CHAPTER 10

Crisis in Review: The 2010 Deepwater Horizon Disaster

Crisis is not spontaneous; generally, warning signs are already in place that signal the inevitability of escalation. Crisis is the final step, evolving from issue, argument, and conflict. In this chapter the BP tragedy is examined as a case study of unproductive issue, argument, and conflict engagement leading to a major crisis. Heath (2006, p. 245) defines crisis as “risk manifested.” He argues that crises are the culmination of risks that escalate into events that threaten organizational survival. The BP case illustrates the problematic consequences of thoughtlessness and disregard for communication ethics in action, consequences up to and including inevitable crises. By reviewing the examples and concepts of preceding chapters, this chapter examines and recapitulates the thoughtless BP actions that made the crisis inescapable. Without a commitment to a background narrative of thoughtful ethics and strong organizational values, BP permitted foreground issues of immediate profitability to supersede the call of ethics. BP’s neglect and continuing misplacement of priorities caused them to miss opportunities for the reflective learning that can guide innovation and repair. Such attentiveness might have rewritten this unfortunate history. Communication ethics in action might have curtailed the environmental disaster that commenced on April 20, 2010. This final chapter considers the results of ignoring the beginning signs of crisis—results with pragmatic implications in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. In this chapter, we do not follow the format of previous chapters; instead, this concluding stage offers additional theoretical insight centered on three major action metaphors:

Crisis communication scholars Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger (2015) contend that crisis is an unexpected and “nonroutine” event, often foreshadowed by early warning signs. Unintended events can mushroom out of control if ignored by upper-level management and other organizational stakeholders. Because crises are by definition “unexpected,” preparation is not a guarantee against their occurrence. However, communication preparation at the level of issue, argument, and conflict will lessen the likelihood and/or severity of a crisis. Crises, by their nature, live outside the grasp of our influence. Leadership must be ever responsive in order to prepare for issues, arguments, and conflicts between and among internal and external stakeholders; such preparation and action yields a greater probability of organizational health and success but cannot be, ultimately, a guarantee that crisis can still be averted. Crises are pragmatic opportunities that can yield lessons for leadership and strengthen relationships with stakeholders as they provide direction for future courses of action. Communication ethics in action molds crises into productive events through its constructive framework for the ongoing development of organizational and communicative behaviors alert to the nonroutine and the unexpected. In addition to the positive learning emerging from a crisis, there is also a shadow reality—the potential for internal and external destruction. Responsiveness and attentiveness to crises seeks to frame direction and outcome, while maintaining full recognition that such control is never totally within our grasp. Crises emerge when issues, arguments, and conflicts receive insufficient attention, giving rise to what might appear, at first glance, a spontaneous crisis. Coombs (2014; Coombs and Holladay 2010) argues that crisis management and communication occurs within three specific phases: precrisis, crisis, and postcrisis. Each phase carries within it particular responses, strategies, and guidelines for effective communication between and among impacted constituents.

Precrisis: Crisis Unfolding

A precrisis consists of numerous events through which a crisis unfolds into reality. Lee, Woeste, and Heath (2007) contend that “proactive” crisis preparedness is crucial in order to remain organizationally vibrant and effective at the phase of postcrisis. The authors echo Coombs’s argument that excellent crisis communication is synonymous with exceptional communication management overall. Each of the phases articulated by Coombs calls for thoughtful and responsive communication ethics in action to be exemplified at all levels of leadership. For Coombs (2014), crisis communication is either the management of information or the management of meaning for internal and external stakeholders as they thoughtfully negotiate and renegotiate interpretations of events. The pragmatic implications of an unfolding crisis are evident in the transformative impact that organizations have on stakeholders. The unfolding of a crisis yields opportunities for constructive growth and positive development, along with the parallel possibility of organizational decline or demise.

This section considers the pragmatic implications of crisis communication and corporate communication practices through three significant considerations: (1) issue, (2) argument, and (3) conflict. These forms of performative content, tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy, illuminate problematic consequences originating from thoughtless disregard for communication ethics in action. Full-blown crises originate from such repetitive acts of thoughtlessness.

Crisis Clarity: Precrisis and Issue

Coombs (2014, p. 8) defines the precrisis phase of crisis communication as “prevention and preparation.” This phase of crisis communication is always active, looking for emerging warning signs that, when left unattended, rapidly grow in problematic significance. Coombs and Holladay (2012) offer the metaphor of paracrisis to characterize the early stage of issue escalation during precrisis management. Paracrisis is a “public visible crisis threat that charges an organization with irresponsible or unethical behavior” (p. 409). Coombs and Holladay cite the helpful advent of numerous Internet technologies, such as social media, to make visible the possible steps of precrisis prevention such as the scanning and monitoring of stakeholder issues (“environmental scanning”). Paracrises are issue events that lend themselves to preventative maintenance or to escalation into a full-blown crisis. Problematic events emerge when warning signs, or “prodromes” as Steven Fink¹ termed them, provoke no reflection, or limited reflection (Coombs and Holladay 2012, p. 409). Thoughtlessness guides organizational behavior to be unresponsive as stakeholders refuse to examine crucial communicative events within rapidly changing environments.

Coombs and Holladay turn to the 1986 work of Heath and Nelson (1986), as well as the 2009 work of Heath and Palenchar (2009), to understand the monitoring of surrounding publics through the active searching of issue arenas and spaces where stakeholders raise and dispute issues. Coombs and Holladay (2012) link precrisis prevention/paracrisis situations explicitly with issues and issue management. They offer four specific practices to prevent escalation, addressing paracrises/issues that BP routinely ignored:

First, Coombs and Holladay maintain that paracrises are about “reputational threat” due to perceived unethical behaviors that create an “expectation gap.” Organizations must strive to be constantly aware of stakeholder perceptions. Second, organizations must evaluate the “importance or salience of stakeholders” by considering the organizations’ own power to harm and undercut the legitimacy of stakeholder groups. Third, they underscore the importance of organizational constraints on possible responses to paracrises/issues; constraints of cost and limits of organizational strategy must drive the effective handling of emerging issues. Finally, organizations must thoughtfully respond to paracrises/issues through three specific communicative strategies: “refute, reform, and refuse.” Refuting offers public evidence that a paracrisis is false. Reforming involves public “repentance.” Refusing embraces a necessary silence, ignoring the paracrisis/issue. Paracrisis/issue communication is the precrisis stage that calls forth a public response to perceived issues that carries capability of attending to escalation.

The history of BP’s involvement in a multiplicity of paracrises/issues that were not properly dealt with through preventative maintenance demonstrates the lack of thoughtful integration of communication ethics in action during these numerous precrisis episodes. These failures occurred in multiple places, and they included the disregard of a broken gauge and a rejection of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) request to install preventative maintenance precautions—failures that eventually led to the 2005 explosion of BP’s oil refinery in Texas City. Chemical safety board chairman Carolyn Merritt led the inquiry into the explosion—the largest investigation of its kind—and found that “the combination of cost-cutting, production pressures, and failure to invest [in safety and infrastructure] caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the refinery” (U.S. Chemical Safety Board 2007, March 20). A similar problem occurred in 2006 when the failure to fix corroding pipelines led to the destruction of 16 miles of Alaskan wilderness. Shockingly, three years after this BP applied for an exemption from a “detailed environmental impact analysis,” claiming that a spill at the Macondo well was highly unlikely (Eilperin 2010, May 5). Unfortunately, the MMS granted the exemption. Large-scale issues of design flaws at the Macondo well went unexamined and ignored. Inattentiveness to problems with the well resulted in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, clearly a continuation of multiple paracrises involving ignored issues, arguments, and conflicts that led to a crisis of sizable public importance—a crisis that damaged not only BP’s reputation but the industry as well.

Crisis Clarity: Precrisis and Argument

In the precrisis stage of crisis management, organizations must attend to and respond to issues in order to avoid escalation to crisis. Argument is a direct result of problematic disregard for issues of significance. Arguments, persuasively engaged, involve internal and external stakeholders contending over the meaning of given issues. Addressing this contention, Coombs, Chandler,² and Holladay (1995) published “The Arrogance and Its Agony: The Importance of Understanding the Argumentative Dimensions of Crisis Communication.” They advocated for a reinvigorated approach to crisis communication that acknowledges the distinctive role of argument in crisis communication.

For Coombs, Chandler, and Holladay, communication during any type of public crisis “requires advocates to respond to a complex rhetorical situation” composed of divergent perspectives, expectations, and viewpoints that compete for saliency in the public sphere (p. 296). Engaging a narrative perspective, they contend that crises arise through the argumentation process. The authors follow the narrative/argument innovation of Walter Fisher³ that is centered on narrative rationality, narrative coherence, and narrative fidelity. They bring these central action metaphors of Fisher into an understanding of crisis situations and crisis responses. Narrative rationality refers to the process of interpretation implemented by internal and external stakeholder experiences that shape events into a cohesive story. Narrative rationality depends upon narrative coherence, or the “consistency” of the story. Narrative fidelity is an “externally” dependent interpretive process that aligns current stories with previous “expectations and past experiences” (Coombs et al. 1995, p. 297). They argue that narratives provide logic and evaluative criteria for stakeholders, influencing the understanding and progress of crises. Crises are multifaceted, composed of competing arguments and judgments that dictate crisis response. Coombs, Chandler, and Holladay contend that narrative argumentation theory offers situational and contextual guidelines for thoughtful and creative response to crises.

BP’s failure to engage issues connected to preventative maintenance raised serious arguments over BP’s integrity, ethical values, and corporate practices. Following the insights of Coombs, Chandler, and Holladay, one can see that BP manifested no narrative coherence in their arguments. BP’s branding practices should have demonstrated narrative fidelity with internal and external stakeholders, yet these practices revealed systematic problems in the alignment of their organizational values and their communicative practices. For example, in 1997, former CEO John Browne proclaimed BP to be a force in the green movement. In 2000, BP unveiled the famous Helios logo. BP’s initial actions announced its desire to forge the way for petroleum companies in corporate social responsibility. However, in 10 years, the misalignment between BP’s words and actions through repeated preventative maintenance problems demonstrated their contempt for environmental safety. Increasing the expectations between and among internal and external stakeholders was made problematic through BP’s disjunction between public relations word and deed, which became a secondary form of narrative coherence problem plaguing BP. Misalignment between environmental concern and environmental protection began to define arguments within and surrounding BP actions. The company disregarded arguments that called them to account, repeatedly revealing a lack of communication ethics in action that made conflicts with multiple publics inevitable.

Crisis Clarity: Precrisis and Conflict

Conflict is the final stage of escalation before a full-blown crisis. Conflict is a direct result of divergent perspectives and viewpoints that clash over competing values, virtues, and ethics. Conflict is anticipated through an organization’s precrisis commitment to prevention through preparation; even so, clashing viewpoints come to the surface in difficult areas of corporate decision making—clashes that, when ignored, invite crises. In these corporate clashes, as in personal ones, emotion is fundamental in understanding the development of conflicts. Coombs et al. (2010, p. 338) provide theoretical insight into this crucial element of emotion in crisis management. They examine corporate apologia, the “communicative effort to defend the corporation against reputation/character attacks,” as an essential response in precrisis preparation. Their work offers a historical overview of crisis communication, drawing specifically upon Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and Contingency Theory.

SCCT begins with David L. Sturges in 1994 and utilizes attribution theory—the belief that individuals link events with reasons—to analyze the conviction that the “nature” of a crisis will “determine the most effective response to that crisis” (Coombs 2014, p. 14). Akin to corporate apologia, SCCT centers on reputation repair through an ethical lens of “stakeholder safety.” Contingency theory builds upon SCCT, addressing the uniqueness of a given conflict (Coombs et al. 2010). Coombs et al. argue that conflicts force constituencies to choose a public position as they respond to perceived threats/opportunities. The standpoint they choose remains contingent upon a range of variables, including significance of threat and opposing viewpoints. In responding to conflict through this lens, they discuss four significant considerations: (1) threat type, (2) threat duration, (3) emotion, and (4) conflict escalation. Threats from internal and external contingencies alike require thoughtful and immediate responses. Crisis communication necessitates understanding the anticipated duration of a given threat, from immediate to long-term. Stakeholders then react to crisis communication responses. Coombs et al. argue that emotion is crucial in responses to and among stakeholders and that the two primary emotions that drive stakeholder response are anxiety and anger. When crisis communication is handled inappropriately, conflict escalation into crisis becomes inevitable due to the increase in this anxiety and anger. The fundamental importance of corporate apologia, thus, is the curtailing of escalating anxiety and anger, making time for genuine action and reputational repair.

Conflict defines BP’s history, anticipating and leading to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Even the 1989 Exxon Valdez environmental disaster, which spilled 38 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, has BP’s fingerprints in the background. BP’s involvement in that crisis originated with its financial interests in TAPS, which was primarily responsible for the Valdez spill cleanup. While Exxon took the brunt of the blame, BP never accepted responsibility, in the name of environmental and stakeholder safety, for its lack of preparation and action. BP’s history of negligent precrisis planning stems from a decades-long disregard of communication ethics in action. Besides the 1989 Valdez debacle, in the 1980s and 1990s BP had attempted to secure government approval to drill in the ANWR; BP’s actions countered Chuck Hamel’s airing of whistleblowers’ concerns and devolved into the oil company’s participation in illegal surveillance (see Chapter 9). These early examples anticipated the issues, arguments, conflicts, and crises in 2005 (Texas City), 2006 (Prudhoe Bay), and finally in 2010 (Deepwater Horizon). Angry stakeholders raised arguments over issues of environmental and stakeholder safety, but BP chose to protect immediate organizational interests rather than acknowledge publicly the intensifying conflicts.

Summary

The precrisis stage of crisis management requires prevention, thoughtful engagement of conflict, and preparation attentive to the unexpected. This section explicated the inevitability of crisis when precrisis preparations are thoughtlessly disregarded, the explication carried out through three key elements:

Once the precrisis stage escalates into crisis, constituencies experience the full weight of the ignored issues, arguments, and conflicts that now manifest themselves through a myriad of channels, events, and incidents, giving rise to a public crisis (see Figure 10.1). Crisis discernment is a crucial component of corporate communication leadership; crises need to be properly identified to discern the appropriate timing of responses, allocation of resources, and a clear understanding of what matters most to various stakeholders. Crisis now often determines organizational success and survival.

Figure 10.1 The Deepwater Horizon disaster

Crisis: Clarity and Discernment

Crisis is the final stage of organizational responsiveness to stakeholder problems/opportunities that have burst upon the public sphere. Clarity of crisis discernment becomes a crucial communication skill, ever attentive to the reduction of unintended consequences. Crises by their nature explode into public view and threaten organizational survival. The complex of events in BP’s checkered history exemplifies crises swirling out of control; problems escalate into crises that challenge constructive growth and organizational identity. Coombs (2004, p. 467) defines “crisis history[s] [as] whether or not an organization has experienced similar crises, [and] is a direct threat to the organizational reputation.” Coombs points to the linkage between thoughtful engagement of communication ethics in action and the applied practical wisdom of phronesis.⁴ In crisis communication, phronesis/practical wisdom demands that leadership understand their stakeholders and the crisis terrain. Without such knowledge, appropriate responses capable of guiding decision making in the midst of turmoil go unrecognized. Crisis communication requires alertness to particulars in the immediate situation, as well as long-term knowledge of internal and external stakeholders situated within a given environment and industry.

This section pivots upon three foundational crisis communication interest groups: (1) internal stakeholders, (2) external stakeholders, and (3) forgotten publics. Stakeholders are formative in escalating the movement from issue to argument to conflict to crisis. Each stakeholder constituency exerts constructive, and at times destructive, impact on organizational health and survival. In the midst of an escalating crisis, the clarity and discernment of issues, arguments, and conflicts permit organizational leadership to minimize crises as they recognize, respond to, and review stakeholder concerns and interests.

Crisis: Internal Stakeholders

Coombs (2004) contends that this final phase of crisis communication necessitates responsiveness to the particular and unique interests of internal and external stakeholders. Internal stakeholders garner power to influence crisis direction, response, and possibilities of amelioration or escalation. Frandsen and Johansen (2011) articulate crisis communication common sense: when internal stakeholder interests and the concerns of external constituencies do not attain a necessary level of alignment, the escalation of a crisis becomes a given. They reject a “psychological” framework for understanding internal stakeholder interests; they follow practices and actions that respond to a unique emerging crisis.

Frandsen and Johansen propose an “integrative” framework that yields understanding of internal stakeholders by evaluating their “relationship” to and with the organization in all phases of crisis (precrisis, crisis, and postcrisis). They articulate four major metaphors that distinguish internal stakeholders from external constituencies:

Stakeholders have differing relationships with organizations, as dictated by their unique interests. As such, each internal stakeholder group has a distinctive stake in organizational survival—employees, for example, connect crises to issues of compensation and durability of employment. Stakeholder identification with an organization reveals values and a sense of “belonging” to a given organization. Frandsen and Johansen contend that internal stakeholders “mobilize” as both “receivers” and “senders” in a crisis communication moment. For example, in the midst of the bankruptcy event experienced by General Motors and Chrysler, GM mobilized internal stakeholders (employees) to engage in social media usage and corporate communication practices to proactively engage with external stakeholders while simultaneously protecting financial resources. Internal stakeholders proactively engage with the organization both in what they hear and in what they express, a dual engagement that influences outcomes within a crisis.

The influential role of internal stakeholders went unfilled in BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. When the explosion occurred in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, BP’s Macondo well was behind its expected schedule. Added pressure of increasing costs and dwindling time contributed to problematic decisions that unleashed volatility in the well. BP’s shortcuts established a chain of critical links that led to the tragedy:

These five thoughtless decisions, compounded by the circumstance of a crippled blowout preventer, doomed the Macondo well, eventuating in the death of eleven employees in the explosion. BP disregarded key internal issues, arguments, and conflicts, refusing to practice the preventative maintenance that might have forestalled the crisis and environmental disaster. BP routinely ignored internal stakeholders; when the crisis eventually spiraled from potentiality to reality, all the internal stakeholders could do was to confirm the veracity of external stakeholder fears (see Chapter 3).

Crisis: External Stakeholders

BP’s thoughtless disregard of internal stakeholders and communication ethics in action resulted in a crisis of significant consequence for the environment and external stakeholders. Joep Cornelissen traces the evolution of corporate communication practices that have changed in response to external stakeholders’ broadened concerns and interests. Previously, businesses limited their communicative responses to meeting stakeholder voices calling for financial “accountability” (Cornelissen 2014). Current business practices, however, engage a socioeconomic approach to stakeholder communication that recognizes the necessity and crucial “continuity” of the organization as dependent upon profit, financial security, and ongoing relational health with outside constituencies. In this communicative model, organizations and external stakeholders depend upon one another for continued growth and success.

Cornelissen frames organizational legitimacy through the financial and social/environmental factors that are tied to stakeholder interests and concerns. He argues that organizations must communicate with outside constituencies, attending to outsiders’ instrumental and normative reasoning that embodies the legitimacy of their concerns. Instrumental reasons refer to financial reasons that tie “corporate performance” to stakeholder support of organizational decisions (Cornelissen 2014). Normative reasons are those concepts that provide an ethical dimension to corporate decision making—stakeholder rights, morals, and so on. Cornelissen argues that stakeholder management is an “old” form of crisis and corporate communication, requiring movement to an external stakeholder “engagement” that is defined by five key considerations:

The stakeholder engagement approach signals that organizations are accountable to outside constituencies and must adapt to their interests and demands. Legitimate corporate communication practices in moments of crisis begin with the corporation’s knowledge of the external environment and its ongoing development of outside constituency interests.

BP failed to embrace accountability toward the interests of external stakeholders, failing to practice respect for their concerns. BP’s first public move after the Deepwater Horizon disaster was to shift blame to Trans-ocean. BP refused to accept blame for its own corporate decisions. Just as it ignored internal stakeholders, BP eagerly dismissed external stakeholder interests and assessments of the situation. Two days after the explosion, media coverage coordinated through the Deepwater Horizon Joint Information Center sought to minimize the severity of the spill. The Information Center initially blamed the increasingly visible oil slick on residual oil coming from the rig. When the actual disaster was no longer containable, BP’s public message acknowledged a spill, but estimated a flow rate of 1,000 barrels a day; in reality, the figure was more than 110 times that amount. As BP downplayed spill estimates and mitigated its financial liability, it continued to corrupt its own reputation. BP’s communication behaviors demonstrated that, even in the midst of an environmental disaster of historic proportions, it is possible for a shortsighted company to remain focused on its own financial interests. BP’s lack of transparency of actions and its dismissive reaction to both internal and external stakeholders demonstrated thoughtlessness of communication ethics in action that continues as a textbook case of corporate ineptitude. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster reveals the reality of unintended consequences propelled by thoughtlessness, which disregards early signs of issues, arguments, and conflicts, making the escalation of an issue into a crisis a post hoc expectation.

Crisis: Forgotten Publics

While internal and external stakeholders forge the center of a crisis, forgotten publics carry with them the further ignored potential consequences. Waymer and Heath (2007, p. 96) argue that crisis by its very nature creates forgotten publics, those not “directly affected by a crisis situation.” They go on to note that forgotten publics are “marginalized stakeholders and [an ignored] public.” In the evolution of a crisis, forgotten publics often enter the conversation quite late in the maturation of a given disaster. But when and if such ignored publics find a voice, the organizational consequences are significant. Waymer and Heath contend that forgotten publics assist in “fram[ing] the crisis, the quality of response to it,” and the opportunities for future corporate decisions (p. 96). Forgotten publics are significant stakeholders in organizational life whose concerns and values have been disregarded through ignorance.

Waymer and Heath contend that thoughtful and responsive crisis communication renders organizational legitimacy in postcrisis stages. With this goal in mind, thoughtful communication ethics in action seeks to discern and uncover forgotten publics. Waymer and Heath contend that forgotten publics influence and affect crisis communication through four major areas:

They advocate “self-reflective organizations” that are prepared for crises by knowing and responding to stakeholder concerns, interests, and values. Crises emerge in the midst of “conflicting” narratives from stakeholders, and leaders must actively seek to understand the narrative standpoints of all stakeholders. These narratives drive crisis evaluation and provide sense-making guidelines for internal and external stakeholders. Organizations generate appropriate communicative responses by acknowledging the “mutuality” of sense making between and among publics and the organization. In engaging these rhetorical strategies, effective crisis communication achieves “transcendence,” which Keith Michael Hearit suggests is a communicative bridge narrative (Waymer and Heath 2007, p. 96). They contend the objective is to locate a transcendent commitment that unites disparate perspectives. Recognition of stakeholder interests and concerns produces successful crisis communication outcomes, providing narrative coherence for impacted stakeholders.

BP disregarded forgotten publics, such as those that lived and worked on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico; their focus of attention remained on deflecting blame, with a fear of liability garbed in lack of transparency. BP poorly managed initial attempts to fix a faulty blowout preventer. Moreover, BP neglected preventative maintenance partly through its inadequate communication with engineers on site. BP’s insufficient spill response actions were exhibited through (1) inadequate communication with stakeholders concerned about environmental impact, (2) deceptive use of aerial dispersants that hid surface oil rather than eliminating it, and (3) disingenuous cleanup efforts that impacted numerous publics (Juhasz 2011). BP thoughtlessly disregarded responsibility for environmental and stakeholder safety through a cleanup void of adequate resources, forethought, and understanding of forgotten publics—escalating the disaster through ineptitude. BP’s efforts to protect and rebuild its reputation came at the cost of alienating stakeholders, violating trust, and publically displaying misplaced priorities. Throughout the crisis, BP was indifferent to the scope of the disaster and avoided accountability through its lack of communication ethics in action. BP’s thoughtlessness during the initial crisis only exacerbated the situation, leading to consequences, intentional or otherwise, for discounted and disrespected forgotten publics.

Summary

Crisis communication focuses on all stakeholders in order to ensure organizational survival in the postcrisis phase. This section considered the role of stakeholders, immediate and forgotten, in the following categories:

Crisis responses should generate clarity and discernment for future courses of action, yielding intended and unintended consequences for organizational actors and constituencies. Constructive crisis communication responds to the unforeseen and considers a multitude of publics and people impacted by the situation, people who are not immediately present. As crises unfold, organizational leadership looks toward postcrisis discourse, mindful of reputational repair that prevents future harm. Ideally, organizations learn painful lessons as they respond to internal and external stakeholders and rediscover forgotten publics. Leadership thoughtfully engages communication ethics in action to repair relationships, reputations, and communication responses in the postcrisis phase of crisis communication.

Postcrisis: Leadership and Communication Ethics in Action

Leadership unites phronesis and communication ethics in action, responding to problems/opportunities that impact the interests of internal, external, and forgotten stakeholders. The postcrisis phase of crisis management embraces continual “learning” (Coombs 2014, p. 8). Leadership should reflect on central issues, arguments, and conflicts that gave rise to the crisis, yielding significant outcomes in postcrisis discourse and decision making. Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger (2007, p. 31) contend that organizations that maintain a constructive “perspective” on the results of disaster enhance their opportunity for the “potential for recovering from a crisis.” Postcrisis communication practices, “mindfully” utilized, ensure that lessons are learned from crises. The case study of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and BP’s corporate communication practices reveals the essential goal of thoughtful communication ethics in action—not only to avert threats and risks but also to learn from them.

This final section analyzes substantial insights provided by Sellnow in his 2010 article, “BP’s Crisis Communication: Finding Redemption through Renewal.” Through an examination of postcrisis communication strategies and a final analysis of BP’s failings, this section pivots upon three major considerations: (1) renewal, (2), reputation repair, and (3) lessons learned. The postcrisis phase of crisis management is a foundational stage of communication responsiveness; BP failed to respond to safety concerns and manifested risks, unwilling to learn and redirect organizational decision making. Ultimately, however, BP had to learn from the crisis in order to move forward with renewal, an enhanced/rebuilt reputation, and organizational success tied to lessons learned.

Postcrisis: Renewal

The crisis communication literature suggests that effective postcrisis discourse engages a discourse of renewal in rebuilding stakeholder relationships. Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger emphasize a discourse of renewal that stresses mutually beneficial opportunities for learning that include the organization and extended stakeholders. Discourse of renewal involves a “future” orientation that assists stakeholders that have been negatively impacted by a given crisis (Coombs 2014). This theory constructively engages crisis: leadership enacts communication ethics in action, helping the organization and constituencies through an attitude of openness to learning, opportunity, and growth.

Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger (2007) emphasize four “theoretical objectives” in a discourse of renewal:

Crises invite possibilities for learning from active mistakes and omissions. Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger contend that postcrisis communication assures stakeholders of ongoing constructive learning, offering them “confidence that the organization [is actively attending to] the crisis” (p. 228). The second objective, ethical communication, should guide precrisis, crisis, and postcrisis communication between an organization and stakeholders. BP illustrated an ongoing ethical failure. Ulmer, Sell-now, and Seeger contend that crises function as practical forms of ethical alerts: “crises provide the opportunity to identify failures that have built up over time and have been ignored or gone undetected” (p. 230). Ethical communication unites attentiveness to stakeholder relationships with pragmatic disclosure of information; such action prioritizes transparency over “strategic” engagement. Discourse of renewal adopts a “prospective” orientation with a focus on the future rather than a “retrospective” preoccupation with past transgressions and behaviors. “Prospective” communication with increased attentiveness to stakeholder demands and concerns requires “effective organizational rhetoric” for ongoing implementation. Leadership engages in effective organizational rhetoric, which persuasively attends to stakeholder expectations. Such rhetoric is both prospective and proactive, constructively engaging organizational learning through an ethical lens of attentiveness to opportunities for growth and renewed stakeholder relationships.

BP’s failings in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster illustrate the pragmatic consequences of a disregard for communication ethics in action. Sellnow (2010, p. 1) argues that the “hope” for BP was and is in a discourse of renewal, which assists in constructively building a future attentive to issues, arguments, conflicts, and crises. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (or BSEE, the new regulatory arm of the former Minerals Management Service) implemented new deepwater drilling regulations in response to the findings from the Deepwater Horizon investigations. The BSEE implemented a discourse of renewal, based on objective organizational learning. The guidelines implemented by BSEE focus on ethical communication that attends to blowout preventer standards and regulations, as well as reforms in “well design, well control, casing, cementing, real-time well monitoring, and subsea containment” (Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement 2015, April 13). Internal and external stakeholders took key steps in regulatory reform and meeting engineering concerns, demonstrating a prospective response to postcrisis communication. Opportunities for BP growth included an overhaul of organizational culture, propelled by policy reforms and regulations that maintained a prospective orientation. BP’s case offered the lesson that “more effective inspection regimes do not necessarily reduce the likelihood of incidents” (Tilcsik and Clearfield 2015, April 17).⁵ Inspections are crucial steps in maintaining “systemic safety,” but safety also “requires a collaborative culture of information sharing.” This collaborative environment cannot be achieved when reporting problems is discouraged in the precrisis phase. A failure within the corporate culture of BP was at the core of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon crisis and demonstrated a lack of communication ethics in action. There was considerable inattention to effective organizational rhetoric—communication practices that seek to learn from all constituents. BP’s alertness to this failure is essential in any redemptive efforts to repair its reputation.

Postcrisis: Reputation Repair

Organizational theories of crisis communication respond to both stakeholder and organizational interests. This collective engagement enhances the possibility of image repair tied to learning during postcrisis consideration (see Benoit 1995; Coombs 2007, 2014). Reputation repair is a critical function in surviving crises. However, Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger contend that it is a misconception to characterize crisis communication as solely attempting to maintain, repair, or reconstruct organizational reputation without regard for larger contexts, situations, and publics. Rather, while rebuilding organizational reputation, effective postcrisis discourse focuses upon “solutions” to crises/threats. Organizations and stakeholders must depend upon one another in order to successfully manage and learn from crisis.

Emphasizing learning with an aim more inclusive than mere image repair, Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger explicate four major organizational theories of crisis communication:

Additionally, Coombs provides two theoretical insights to this group: contingency theory and complexity theory (Coombs 2014). In each case, image repair is important, yet it is only part of the particular theoretical engagement. Discourse of renewal focuses on prospective directions, maintaining ethical communication throughout all phases of crisis and acknowledging the necessity of new directions and opportunities for stakeholder engagement. Corporate apologia is a communication response to accusations and criticism against organizations, calling for public apology for “wrongdoing” to impacted constituencies (Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger 2015). Image Repair Theory, developed by Benoit (1995), is a theory integrating a multitude of communication strategies in order to evaluate the type of “attack” or “complaint” leveled by stakeholders against negatively perceived organizational actions—complaints that call for particular and appropriate responses (Ulmer, Sellnow, and Seeger 2015). Coombs (2014, p. 21) argues that SCCT links the nature of a crisis with a particular response that is dependent on stakeholder expectations, including a commitment to constituency safety. Contingency theory then examines the nature of crisis escalation, contending that the precrisis stage of conflict is constructive and benefits organizational relationships with stakeholders. Finally, complexity theory understands an organization as a system that includes the interaction of stakeholders, the organization, and the crisis event. Reputation repair in all six organizational communication theories involves strategic augmentation and learning as a response to the complexity of stakeholder concerns, interests, and safety concerns of a unique crisis moment.

BP’s commitment to reputation repair without regard for stakeholder concerns demonstrated a lack of leadership and communication ethics in action. Sellnow (2010) contends that crisis responsiveness depends upon “strong leadership” to build “confidence” that a crisis solution will propel future organizational health and growth. Such leadership depends upon “open” and “honest” communication that demonstrates “compassion for victims at all levels.” As he summarizes it, “in the two months following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP failed to communicate such leadership” (p. 1). BP actively engaged in image protection and reputation repair alone throughout the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and subsequent crisis. BP disregarded the affected stakeholders and refused to enact transparency in their communicative actions. When the well was capped in July, BP ceased cleanup activities at sea and focused on more visible beach cleanup, an act of superficial public relations. The BP website revealed only pristine beaches. BP attempted to manipulate reality by busing 400 cleanup workers onto the beaches prior to President Obama’s visit. Its initial engagement with the crisis offered an illusion of organized cleanup and environmental care. As early as June 2010, two months after the spill, BP bought search terms from Google and Yahoo!, such as “oil spill,” to monitor and control criticism against the company (Mail Foreign Service 2010, June 10). Results of searches routed Internet readers to BP’s website, straight to the heading “Learn more about how BP is helping.” Failure to address the impact of the crisis on stakeholders constituted another missed opportunity by BP; the company leaders continued to refuse to learn or even to properly address the disaster. BP’s disregard of communication ethics in action demonstrated its priority of reputation repair over stakeholder consideration.

Postcrisis: Lessons Learned

Communication ethics in action is a foreground response to issues, arguments, conflicts, and crises set against a background of competing, conflicting, and clashing narratives, virtues, and values. Creative leadership must engage communication ethics in action as a responsive and reflective/reflexive communication strategy composed of pragmatic ethical commitments to both the organization and the stakeholders. Failure to engage communication ethics in action is a refusal not only to learn and flourish but also to strengthen core organizational narratives, values, and commitments. Arnett, Harden Fritz, and Bell (2009, p. 137) define the foundation of communication ethics as the assumption that “multiple goods compete for allegiance in the public sphere.” Communication ethics in action in postcrisis communication practice acknowledges a multitude of impacted stakeholders and enacts a responsive stance of constructive listening and learning linked to creative organizational decision making.

Arnett, Harden Fritz, and Bell argue that communication ethics in action is the performative “dwelling place” of organizational practices that meaningfully connect the issues, arguments, and conflicts between and among internal, external, and forgotten stakeholders. Communication ethics contends that “no organization is ethically neutral” (p. 137). Communication ethics in action in the midst of crisis escalation must attend to the practices advocated for and by a given organization while learning from and addressing a wide range of constituencies. Organizational identification and commitment generates loyalty and trust in and for corporate structures; once violated and soured by now tarnished relationships, crisis communication calls for action far more demanding than reputation repair alone. Postcrisis communication demands that lessons learned from crises and problems start with acknowledging that organizational life is a place of ethical commitment inclusive of all stakeholders.

Sellnow (2010, p. 1) argues that BP has the potential to emerge from the disaster at Deepwater Horizon “more steadfast, trustworthy, and resilient,” but BP can only do so if it heeds lessons learned from internal, external, and forgotten stakeholders. Following the 2010 Deep-water Horizon disaster, BP implemented changes designed to prevent future disasters from occurring. Most of these changes were regulatory, focused on restructuring business practices. In addition to BP’s organizational changes, and as a direct result of the 2010 disaster, the MMS was separated into three distinct bodies: (1) the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement for regulation and oversight, (2) the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to manage future development, and (3) the Office of Natural Resources Revenue for revenue collection (Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster, 2011, January). This action alone created more impartiality in the leasing, managing, and regulating of volatile deepwater wells in the United States. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management also created a regulatory response to the disaster, which involved a safety alert on April 30. On May 27, a safety measures report included recommendations for blowout preventers and other safety equipment such as well-control systems. On June 8, a notice for increased safety measures was sent to all companies leasing drilling locations in the Gulf of Mexico. A follow-up on June 18 required detailed spill plans from all lessees. Additional requirements for safety equipment followed the Deepwater Horizon investigation; governmental agencies, stakeholders, and companies learned quickly from the disaster and adopted appropriate policies and procedures. As Sellnow (2010) stated, BP’s redemption can come from efforts for renewal. Communication ethics in action requires ongoing listening, ever searching for improvement and excellence, propelled by attentiveness to all stakeholders.

Summary

Postcrisis communication calls for a commitment to change in response to lessons learned via crisis escalation and response. This section examined the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in its tie to crisis communication in three significant areas:

Postcrisis communication thoughtfully achieves reputation repair as a byproduct of public actions that display a positive change in trust and relationships between and among all stakeholders. Without commitment to communication ethics in action, leadership disregards the potential for growth and opportunity that emerges from postcrisis reparations. The unification of precrisis, crisis, and postcrisis stages of communication discloses a foundational need for communication ethics in action to generate an ever-expanding environment of pragmatic trust in the organization and an ever-expanding external constituency.

Chapter Summary

The lessons of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster resonate within crisis communication studies and public relations scholarship today. The pragmatic implications of the tragedy yield significant lessons for corporate communication ethics. Arnett (2015), in a keynote address to the European Public Relations Education and Research Association, reminds scholars and practitioners alike that justice and ethics converge to demand attentiveness and acknowledgment of internal, external, and forgotten publics. Arnett argues that public relations ethics must involve three admissions:

All constituencies must be attended to, recognized, and responded to in postcrisis communication.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster yields lessons for the field of public relations and corporate communication practitioners. BP’s past and present communication practices reveal an opportunity to address imperfections as opportunities, reaching out to all constituencies to strengthen organizational identity and invite recognition of a larger context. Organizational leaders must attend to background narratives and foreground practices to create an environment responsive to communication ethics in action.

The interplay of narrative setting and everyday practices creates a space where constituencies develop, refine, and mold an understanding reflecting appropriate reactions to unpredictable situations. In an environment attentive to communication ethics in action, all stakeholders participate in the creation, maintenance, and recreation of safety and organizational culture. This participation allows for necessary reflection on issues that can provide warrants for arguments and for responses to conflicts. Such interaction is the learning context from which multiple perspectives of internal, external, and forgotten stakeholders lend insight into immediate and future-critical decision making.

Arnett states that “the value of an organization is found in its ability to admit flaws that continue to propel innovation and creativity, fighting the conventional impulse to mask all inadequacies” (p. 49). Communication ethics in action is a theory-informed practice that can unmask and correct thoughtlessness and disregard for persons, places, ideas, and values, creating a remedy that can unite policy with a coherent sense of organizational character. Crisis communication as exemplified through the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe demonstrates the vital importance of immediate attention to issue, argument, and conflict if crisis is to be averted.

¹ Steven Fink is a nationally recognized expert in crisis communication. He is the author of three scholarly publications.

² Robert C. Chandler is an internationally recognized expert and author on crisis communication. He has authored eight books.

³ Walter Fisher is an internationally recognized scholar and is most noted for introducing the narrative paradigm into the field of communication. His seminal work, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action, was published in 1987.

⁴ The notion of phronesis is found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. For an application to the marketplace, see Tom Morris, If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997).

⁵ Tilcsik and Clearfield are referring to Lori Bennear, “Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling: A Review of Regulatory Regimes in the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway,” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 9, no. 1 (2015): 2–22.