To continue the previous blog regarding the BP oil spill：

While businesses are sometimes legally constituted as a person, is in my opnion, not a person. It cannot be expected to contain the same qualities that people are expected to have, namely, ethics. A CEO can be said to be unethical, a stockholder can be said to be unethical, but a business, theoretically and logically, cannot be said to be unethical because if otherwise, it ceases to be a business, which at the fundamental level is an agency for the sole purpose of making profit.

However, although a business does not have ethical values, it is still capable of displaying ethical actions for the purpose of maximizing profit. An unethical business will most likely become a failed business because of the enormous amount of pressure from different stakeholders, such as environmental groups and government agencies, and would often be forced to follow regulation or be legally prosecuted. Therefore, business do not perform ethical actions because they have ethical values, but rather because those actions serves to maximize their profit in the long run.

Source:

Dina Cappiello. “BP ultimately responsible in Gulf spill”. Yahoo! News. extracted from the internet September 14, 2011.

http://news.yahoo.com/report-bp-ultimately-responsible-gulf-spill-174211824.html

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BP is held responsible for the worst U.S. offshore in history, where 11 rig workers were killed in an explosion in April 2010, and the resulting 200 million gallons of crude which spilled into the sea. They are responsibe for their failure to provide the protection and safety for their worker and the environment.

The Obama administration, as a reaction to this crisis, decided to further enforce and mandate the regulation and safety procedures on offshore drilling practices. However, Congress has yet to pass a single legislation regarding this issue.

This issue raises several ethical questions which includes:

1. Who should be responsible for such disasters, the firm or the individual person(s)

2. Should the firm/person be liability or criminally charged for such disaster, and how will they affect (or not affect) the action of the firm in the future

3.To what extent should the public good be sacrificed for maximizing profit for a business firm, and how should they resolve such conflict between the different stakeholders

4. How should the government be effective changed that they are preventing and not only reacting to these issues

Source:

Dina Cappiello. “BP ultimately responsible in Gulf spill”. Yahoo! News. extracted from the internet September 14, 2011.

http://news.yahoo.com/report-bp-ultimately-responsible-gulf-spill-174211824.html