Question:
Discuss about the Plant Society for BP Oil Company.
The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze two main aspects in a workplace. In this case, the main aspects of study are development of fictional scenario in a workplace and development of script based on the ethical dilemma or simply values of conflicts that have been presented in the scenario. It is very important to note that, in any workplace setup, there are a lot of situations that may take place at any particular time and may result to sever effects to the workers and the environment. Therefore, our scenario under consideration will result to ethical dilemma in workplace that will bring great loss of the employees with adverse effects to the environment. It is therefore very important to ensure acute relationships among all the stakeholders in any workplace setup to avoid such ethical dilemma that can cause loss of lives and negative impact to the environment.
This section involves a specific fictional scenario that outline emergence of ethical dilemma. In this paper, the workplace of our choice is a company dealing with oil products. There are numerous activities that take place in a company dealing with oil products and therefore a great scenario can be drawn from such a workplace setup. The company is widely known as BP Oil Company. The main purposes of the company are oil distribution from one destination to another. The distribution is based on water media such as oceans, seas and lakes. The distribution is also done via land transportation through road transport as well as railway transportation. This simply implies that the company is well connected to many markets all over the world. It is well established that oil product business venture has monopoly characteristics and they tend to be concentrated along a particular line of distributors.
To start with, BP Oil Company has ventured into this business for the last seven years. In the first three years, the company was based on five countries where the oil was being transported after being processed in their plant. Later on, the company expanded the distribution to two more countries over the last four years. This called for more workers by the company so as to fill the emerging positions created by the expansions of the business (Thomas, 2009). As said earlier in the context, BP Oil Company is operated by many employees. Both junior and senior employees are equipped with necessary skills and expertise to as to fit in the various jobs tasks and specifications. Each employee is aware of the tasks and other specifications. The scenario that is about to unfold involves shifting of obligations of various workers which led to the ethical dilemma.
BP Oil Company is headed by a managing director who oversee the overall activities of the company. At the time of the scenario, the managing director was Mr. Daniel Jobs. Below the managing director are the specific company representatives that take charge of the company activities in the counties that the company hold shares. The company has ventured to five countries which implies that the representatives are five. Then there are chief distributors who move the oil from one destination to another. Two years ago, that is, by the end of year 2015, there was a major shift of the representatives from one country to another by the BP Oil Company. This shift brought a lot of tension to the representatives and other employees. It is a duty of the representative to hold account of all the employees of the company in that country and to coordinate all the activities taking place.
By late December 2015, the shifting process was almost done. However, there were two representatives who did not like their new place of work. One of the representative was Daniel Gilbert and the other one was Antony McGregor. Their discomfort arose when Daniel was shifted to a land rock country that was initially headed by Antony. This was not well to both of them but they had to abide to the new rules and regulations governing the BP Oil Company on the shifting process. This meant that Antony was to deal with oil distribution via water transport. That is, through the sea. Then for Daniel, he had to shift from sea oil distribution to railway oil transportation in the new country assigned. This was a complete change of tasks for both of them. Later one, they adopted their new assignment and work was done as planned.
However, by July 2016, a funny thing happens. Antony started selling some oil products to some group of people in the sea before the entire capacity was fully uploaded by the company for his personal gains. This brought a lot of tension to other employees of the company involved in the shipping process. They complained to Antony but he could not listen to them. Most of them were his juniors who feared jobs loss from this representative. Therefore, they opted to keep quite as Antony continued with the illegal trade in the sea. Finally, Antony could fix the capacity of the shipment during offloading and all seemed well. This continued for long as BP Oil Company continued to make huge losses in the long run. The junior employees feared their reputations if they reported the case to the managing director of BP Oil Company. After all, Antony was their boss in that particular time. So, they started chipping in in this illegal trade so as to benefit themselves as well. The company incurred huge losses while on the other hand Antony and his team were fully loading their pockets with money generated from the illegal trade.
By the end of year 2016, the managing director visited Antony and his team and he wanted to fully enquire what was happening in Antony’s cohort of employees and the whole process of shipping the oil. The managing director noted a lot of deficit in the oil supplied since Antony and his team started the shipping of oil in the country. He demanded Antony and his team to fully account for that deficit but they could not due to the bitter truth. The managing director told Antony and his team that their contract and the company would end in the next two months. They were so bitter with the decision of the managing director. Antony and his team decided to continue with the illegal oil trade before their contract end. Later on, Antony noted that there was a lot of oil spilling into the sea during oil siphoning and this was very dangerous. This leads to ethical dilemma of this fictional scenario. Therefore, the next section of this paper will critically analyze the development of script.
The ethical dilemma that has been drawn from this scenario is the spilling of oil into the sea during the illegal siphoning of oil by Antony and his shipment team. All of them are employees of the company mandated to perform the shipping process of oil. They have developed some personal greed during performance of their duties and in the process of shipping, Antony noted oil spilling into the sea. They irony of this is that, Antony did not notify the other employees about the spillage since he was getting a lot of share from the entire illegal activity. Therefore, all the other employees were fully enjoying this extra coin without knowing the anticipated adverse impact that would arise.
The representatives from the other countries were bringing a lot of returns to the company unlike Antony and his team of employees. The managing director was worried and tried to figure out what was happening with the team Antony lead in the shipment of oil. The time given to end the contract between the company and Antony with his team was nearing. As a requirement, during the closing of a company trading year, all the representatives of BP oil Company must meet together with the managing director so as to give annual report regarding the activities done on behalf of the company. Therefore, Antony and the other representatives were to meet so as to submit and analyze the annual report of each representative. Later on, they were to compile a common annual report of the company based on the reports submitted by each representative. However, all the other employees are left to continue with their activities as stipulated in the company’s employment act. This implied that, in case Antony was to attend the meeting on annual report, his team of workers would continue with the activities spelt out by the company. For the case of Antony, his employees would probably continue with the process of siphoning illegal oil in the sea.
Three weeks before the termination of contract between the company and Antony, the managing director of BP Oil Company called for a meeting of all the representatives of the company so as to submit the annual report. Therefore, Antony left his team of employees to continue with the shipment as he represents them in the annual general meeting. The mistake that Antony failed to tell the team is that a lot of oil have been spilled during the illegal siphoning of oil. He failed to alert them hoe dangerous this would be to them and the environment. This was a huge mistake done by Antony.
On 3rd February 2017 after Antony had left for annual general meeting, his team shipped the oil to the sea as usual. They had planned to siphon the oil in the sea as usual so as to generate illegal income for them and their boss, Mr. Antony. However, this was a bad day for them. At their actual place of illegal trade, a mistake happened. There was a lot of oil spillage in the gulf and none of the worker could note. Few hours later, a broad bang was hard from the sea shores followed by huge smoky fog. This was later realized that the team failed to control oil spillage as Antony could do. They therefore left the over spillage to occur which later on resulted to fire bursts in the sea. All of them were burnt beyond recognition and died. There was a lot of oil spillage in the gulf and this brought a lot of damage to the people surrounding and the environment.
During the meeting that Antony was present, news came that all of the company employees shipping oil on behalf of BP Oil Company died in a dangerous fire bust resulted by a lot of oil spillage in the gulf. Antony could not believe on what was reported, he cried but all in vain. The company was so disappointed and required him to explain what had happened.
This result to what is known as BP Oil Company gulf spill. It took many lives of BP Oil Company and brought a lot of damage to the environment. The lives lost were very many and the company needed to set out mechanisms to determine reasons and rationalizations from that incident. The stakeholders involved in this committee were all the representatives including Antony who was a key suspect in the reported case. The managing director was also part of the committee. The environmental assistant who needed answers on the oil gulf spill. The police commissioner was among all the stakeholders involved in BP Oil Company gulf spill.
The main argument was to discuss the compensation plan of the employees who died. The compensation of the company for oil lost, actions to be taken to Antony and the effect of oil spillage on the environment. Therefore, a lot needed to be done. People had started complaining about the effects of oil spillage to the environment and they reported those cases for further action to be taken against the company (Arnold, 2010). The company decided to dismiss Antony on the basis of negligence and he was required to pay for all the damages succumbed by the employees of the company as a compensation plan. The company tried to follow the compensation of the oil lost with no major progress on the same.
The issue of effects of BP Oil Company gulf spill remained the only issue that this ethical dilemma had great impact together with lives lost. The effects of this dilemma affected both the community and the environment. The effects can be outlined in great extent to the maritime creatures which later on spread to land. A lot of marine creatures died as result of oil spill. This minimized the amount oxygen in the water that made animals in the gulf to die. There were no new species reproduced for a long period of time. The number of fish in the sea reduced thus bringing the supply of fish product in the area at zero level. Again, when the oil evaporated into the atmosphere, there were cases of acid rains that affected building in the area. The future generation of the community was at risk when they consumed fish from the gulf. Children with disability were born at that time due t presence of mercury in the fish.
Again, most of the employees of BP Oil Company come from the region. When they died, their families faced difficulties on how to reveal their bodies. Again, it affected the economy of these families since they highly depended on these employees for basic needs and other essentials in a family setup. The spillage of oil left them with no clean water for consumption. This also limited the number of visitors or rather tourists to the gulf since the water was no longer clean for human consumption and recreation. All these adverse effects made community to demand for compensation from the company.
The argument from the company to counter the reasons and rationalizations was to fully compensate the community for the damage brought by the company. However, many of the stakeholders denied this option claiming that the company was clean and Antony was to blame. The most powerful and persuasive response was to ask the stakeholder to put into consideration the community suffering that was caused by negligence of one of the company’s employee. Negligence by Antony reciprocated negligence by the company by laws of proportionality. Later on, the stakeholders agreed to compensate the community and laid down mechanisms to improve the environment. In summary that was the BP Oil Company gulf spill ethical dilemma that effected the environment and many employees lost their lives.
References.
Arnold, J. (2010). Coaching Skills for Leaders in the Workplace: How to Develop, Motivate and Get the Best from Your Staff. How to Books.
Thomas, K.W. (2009). Intrinsic Motivation: What Really Drives Employees Engagement. Berret-Koehler publishers.
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