Referring back to Quins blog about Enbridge’s’ illusive marketing strategy, I would like to share my thoughts on this issue. Without a doubt, having Enbridge provide unrealistic figures to the government and the general public raised a couple of concerns for everybody. However, concluding it as being an un-ethical act would be questionable in my opinion.

It seems to me that Enbridge has underestimated the power of its external stakeholders (environmentalists, government ie.). This is a common mistake most companies encounter during daily operations, and the consequences are rather high as it could affect their brand loyalty as well as image. Perhaps Enbridge were too concerned with pleasing their shareholders, senior management that they simply neglected their external stakeholders – After all, Enbridge did only provide quantitative benefits from an economical prospective.

To conclude about what Enbridge did, as being un-ethical, is rather rash. If you look at the bigger picture, Enbridge simply failed to communicate the added value of this project over the associated risks to the public. It would have been a lot better, If they did provide informative environmental risks associated this project along with proper short term and long-term responses if the unfavorable event were to occur. In the end, it isn’t a question whether or not this was ethical; it was whether Enbridge truly understood the interests of its external stakeholders. In this case, they didn’t.