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Executive Summary
BP is an international oil and gas company that operates in more than 80 countries
under two segments: exploration and production, and refining and marketing. It is
one of the world's leading oil companies on the basis of market capitalization and
proven reserves. As an oil company, it is directly linked with the use of fossil fuels
linked with major environmental challenges on a global scale. BP is engaged in
CSR initiatives intensively, promoting the projects related to the renewable sources
of energy, investing in projects aimed to tackle climate change issues, and
others. The CSR commitment of the British Petroleum focuses on five aspects
which include the employee relationships, ethical conducts, health safety and
environmental performance, financial aspect and control (British Petroleum, 2008).
In order to ensure that they are able to get affiliated with different international and
global organizations for Human rights. BP shall partner with organizations, such
ascleanenergy.org which focuses on clean renewable energy and protecting the
quality of life. BP shall invest in technologies which will help reduce its carbon
foot print. Moreover BP shall partner and promote with organizations which fight
against diseases such as lung cancer. They can organize walks to create awareness
against lung cancer. This will help build an image for BP of being an
environmentally sensitive company. BP is faced with a number of challenging
obstacles to growing their upstream oil operations, but there are numerous actions
that should be taken by the company in order to adapt and drive growth in these
challenging times. BP needs to utilize new technology, enter into mergers with
NOCs, establish a recognizable CSR program and stick to its bread and butter
business of deep-well drilling.
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Introduction
BP is one of the worlds largest energy companies, providing its customers with
fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals
products for everyday items. BP is a global oil and gas company headquartered in
London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest
company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas super
majors. It is vertically-integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas
industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and
marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading. It also has major
renewable energy activities, including in bio fuels, hydrogen, solar and wind
power.
BP has operations in over 80 countries, produces around 3.8 million barrels of oil
equivalent per day and has 22,400 service stations worldwide. Its largest division is
BP America, which is the biggest producer of oil and gas in the United States and
is headquartered in Houston, Texas. As at 31 December 2009 it had total proven
commercial reserves of 18.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The name BP
derives from the initials of one of the companys former legal names, British
Petroleum.
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British Petroleum is one of the biggest companies in the field of oil and allied
products whose market value is in hundreds of billions. But financial crises and
unpredictable nature of business are the unavoidable aspects which are also among
the highlights of the criticisms of the stakeholders. The companys authorized
ordinary share capital remains at 36 billion shares of 25cents each, amounting to
$9 billion. In addition the company has authorized preference share capital of
12,750,000 shares of 1 each ($ 21 million) (Annual Reports and Accounts, 2003.
Today the BP group has more than 103000 people working over 100 countries
within four main business segments. Having been able to realize their corporate
social responsibilities by analyzing the views of their stakeholders, the British
petroleum has been able to solve the issue and attempt to have an enormous
reinvention in 2000. The main goal of this reinvention is to alter the perception the
people regarding BP in terms of its business operation and its role in the society.
This reinvention is also a part of the loyalty of the company to their social
responsibilities and which costs $200 million. British petroleum was the first oil
industry which started to address the issue of global climate change. It can be said
that the corporate social responsibility challenge for the British petroleum has been
threefold. The first one is to the challenge of translating the social responsibility
commitment into an efficient and consistent approach in the global market. The
next is to be able to meld the BP its subsidiaries like Arco and Amoco to social
investments and the last is to satisfy and meet the external expectations from the
society. These CSR commitment has been strengthened through the changes or
reinvention mentioned above which include their advertisement of the Beyond
Petroleum.
For meeting their organizational goal of being committed to social responsibilities,
the company had been able to conduct precise planning with more than 130 fully
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functions business units. In this view, each of the each of the business units has
largely autonomous business operations with its own identity, history, imperatives
and relationships. By the use of stakeholder models, it can be said that British
petroleums corporate social responsibilities are trying to meet the needs of their
stakeholders. In doing so, it can be said that the management of British Petroleum
must be able to stick on to the following Stakeholders Dialogue model for CSR.
Due to the environment and social concerns that have been distinguished by this
corporate social responsibility commitment of British Petroleum, management of
the company has decided to create a plan in relation to identifying what should be
done to be successful with their commitment. Basically, the company wanted to
remove the old mindset in regards to petroleum that is the idea in which oil
companies are treated as dirty, secretive and supercilious.
With this, it can be said that among the ethical theories of corporate social
responsibility, the British Petroleum has been able to adhere to the context of virtue
theory. Virtue theory is centered on ones ethical condition and the type of
individual .the person himself and the type of person he intends to be. Thus, the
virtue theory states that becoming a virtuous person is dependent on individual
choice. In this theory, the characteristics of a virtuous person are taken into
account. More specifically, if a person prefers to become virtuous, he will then live
a good, happy and flourishing life. Basically, this theory explains that if a person
chooses to be virtuous, he will also become happy for the rest of his life. As an
ethical person, one will derive his happiness out of doing good deeds to other
people.
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BPs track record of corporate social responsibility has been mixed. The company
has been involved in a number of major environmental and safety incidents and
received criticism for its political influence. However in 1997 it was the first major
oil company to publicly acknowledge the need to take steps against climate
change, and in that year established a company-wide target to reduce its emissions
of greenhouse gases. BP currently invests over $1 billion per year in the
development of renewable energy sources, and has committed to spend $8 billion
on renewable in the 2005 to 2015 period.
Concept of Corporate Social responsibility
While there is no universal definition of corporate social responsibility, it generally
refers to transparent business practices that are based on ethical values, compliance
with legal requirements, and respect for people, communities, and the
environment. Thus, beyond making profits, companies are responsible for the
totality of their impact on people and the planet.1 People constitute the
companys stakeholders: its employees, customers, business partners, investors,
suppliers and vendors, the government, and the community. Increasingly,
stakeholders expect that companies should be more environmentally and socially
responsible in conducting their business. In the business community, CSR is
alternatively referred to as corporate citizenship, which essentially means that a
company should be a good neighbor within its host community.
responsibility for the companys actions and encourage a positive impact through
its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities,
stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, CSRfocused businesses would proactively promote the public interest by encouraging
community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that
harm the public sphere, regardless of legality. CSR is the deliberate inclusion of
public interest into corporate decision-making that is the core business of the
company or firm, and the honoring of a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit.
Corporate Social responsibility of BP
At BP CSR journey by recognizing that the primary responsibility of the
company and its management is to maximize the value of the firm over time, and
to operate the company in a manner consistent with the norms and values of its
shareholders.
BP is in the business of finding oil, refining it, and selling the gas that results. In
the course of doing business, BP interacts with a huge range of individuals and
organizations, and those interactions bring with them ethical obligations. Basic
ethical obligations in such a business would include things like:
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a) Providing customers with the product theyre expecting (rather than one
adulterated with water, for example),
e) Complying with environmental laws and industry best practices, and so on.
Sustainability: Company operates in the ways that secure long term economic or
regulatory interests behavior that is socially detrimental or environmentally
wasteful
Education & training: BP always trained their managers and workers to improve
efficiency and cautiousness about safety.
Health care: The Company provides medical lounge and routine medical checkup
for those workers who work at mine.
Equal opportunities: Always equally evaluated their workers all over the world
according to gender, race and color.
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Safe product: BP always tries to provide safe and quality product to consumers.
Recycling: BP recycles its 15% product and gradually tries to increase percentage.
Working environment: The Company always provides its worker safe working
place.
Energy & water usage: BP is very efficiently used their energy and water.
Local communities:
BPs relationships with communities are important for all our activities, but
particularly for major new projects where our presence may bring about changes in
the local areas, such asjobs and support for community development, as well as
increased road traffic, changes in the landscape and increased demands for fresh
water. They engage with local communities through public consultations and
meetings with local representatives. For example, in planning the expansion of our
LNG plant in Indonesia, they conducted public consultations involving
communities from 62 villages.
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Non-governmental organizations:
For new projects, they often consult with relevant local and international NGOs,
who may provide specialized expertise on managing impacts. We also engage with
NGOs on specific issues. In 2014, we discussed climate change, financial
transparency, human rights and operating in sensitive areas, in these meetings.
Academic institutions:
BP collaborates with research institutions and universities onspecific issues such as
climate change, water stewardship and biodiversity. They also invest in the
development of education and teaching programmers around the world,
particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Community engagement:
BPs ability to operate safely and continuously can depend on obtaining the
necessary official permits from the authorities and on the informal permission and
support of the communities in the surrounding area. They consult with
communities about potential environmental and socio-economic impacts
throughout the life cycle of projects and operations and develop plans to manage
these.
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Community grievances:
BP believe that open dialogue helps to build strong, mutually beneficial working
relationships over the long term, and enables all sides to work through any
disagreements in a constructive way. They provide guidance to projects on
developing operational-level community grievance mechanisms, which help them
to understand community concerns and seek to address them before they escalate.
Understanding socio-economic implications of incidents:
BP assesses the risk of unplanned events, such as spills and security incidents. This
currently includes information on possible health, safety, environmental,
reputational and business impacts. They have tested new socio-economic risk
criteria with several businesses, including Australia, Brazil and the US. The criteria
cover areas such as community stress and disruption, livelihoods, cultural heritage,
workforce welfare and the availability and quality of fresh water. BP plans to
incorporate these into our standard risk methodology in 2015.
Customers and Communities
BP has more than one million shareholders worldwide. They have the opportunity
to propose and vote on resolutions, and attend BPs annual general meeting (AGM)
where they can pose questions to BPs directors. Information about BPs business
activities, progress and prospects is made available to shareholders via their
published corporate reports and on this website. BP also engage with them on the
social and environmental aspects of BPs activities. Non-financial subjects covered
in recent discussions include:
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Suppliers of BP
BP engages with suppliers in a variety of ways, including review meetings to
identify mutual improvements in performance. BPs ability to fulfill BP corporate
responsibility aspirations depends in part on the conduct of our suppliers.
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This is why, for example, BP planned the construction schedule for the BTC
pipeline around the breeding season of a rare local grouse. And why BP funded
satellite transmitters to help experts track endangered sea turtles in the nearby seas.
Its why BP has started programmers to share their business knowledge with
entrepreneurs in Angola, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere. Its
why BP sponsor university programmers and send BPs employees into schools
around the world, to help children learn how energy works and to inspire
tomorrows energy experts.
BP states that it recognizes the significant environmental and social challenges
faced by the world in the 21st century. It believes it can, and should, play a part in
addressing and resolving many of the issues associated with sustainable
development. It also accepts that while the company can be part of the solution, it
cannot and should not be the whole solution. Governments, companies and civil
society must fins effective ways of working together.
Alongside the standard financial figures, BP reports its own greenhouse gas and
other emissions, oil spillages, employee satisfaction, days lost through injury at
work, and community investment across the world.
BP's policy statement commits the company to ambitious and wide-ranging
business principles. The company's reporting seeks to illustrate how the company
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Conclusion
Above all the circumstances we know that BP is one of the world largest energy
companies. They are providing their customers with fuel for transportation, energy
for heat and light. Our everyday item made by petro chemicals which we can
obtain from BP.
Among all the petroleum company BP is the first who takes major steps against
climate change. In environmental safety issue BP is expended $701 million in
2009. They are also established a company wide target to reduce its emissions of
green house gases.
They have different types of corporate social Responsibilities (CSR) activities. At
first we know that CSR Is a form of corporate self regulation integrated into a
business model. They are donating education sector, health sector, world safety
issue etc.
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Bibliography
1)
http://www.rhcatalyst.org/site/DocServer/CSRQ_A.pdf?docID=103
2)
http://en.wikipedia.org
3)
http://businessethicsblog.com/2010/09/01/bp-and-csr/
4)
http://www.bp.com/subsection.do?categoryId=4&contentId=2006741
5)
http://www.bp.com/iframe.do?categoryId=9030814&contentId=7056943
BP tackles climate change threat with 200m boost for energy efficiency. The
Telegraph. 25 October 2005. Retrieved 9 February 2011
BP to invest $1 bln plus in alt energy this year. Reuters. 13 April 2010. Retrieved
9 February 2011
D Wood, Corporate Social Performance Revisited (1991) 16(4) The Academy of
Management Review
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