My Business Ethics assignment at HAN (A Report on
The DeepWater Horizon BP oil spill from a Business Ethics
perspective)
For my Business Ethics module I follow at HAN (Hogelschool van
Arnhem and Nijmegen - Arnhem Business School) I was assigned to
work on a group project on the recent scandal of the huge oil spill
caused by an accident on the DeepWater Horizon platform in the Gulf
of Mexico.
In my assignment I was assigned to work of a group of 4 students
initially, however after the first week one of the students decided
to just quit the work group and we were left with a group of
3.
I had quite a struggle in the beginning and somewhere in the middle
of the project because one of my group members were not showing on
the first 2 or 3 meetings. Luckily with time that was managed and
he started showing and parcipated actively and I even can say was
quite happy with his input.
The guys I've worked on the project were: Ervan (Indonesian) and
Miguel (Spanish). It took us about 4 weeks to complete the project
but at the end the report become a good one.
The report was graded by the Business Ethics teachers Stephan and
Silvia. The report was graded with the mark of 8.0 on the scale of
10 maximum, which btw is quite a good mark if it's matched to the
normal grading standards here in the Netherlands.
The aim of the report was to define a Problem Statement based on
the oil spilling issue in terms of:
1. Problem owner
2. How the problem owner should act
3. The Moral Nature of the Problem
4. Overall Problem Analysis
5. Possible options for actions to solve the BP Deepwater Horizon
catastrophe
6. A cooperating strategy way as a mean to solve the Mexico Gulf
contamination
7. Solution in terms of Black & White Strategy
8. Using a creative middle way solution to solve the BP
problem
9. Ethivcal Evaluation
9.1 Ethical evaluation baesd on intuition
9.2 Ethical evaluation in light of Utilitarianism
9.3 Ethical evaluation of the problem according to John Stuart
Mill's freedom principle
9.4 Case study in light of Kantian's categorical imperative
9.5 Case evaluation in terms of Aristotle's virtual ethics
9.6 Problem from Care Ethics perspective
10 Criticism on major ethical theories
11 Moral acceptable action to solve the BP Deepwater Horizon
problem
Here I also post for download the
Business Ethics report on British Petroleum in a PDF
and
Business Ethics report on Deepwater Horizon oil spill
I hope this report will be an interesting learning point for
Business Ethics students for the upcoming years in Arnhem Business
School and will be an example report on how to write and structure
their Business Ethics group assignment reports.