CSR Fail: 30 things BP could've done differently

1182575_21461004 As the U.S. says goodbye to Tony Hayward, one may be tempted to dream, Inception style, of the BP's wasted opportunities for CSR. What follows is a partial list of what BP could've done differently to be socially responsible. BP could have

... fostered a top-down culture of regulatory compliance, fire or reassign employees that had conflicts of interest.

... not lobbied for weak safety regulations and infrastructure.

... addressed safety problems immediately when they were reported instead of ignoring them.

... protected safety measures from internal cost cutting.

... planned for a forseeable contingency for an oil company: a giant oil spill.

... hospitalized injured workers immediately after the Deepwater Horizon explosion rather than forcing them to sign waivers.

... worked cooperatively with the federal agencies on the clean up.

... facilitated reporter access to Gulf Coast sites affected by oil.

... adopted a posture of remorse, apology and empathy rather than evasiveness, denial and deceit.

... guaranteed full cleanup costs.

... established a community support fund to reestablish the Gulf economies the oilspill destroyed.

... held off on settling with Gulf Fisherman until damages were assessed.

... not issued a timeline for filing compensation claims, at all and certainly not before the spill had been controlled.

... paid Gulf fisherman for cleaning up oil on top of their potential settlements, rather than seeking to deduct what BP paid for cleanup FROM any future settlements.

... capped the well as a first step rather than trying alternative, risky strategies designed to preserve the well for future use.

... issued accurate estimates of oil outflow and accurate data generally.

... guaranteed the health costs of oil clean up workers that fell ill.

... been honest.

... disclosed dispersant chemicals before using them.

... minimized rather than overused toxic dispersants.

... not attempted to shift blame around to business partners.

... not fabricated photos. At all, and certainly not on multiple occasions.

... chosen not to pursue digital and social media PR control re adwords, url redirects and youtube.

... prioritized true clean up and recovery over dispersal's "out of sight, out of mind" solution.

... not had new-US CEO Dudley immediately been talk of "scaling back" cleanup efforts.

... had a different CEO than Tony Hayward in the first place, and certainly not allow him take a weekend off to go yachting mid-crisis.

... revoked Hayward's golden parachute payout.

... not orchestrated coverups.

... provided answers to questions at the Congressional hearing.

... not prioritized running PR interference above solutions and the harm it inflicted on the community.

. Many of the things BP should've done to be socially responsible are counter to what its legal team would advise to limit its legal liability and its marketing team would advise to maintain its brand. Which points to the central issue: BP is the CSR loser of the decade due to continued priority of its business interests over social obligations created by the harm its business wreaked. That quality makes BP irresponsible. A few months ago, I praised Exxon over BP due to BP's history of deceptive greenwashing. The spill was only a symptom of a larger disease of BP hubris and systematically unethical business practices. BP's $20B fund is unimpressive. While the government fumbled by maintaining any statutory cap on damages (why should we protect the oil industry from the full cost of the harm it incurs?), $20B is small dollars for BP. $20B won't cover the cleanup in the short or long term, and is so far all talk as the capital has yet to be delivered to the fund. Further, $20B can't rebuild the value of the now destroyed Gulf coast economy, estimated at $230B. And BP didn't just destroy the economy for this year; learning lessons from Exxon-Valdez, the region is unlikely to recover for the next 30 years, at least. Only the future will show whether BP's CEO-switcheroo results in changes to BP's core business strategy of issuing a big "f-you" to Americans and their nation's environmental health. .

Tags: CSR Ranking, CSR Reports, Corporate Responsibility

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