The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon well in 2010 that caused the gulf oil spill had all kinds of problems and most of these stemmed from unethical decision making.

The management team from BP was on a risky drill in deep water which was tricky enough without the delays that were pushing the project over budget and past its deadline. BP was losing money and needed to get the drilling completed. This stress added to the management team making reckless decisions to save money and time, regardless of safety and environmental impacts (BP, 2010). David Spence points out that BP should not have made these decisions based on their Corporate Social Responsibities (Spence, 2011). These CSRs are what managers follow to make ethical decisions regarding finances, safety, and environmental decisions. Sometimes these ethical decisions are not popular and can cost the company money. Corporations are in business to make money and this can make shareholders uneasy when major projects start going over budget. Milton Friedman suggested that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits and that much of the other stuff that businesses spend money on is robbing from the shareholders (Corporate Social Responsibility, 2011). When a business does not behave ethically, it can tarnish their namesake, affecting future business (Roberts, 2011). This leads to one of the other ethical framework, utilitarianism, which means doing the best for the greatest number of people regardless of the actions it took to get there. If the BP explosion had not of happened, then by taking risky shortcuts, a large number of shareholders would have benefited. For this case, the utilitarianism theory sums up to the fact that a few human lives lost or environmental disasters are fine as long as the production of oil helps more people than it hurt. Doug BP still hasn’t learned ethical lessons. (2010). Strategic Finance, 92(2), 13-15. Corporate Social Responsibility. (2011). Sage UK. Retrieved from https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sageukkcmngt/corporate_social_responsibility/0 L Etang, ,Jacquie. (1995). Ethical corporate social responsibility: A framework for man. Journal of Business Ethics, 14(2), 125. ”
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