issues Affecting Bp Operations Management Essay For a company to become a good corporate citizen it must follow the rules put in place by the government to where the company's operations activities are taking place, this also include protecting the environment and local people in the community from any harm from noise or water or air pollution. This report will explore more about the responsibilities BP have for making moral judgement and how their employees are involved and empowered. Also will have information on ethical issues affecting their operational activities and how do they ensure good relationship of employer and employee. Ending part there will be a summary about ethical code for oil industry. INTRODUCTION Considering ethics, a corporations' responsibility for taking actions that are morally sound needs to change. Reviewing the role of the individual, corporations are being subjected to the role of moral agent. The question is, can a corporation, composed of people, be held responsible for its own action as a moral agent? The answer is complexed from an individual's viewpoint with that of the corporation. Werhane (1989:821) viewed that corporation by law is identified as a person that is frequently held responsible for business practises. However, Werhane continues, if firms are not moral agents, they do not become morally liable and thus the onus is passed onto the individual person. [1] This becomes complicated because how can individuals become solely...
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...Shell in Nigeria: The Ethical Issues Ethics are moral principles, as of an individual, a country or a religion. A lot of people have different perspectives of the world and carry different opinions involving what is ethical and what is not. Ethics are a major concern in International Business and companies face ethical issues very frequently. Royal Dutch Shell, commonly known as Shell, is a fusion of over 1,700 companies around the world. Shell Nigeria is one of the largest oil producers in the Shell Group and more than 80% of the oil extractions in Nigeria is in the Niger Delta. The Delta is a home to many small minority ethnic groups, such as Ogoni, all of which suffer exploitation of human rights, environmental rights, and economical and health issues by big multinational oil companies, mainly Shell. Emanuel Nnadozie, A famous writer, has said "Oil is a curse which means only poverty, hunger, disease and exploitation for those living in oil producing areas.” This paper will focus mainly on the case of Shell’s ethically immoral attitudes towards Ogoni, but one must keep in mind that there are dozens of other groups that suffer the same exploitation of resources and injustices, both environmentally and economically. Firstly, Ogoni continuously faces human rights violation from Shell. Oil from Ogoniland provides close to $30 billion to the economy of Nigeria and the people of Ogoni see only very little from their contribution to Royal Dutch Shell. According to The Essential...
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...Lorenzo’s Oil “Lorenzo’s Oil” is a very dramatic, heartbreaking movie based on a true story. The story starts off of the Odone family coming back from Africa. Their fiver year old son Lorenzo Odone starts to have some odd changes in his behavior during school, and later on at home. He starts to have fits which is unusually for Lorenzo. As well he had two accidents that left him injured. The parents Augusto Odone and Michaela Odone decide to take him to the children’s hospital to see what is wrong with him. They find out that their son Lorenzo has a rare diseases known as ALD (Adrenoleukodystrophy). It is a rare heritable genetic disorder that affects only males ages 5-10. It is passed on by mothers who are carries of this disease. What happens is that the brain function declines, due to the lack of myelin sheath being removed from the brain nerve cells. When there is no myelin the nervous system starts to fail. Lorenzo muscles started to get weak, and had less control over things. After Lorenzo’s father Augusto learned all about the symptoms (blindness, deafness, seizures, and death), him and Michaela start to study about the disease. They are determined to find a cure for the disease, and tried to seek more help from scientist and doctors. Sadly, the doctors and scientist seen Lorenzo as just another patient and were not able to do anything to help Lorenzo. This is where the problem started. Lorenzo was used as a “rat” for the scientist and doctors so they could study his...
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...Ayrton Bettencourt Barry University • Ethical issue: Please describe the ethical issue that you have identified. Describe the who, what, where, why, and when. The ethical dilemma facing BP is how to balance profit maximization and at the same time be responsible for the environment and society. Several events have affected BP in recent years but none has challenged the balance between profit and environment responsibility like the Gulf oil spill. This event, recognized as the worst oil spill in the History of the United States, occurred on April 20th of 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico and was characterized by an explosion following an integrity failure of a well and a consequent 87 day spill of oil into the sea (BP, 2010). Eleven people were killed in the explosion and it is estimated that almost 5 million barrels of crude oil dispersed into the Gulf Sea (The Ocean Portal Team, 2010). Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP at the time of the oil spill incident, downplayed the effects of the oil leak in the environment and society, stating, “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean“ (Webb, 2010). Previous events had caused concerns among authorities on the possibility of BP not doing the appropriate maintenance of its old system of wells. In fact, in 2004 the company was fined for $1.2 million by state regulators (Barringer, 2006) and in 2006 for $2.4 million by the labor department also because of unsafe practices (Pulham, Hilaire, & Fenn, 2010)...
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...TMG 610 Global Trends in Technology Case #8: Royal Dutch / Shell: Ethical Issues, Human Rights and Resource Extraction Case Study Report Ozel Kirkland 29 March 2014 I. Introduction – In General Terms What is this case is about? Why is it relevant to TMG 610? Whether the extractive industries like it or not, the nature of their involvement with host nations is a precarious balance between competing interests (Dicken, 2010), and firms are either obligated to conduct themselves responsibly when dealing with developing nations like Nigeria, or mitigate the negative effects of their choices after the fact, like Royal Dutch / Shell was compelled to. Unfortunately, some extraction companies have a reputation for embracing their short-term self-interests, exploiting developing countries rich with oil like Nigeria, instead of acting ethically. Many of the extractive resources of the world are found in poorer, or developing countries. The question is how can these resources be exploited without foreign assistance. In the earlier part of the twentieth century, many of these extractive industries originated from colonial powers that had expanded into these countries and invested in these companies. This expansion was singularly intended to expand the grip for these foreign countries over mineral resources, used to support their home country and the growing manufacturing and infrastructure growth in those home nations. However the relationships between these host...
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...ExxonMobil and the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline A CEO of any multi-million dollar company is always left with ethical dilemmas that affect their profession. Most of these ethical dilemmas always center on employees, personal beliefs and environmental issues. In this case CEO Lee Raymond of ExxonMobil, was faced with the decision of building a pipeline in Chad and Cameroon. Until a Certain point in time, the pipeline was a shared interest among Shell and TotalFinaElf. However both the companies have backed from the project, due to future economical issues. Although on paper it seems that both companies were doing the best for the environment, but it was an environmental risk that these companies were facing. If such environmental risk was to take place the company could face up to billions in lawsuits. The CEO Lee Raymond was faced with the decision of whether building the pipeline would be ethical or not. Other than environmental factors, there were many other issues standing in his way. For example the lively hood of the people in Chad and Cameroon will be affected, as well as the indigenous people of Cameroon. Nearly 64 villages and their citizens will be affected by the construction of the pipeline. However the biggest dilemma that Lee Raymond faces is that if not ExxonMobil, than another company will continue with the project. There are many ethical issues surrounding the construction of the pipeline, such as corrupt politicians, the environment and the people. Developing...
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...Ethical Organization Profile Maltie Ramjattan, Stuart Copenhaver, Judith Sturdivant, Anthony Cortez Sr. MGT 216 September 27, 2010 Ethical Organization Profile Global Oil Company has to be able to watch and take into account all problems that an employee gives them. Global Oil Company about 20 years ago did not have this in place and caused a big issue at one of their plant. This company did not listen to their employees and was only worried about the profits that then what was happening around them. They could have just fixed the problems and still could have been profitable, but would just not have made as much money. Because they did not listen to their employee’s part, one of the plants exploded and caused major property damage and employees to get hurt. This is why the code of ethics had to be put in place to prevent this from happening again. This company is not going to let what happened 20 years ago happen again. The Ethics Code of Global Oil Company is built around 10 key concepts that demonstrate the companies’ dedication to doing business ethically. 1. Building Reliability and Trust with Employees, Customers, and Shareholders – Building Reliability and Trust is integral to ensuring that our employees know they can rely on each and trust in their fellow employees, ensure that customers view our products as a flagship of reliability, and trust that we will treat them fairly in all business dealings, and ensure that the shareholders...
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...Business ethics has come under scrutiny over the past several years thanks to such companies as Enron, and more recently BP. As a society we are faced with ethical dilemmas daily and our culture is shaped by how we handle these situations. A Code of Ethics policy is used in most businesses today to establish acceptable behaviors and actions expected among the employees and executive officers. The Code of Ethics is fundamental in building a stable business foundation with all members being expected to comply. It is here that the problems start because even though the Code of Ethics should guide the members toward appropriate moral activity, it is not always successful. When moral and ethical behaviors go bad it affects us all. The top three ethical issues within today’s business environment that affect my community and my organization are corporate social responsibility, leadership issues, and financial issues. The first ethical issue to affect us is corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR is defined by how companies integrate social and environmental issues and concerns within their business operations. CSR goes beyond corporate donations and compliance of corporate laws to the management of an environmental impact. A good example of how a company’s CSR is inadequate would be British Petroleum (BP). BP is a large oil company in...
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...Chevron Chevron, one of the oldest energy companies in United States, was first founded as Pacific Coast Oil Company in 1879 and was named as Chevron Corporation in 1984. Several companies were established after Standard Oil’s split during 1980s’ and Chevron Corporation was among those big energy corporations who merged with those companies. The company is publicly traded on NYSE, Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500. Chevron is involved in petroleum and natural gas industry. It does almost anything related to the industry from exploring to generating power. With over 60,000 employees Chevron operates business in 84 countries; Angola, Australia, Gulf of Mexico, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and United States are regions where the cooperation mainly operates primary exploration and production. Other than oil and natural gas, Chevron is engaged to biofuel, geothermal, hydrogen, solar and wind energy production. According to the official website for businesses Chevron offers following goods and services: * Additives * Aviation Oils * Base Oils * Chemicals * Fuels * Lubricants * Marine * MSDS * Specialty Products * Technology And for consumers it offers goods and services listed below: * Fuels and Stations * Gift and Credit Cards * Pay Bill * Motor Oils and Fuel Additives Code of Ethical Conduct Chevron relies on values such as integrity, trust, diversity, ingenuity, partnership, protecting...
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...to mention a global wave of criticism washing over the pharmaceutical giant (e.g., New Zealand Herald 27th March 2007, Vasagar 2007). In 2009 the New Zealand public learned that Cadbury was substituting palm oil for cocoa butter in its chocolate (e.g., New Zealand Herald 4th May 2009). At the time many multinationals used palm oil in their products and while its use received considerable attention from conservationists, Cadbury was using only certified sustainable palm oil; a move that was part of a cost cutting exercise to help maintain pricing levels for its consumers. However, there was considerable public outcry, as well as protest by international environmental groups such as World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and local organisations such as the Auckland Zoo (over the potential loss of Orang-utan forest habitat to palm oil plantations). The negative publicity from the palm oil debate created damaging ‘noise’ for Cadbury’s ongoing worldwide ethical brand building efforts and its high profile announcements that it would shortly be using the Fairtrade logo for the flagship Dairy Milk brand in key global markets, including Australia and New Zealand (Fairtrade Foundation 2009). Less than three months later Cadbury caved into the conservationists’ demands and reversed their palm oil policy (e.g. New Zealand Herald 17th August 2009). This case study illustrates the relevance of buyer behaviour theories...
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...There was a vast number of ethical issues raised in the movie “Enron-the Smartest Guys in the Room” but the four I am going to focus on are listed below. Art Anderson, Ken Lay and all of the other executives did a number of unethical things which ultimately brought down Enron and affected thousands of employees and their futures. The bottom line was that each and every one of them acted out of greed for the almighty dollar. 1- Encouraging employees to invest and buy stock in Enron when they knew the truth about the lack of value in the stock. As an employee you trust in your management to make the best choices both for you and for the business to succeed. Ken Lay and other executives strongly encouraged Enron employees to invest in it’s stock. They all knew that the company was not doing well and yet they encouraged others to spend their hard earned money investing in it all the while they are selling their shares of stock. Employees trusted and relied on their decisions and in the end it ended up hurting them. With Ken Lay publicly encouraging its employees and other investors to invest in Enron’s stock he is affecting their future and retirement. These employees didn’t earn nearly as much as he did and he is convincing them to invest their money into an entity that was set to fail by Lay himself. I don’t believe any proper ethical alternative action could have been taken in this situation. Of course you want your employees to have faith in the company they work for...
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