...I - Background Study EXXON VALDEZ CASE Companies would always be prone to crises and problems beyond their control. What makes a company stand; amidst all problems they are dealing with is how they deal with it. One of the greatest controversies during the 1980’s was the Exxon Valdez oil spill that happened on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez ship had identified icebergs and decided to take a different route to get around them. Unfortunately the oil tanker crashed into shallow water, this area is actually called the Bligh Reef, but because of the hit the tanker had about 10 million gallons of crude oil into the reef.This catastrophe got the media’s attention, and Exxon’s response to the environmental damage they had caused was very unprofessional. The company completely refused to communicate openly and effectively. The CEO of the company, Lawrence Rawl even refused to be seen for almost a week. Efforts to contain the spill were slow and Exxon's response was even slower. Because of the lack of appearance from high profile personnel from Exxon and the lack of action from their company, it left the impression that the Exxon Corporation did not take this accident seriously. Exxon Valdez case became one of the classical case examples of a “not to do in handling with a crisis”. By the time, they started to do some action; their reputation is already tainted with negative comments from...
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...Exxon Valdez and Tylenol Case Study DE LA SALLE UNIVERSITY - DASMARIÑAS Communication Arts Department Lawrence G. Rawl, chairman and chief executive of the Exxon Corpoation was in his kitchen sipping coffee when the phone rang and received the news regarding the spilling of crude oil into the frigid waters of Prince William Sound, just outside the harbor of Valdez, Alaska. What was about to happen was the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States. These were the documented facts that media had portrayed across the United States and to the world: Exxon Valdez, a 978-foot tanker piloted by a captain whom later revealed to be drank, ran aground on a reef 25 miles southwest of the port of Valdez. The results caused a spill of 250,000 barrels, the largest spill ever in North America. The devastating results affects, 1,300 square miles of water, damaging some 600 miles of coastline and murdering as many as 4,000 Alaskan sea otters. The disaster also enshrined the name of Exxon in the all-time Public Relations Hall of Shame. (Seitel, 2000). According to the book, Exxon’s dilemma broke down into five categories. First was the hesitation of Mr. Rawl if he is going directly and personally to Alaska. In an interview Mr. Rawl has said, “We had concluded that there was simply too much for me to coordinate from New York. It wouldn’t have made any difference if I showed up and made a speech in the town forum. I wasn’t going to spend the summer there;...
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...Rawl, chairman and chief executive of the Exxon Corpoation was in his kitchen sipping coffee when the phone rang and received the news regarding the spilling of crude oil into the frigid waters of Prince William Sound, just outside the harbor of Valdez, Alaska. What was about to happen was the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States. These were the documented facts that media had portrayed across the United States and to the world: Exxon Valdez, a 978-foot tanker piloted by a captain whom later revealed to be drank, ran aground on a reef 25 miles southwest of the port of Valdez. The results caused a spill of 250,000 barrels, the largest spill ever in North America. The devastating results affects, 1,300 square miles of water, damaging some 600 miles of coastline and murdering as many as 4,000 Alaskan sea otters. The disaster also enshrined the name of Exxon in the all-time Public Relations Hall of Shame. (Seitel, 2000). According to the book, Exxon’s dilemma broke down into five categories. First was the hesitation of Mr. Rawl if he is going directly and personally to Alaska. In an interview Mr. Rawl has said, “We had concluded that there was simply too much for me to coordinate from New York. It wouldn’t have made any difference if I showed up and made a speech in the town forum. I wasn’t going to spend the summer there; I had other things to do”. Secondly, Exxon failed to establish media control. Exxon, wanted to take charge of the news flow and...
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...Exxon Valdez and Prince William Sound Case Keller Graduate School of Management – Online AC573 Anthony Mucheru Instructor – Frank Pidgeon November 2011 Shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. At the time of the grounding, the vessel had departed from normal shipping lanes to avoid ice in the water and had failed to make a corrective turn in time to avoid the submerged reef. The ship was piloted by third mate Gregory Cousins, who did not hold a required license; the captain, Joseph Hazelwood, was in his quarters. Hazelwood, whose driver’s license was at the time suspended for driving while intoxicated, later failed a sobriety test. At the time, the pipeline was opened and strict traffic lanes were established in the Sound to guarantee safe tanker passage. But, in recent years, disintegration of the Columbia Glacier had filled the lanes with ice. To avoid slowing down to dodge icebergs—thereby delaying the oil’s delivery to market—tanker captains routinely moved out of the shipping lanes (Brooks, L. J., 2010 p. 505). On shore, no one was keeping watch. Although the Coast Guard was charged with monitoring vessels through Prince William Sound, in fact, its outdated radar system did not reliably track vessels as far out as Bligh Reef. An earlier proposal to upgrade the radar system had been rejected as too expensive. And the Coast Guard’s oversight...
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...negligence or misadventure. Often, a situation is created which cannot be blamed on the company - but the company finds out pretty quickly that it takes a huge amount of blame if it fumbles the ball in its response. One perfect example of this is that of Johnson & Johnson, and their response to the Tylenol poisoning back in the year 1982 when the company’s Tylenol medication commanded 35 per cent of the US over-the-counter analgesic market. Unfortunately, one individual succeeded at lacing the medication with cyanide. This caused the death of seven people which resulted into a nationwide panic about how widespread the said contamination may be. In the end of that certain incident, everyone knew that Tylenol was associated with the scare and J&J’s market value fell by one billion dollars as a result. History repeated for Johnson & Johnson. The incident reenacted itself in 1986, but the company has learned its lesson and is not willing to suffer the same consequences. It acted rapidly and recalled every Tylenol products from every market – not just those which are in the affected state. Not only that, the company also stated that the product would not be re-established on the market until something had been done to provide better product protection. Thus, Johnson & Johnson developed the “tamperproof” packaging that would make it difficult for a similar incident to occur in the future. Another example is the tragic oil...
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...I. Background Information/ Additional Perspectives A. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill March 24, 1989 marked the date of the largest oil tanker spill in the history of United States as the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. This incident put Exxon into a crisis as it made the Alaskan region into a worldwide symbol of environmental chaos. The enormity of the ecological ruin and the phenomenal task of cleanup caught the attention of the many nations. Many workers and volunteers flooded the area for its restoration which required extensive labor and $2.1 billion of Exxon funding. The crisis is blamed to the following reasons: the faults were Exxon’s inadequate equipments on the ship and the insufficient number of trained members. Another thing is that a crew was unable to maneuver the ship properly due to exhaustion with work aboard. It was also traced that Captain Joseph Hazelwood was under the influence of alcohol which was the reason why he cannot give proper instructions to the staff. Hazelwood's activities in town and on the ship are the main focuses of the investigation. This also became the basis of widespread media sensation. Indeed, Exxon’s reputation suffered severely. Some Public Relation Practitioners said that Exxon seriously worsened the damage to the public due to its slow and insufficient responses. Exxon also failed to establish itself as a company concerned about the problems it had caused....
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...STUDY ANALYSIS: EXXON VALDEZ OIL SPILL Submitted by: Chaira Mae C. Aguilar Submitted to: Prof. ROEL S. RAMIREZ, APR January 11, 2016 I. SUMMARY and SYNTHESIZE In March 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez underwent an accident in Prince William Sound in Alaska. This accident resulted in a massive oil spill, where more than 10 million gallons of crude oil leaked into the sea. Exxon’s problems were worse by its lack of preparation and bravery in dealing with the situation. Lawrence Rawl, CEO, stayed out of the public view for almost a week after the incident happened. After a meeting, he faced the demonstrators and stakeholders. He took all the responsibility and promised an investigation. Facts According to Office of Response and Restoration, with this banishment institutionalized in U.S. law, Exxon Shipping Company shifted the operational area to the Mediterranean and Middle East and renamed it. In 1993, Exxon spun off its shipping arm to a subsidiary, Sea River Maritime, Inc., and Exxon Mediterranean became the Sea River (S/R( Mediterranean. In 2002, the ship was re-assigned to Asian routes and then temporarily mothballed in an undisclosed location. According to The Whole Truth, Exxon, along with the rest of the oil industry knew that navigating a large supertanker through the icy and treacherous waters of Prince William Sound was extremely complicated. Armed with this knowledge the oil companies promised to use great care to avoid a spill. Exxon broke the said...
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...strike a company purely as a result of its own negligence or misadventure. Often, a situation is created which cannot be blamed on the company - but the company finds out pretty quickly that it takes a huge amount of blame if it fumbles the ball in its response. On September 30, 1892, Jhonson and Jhonson announced that three persons had died as a result of taking Tylenol capsules that had been laced with cyanide. Within the next two days, four additional deaths from the same cause were reported. All seven deaths occurred in the Chicago Area, but J & J recalled thirty-one million bottles of Tylenol from store shelves throughout the nation. The publicity surrounding this was unprecedented in American business history; in the print media alone, more than 125,000 stories appeared. Many business analysts said that no product could survive this, and they pronounced Tylenol dead as a product line. From the outset of crisis, J & J recognized the immediate and long-term stakes involved. Its strategy was based on maintaining high visibility and avoiding any appearance that the corporation was trying to duck responsibility. The incident involved four specific “publics” – the management at Johnson & Johnson, its employees, the consumers and the stores which were selling Tylenol. By communicating with the management and employees (internal publics), the company reinforced the mission statement and its dedication to serving the consumers as well as possible even when it was...
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...Introduction Exxon Mobil is an American company resulting of a merger from 1999 between Mobil Oil & Exxon Corporation. Exxon Mobil’s field of activity focuses on oil’s extraction, refining and distribution where it is one of the leaders. Exxon Mobil is also one of the largest petrochemicals producers in the world. It has 45 refineries in twenty-five countries with a distilling capacity of 6.3 million barrels of oil per day. It also has 42,000 service stations in more than 100 countries under the brand names Exxon, Esso and Mobil. The corporation has regained the No. 1 rank, in the fortune magazine, of the largest U.S. companies, dethroning Wal-Mart, the retail giant, with a turnover of 453 billion dollars. We are going to perform an Ethical Review of Exxon Mobil. As a first step, it is important to say that when it comes to ethics and oil industry everything already seems lost in advance. Since long the image of this industry is marred by various environmental disasters (oil spill on the coasts etc…) and many business problems that suggest that oil companies have blood on their hands. Following these disturbing facts it now seems essential for Oil businesses to regain a public image for stakeholders & all others. Indeed, a lot of these events have significantly harmed the Oil Industry. We will therefore study Exxon Mobile’s ethics based on its history, its ethics policy, its corporate board & key executives and finally through its ethical practice. ...
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...El caso Exxon-Valdez La empresa Exxon inició tarde y de forma lenta el control del derrame y se rehusó totalmente a comunicar la situación abiertamente. El entonces Presidente de la empresa, Lawrence Rawl (1928-2005), se negó a contactar a los medios y su respuesta fue “no tengo tiempo para esas cosas”. Poco después del accidente, un vocero informó que se estaban aplicando procedimientos para controlar la situación, al tiempo que los noticiarios televisivos mostraban la ineficiencia de la empresa al respecto. Después de una semana, la empresa no mejoraba su nivel de comunicación y los medios se volvieron agresivos, al grado que, en una conferencia de prensa, las pocas buenas noticias que quería comunicar fueron desmentidas por las evidencias periodísticas. Cuando finalmente Rawl aceptó una entrevista para un noticiario televisivo, en donde se le preguntó sobre los planes para la limpieza, documento que no había revisado, expresó que no era el trabajo del presidente leer esos informes y culpó de la crisis a los medios de todo el mundo. Diez enseñanzas de la teoría y la realidad 1. ------------------------------------------------- Realizar frecuentes simulacros de crisis que mantengan “aceitado” a un equipo de respuesta inmediata, especialmente de cara a los medios de comunicación. 7. ------------------------------------------------- Tener sistemas efectivos para afrontar la crisis. Exxon falló en ello y, particularmente, en su disposición para actuar de inmediato...
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...Exxon Valdez Oil Spill of 1989 Isaac Mitchell Maine Maritime Academy The Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 occurred in Prince William Sound off the coast of southwestern Alaska. The date when the oil tanker ran aground was March 24th, 1989. It struck Bligh Reef at about 12:04 a.m. There have been various estimates of how much oil spilled into the ocean. A total of 11 million US gallons was a commonly accepted estimate of the spill’s volume, used by the State of Alaska’s Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club ("Questions and answers," 1990). Other groups, such as Defenders of Wildlife, question the official estimates, maintaining that the volume of the spill went underreported (DeVries, Luts, 2004). Alternative calculations, based on an assumption that the seawater rather than oil drained from the damaged tanks, estimate the total to have been 25 to 32 million US gallons (Bluemink, 2010). Because of the spill many practices were going to change in the shipping industry. The Exxon Valdez oil spill drastically changed the United States’ shipping regulations, policies, and documentation. The Exxon Valdez damaged eight of its eleven tanks on board, spilling 11 million gallons of its 53 million gallon cargo of oil. Those 11 million gallons would spread and ultimately impact over 1,100 miles of non-continuous coastline in Alaska, making the Exxon Valdez oil spill the...
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...Exxon Valdez Case Study Executive summary The ethical issues faced by management of corporations, and Exxon in particular, originate from the objective of cost cutting with the purpose of profit maximization. As was seen in Exxon’s case, where the disaster could have been prevented if the proper mechanisms and equipment were put in place. Conflict of interest is also a major ethical problem faced by management as well as employees in corporations, as human beings always look to benefit for themselves above others. Respect to others is another major aspect ethical aspect that should be present in organizations. Exxon Valdez allowed happenings which were seen as common practice. In any other situation this would taboo and not ethical. There was conflict of interest in the safety of the crew and the environment as seen with the emergency training and planning and the captaining skills which resulted in a natural disaster which should have been prevented. An analysis of the traits of a profession evidently suggests management would arguably not be classified as a profession. Ultimately managers therefore do not adhere to the same level of ethical standards as professionals. For Exxon managers to be ethically responsible in their commercial roles they need to find ways of balancing the needs of the company and satisfying their own personal interests with that of the organisation. One way of achieving this is to strictly adhere to the organisations...
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...The Long- Term Effects of oil on ecosystems: A comparison of the Exxon Valdez and the BP oil spill The Exxon Valdez was a single hull, 987-foot super tanker built by the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, out of San Diego, California. The Exxon Corporation commissioned this ship into service on December 11, 1986. After the March of 1989 collision with Bligh Reef, the vessel was towed to the shipyard in San Diego and repaired in June of 1989, more than 1,600 tons of steel needed replacing, and the cost of this repair was over $30 million dollars. The Valdez is back in use owned and operated by the Hong Kong Bloom Shipping LTD., renamed the Dong Fang Ocean, and registered out of Panama. At 12:04 A.M. on March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef, Captain Joseph Hazelwood was below decks and intoxicated, the vessel was under the control of the third mate, Gregory Cousins. It was later found that in addition to the intoxicated captain, the third mate, Gregory Cousins, did not have the proper endorsement on his coast guard license to operate a ship in the pristine waters of Prince William Sound, and on top of this Exxon failed to repair the damaged radar that could have prevented the accidental grounding of the ship. At the time of impact, the Valdez was carrying 55 million gallons of crude oil and 11 million gallons of crude was spilt into one of the most delicate, and bountiful marine ecosystems on earth, Prince William Sound. This number of 11 million...
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...It’s Time for the World To Have an Oil Change Prepared by: Nathan Banasek Submitted to: Betty-Anne Schlender Date: November 15, 2013 COMM 1101 Section 107 Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………...1 Environmental Impact…………………………………………….…….…2 Major Spills Occurring in Water………………………….………………4 Major Spills Occurring on Land………………………………………..…6 Cleaning up a Large Oil Spill…………………………………………...…7 What Can Be Changed…………………………………………………….9 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………10 References……………………………………………………...………….12 List of Illustrations Figure 1: An Oiled Pelican in Costal Louisiana………………………….3 Figure 2: The Exxon Valdez aground on Blight Reef……………………5 Figure 3: One of the many oil wells set afire outside Kuwait City……...6 Figure 4: A Boom on the Louisiana Coast………………………………..7 Figure 4: Shoreline Modification in Coastal Louisiana………………….8 Figure 6: Ships and Drilling Rigs Surrounding the Discover Enterprise9 Introduction The world’s dependence on oil is no secret. Feeding this addiction puts immense demand on oil companies to produce oil as quickly as possible. Finding large reserves of oil is a never ending quest for oil companies. Transporting oil is a major risk of the oil production process. This crucial step has the potential for the most catastrophic damage. Oil spills can impact ecosystems in devastating ways and decimate animal life in the area affected. The damage can last decades and sometimes the effects can be irreversible...
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...On July 27, 2010 oil began leaking from a well off the coast of New Mexico. This spill, classified as an accidental spill, will greatly affect worldwide business and business practices. Before the conclusion of the oil spill, 4.4 million barrels of oil will have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. This catastrophic event will have a clear negative effect on international business that will in turn people living and working throughout the world. The primary business that was affected by the oil spill was the seafood market. Many worldwide seafood distributers and restaurants rely on this region for the products that make their business successful. According to Jaquetta White, the spill has decreased the number of crabs, lobsters, and other types of ocean fish produced around the world. The area that was affected by the spill was extremely rich in crabs which were exported to the many worldwide businesses that needed them. According to Scott O'Connell, the other type of crustacean that was affected was shrimp. The Gulf region has an abundant population of shrimp that are exported all around the world but especially to Mexico. In addition to negative seafood sales across the world, was the impact to fishermen and their crews when they could not continue to capture their product from the oily waters. The economic interdependence of these businesses was greatly compromised from the fishermen at the ocean level to the worldwide businesses that did not receive their product (nola.com)...
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