Case Ethics After an Oil Spill (group)
Question 1
In modern business environment, the most successful organisations are able to recognize when they do wrong as a best ethical practice. In affirming this, Palosaari (2019) evaluating the concept of oil spills and ethical context of this occurrence, relevant findings were sourced. It was evidenced that it is instrumental for the organisation in the receiving end to begin by owning up the problem, arrange mitigation measures and if possible, arrange for immediate compensation for the affected communities. Hence, it is appropriate arguing that the $5,000 set by the company for enabling the community to hire their experts is quite in order. This would not only ensure they are holistically represented in deciding on the way forward post the oil spill and negotiating for the appropriate support to the community and all impacted stakeholders. As evidenced in Ghabra and Calafell (2018), it is ethically appropriate ensuring that the affected community is part of the negotiation and decisions pertaining an issue that has directly impacted them. This similarly has a positive implication of lowering the scope of biasness of the CEO or the manager of the organisation which has caused the oil spills solely or independently making the decision. From evaluation of these aspects, the company decided to compensate the community with $5,000 as a facilitation.
Further, it is an insult compensating the community with only $5,000. Simply put, a successful pipeline operation by the company would have raked them millions of dollars. This would have been to the expense of the natural resources of the community since basically, passing oil pipelines in residential areas directly impact the environment. The oil spills only worsened the phenomenon as it contributed to direct impact with the wildlife, water resources, health management, recreation facilities and public land. These were significantly damaged by the oil spill causing trauma and immense negative implication to the community. Worse still, the oil spill was a life threat to the community in terms of their wellbeing and sustenance in the society. Hence, with all these compounded issues, only offering $5,000 to the community would be a major insult to the community. According to de Oliveira Soares et al. (2020), through oil spills, the impact is not only short-term based among the affected community, but they are long-term with devastating effects if not appropriately and substantially managed on time prior their prevalence. Hence, for the community affected by oil spills, there are more efforts which need to be put in place, new strategies initiated which would increase their satisfaction and not see the $5,000 as an insult to them.
In my position as the local manager of the company, the best practice would entail establishing a sustainable strategy for mitigating the effects of the oil spills. This means initiating a more integrated plan which include all stakeholders input to guarantee the best practice which favours the entire community. Through an integrated plan, it would be possible to monitor its progress, evaluate the best mitigating strategy and how the evaluation of successful cleaning of the oil spills being implemented.
Question 2 The different options in place for Enbridge are informed by the need of harnessing the community satisfaction from their reactionary measures………….
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