A British Response to an American Disaster
Tony Hayward, CEO of BP
We couldn’t help but recognize the impact culture had on the approach British BP took to an American disaster.
Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, said during an interview with the Guardian “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”
What Hayward didn’t consider when he said this is the environment, a bit of geography (gulf, not ocean) and the number of people affected by the spill in the Gulf region and the influence of the environmental movement in the US, which is smaller in the UK. Brits also don’t tend to have the more trusting, close relationship Americans have with the the press. Carrie Shearer, an intercultural consultant and former oil industry executive, opines Hayward should have apologized to the public, stated what BP was doing to correct the disaster and then recruit a crisis communication team to speak to the press, thus removing BP’s leadership from the spotlight.
Al Center, a Cornell University professor of chemical engineering, explains what he would have emphasized:
I would have had a technical spokesman go to all of the news networks to explain what BP was doing to contain the well and the spill. There are 19,000 people working on this problem and BP is spending about USD$20 million per day towards its resolution. I think if people saw the magnitude of the response the public perception of BP would be better.
Shearer explains that it’s not common in the UK to hire a PR firm or a crisis communicator to work with the press on disasters like these, as it is in the US. Regardless, Shearer emphasized that somebody should have trained Hayward on how to speak to the media, which would have saved him the loss of face caused by his reference to the relatively small amount of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
Public statements in the UK are less detailed than in the US, apologies are avoided and comments are understated, which conforms with British norms of communication. In response to some of the mistakes BP made when beginning to search for a resolution, Hayward said in the same Guardian interview that “it was a bit bumpy to get [the relief] going. We made a few little mistakes early on.” There was no initial apology to the public, which is what Americans look for when disasters like this happen. The British focus, as we’ve seen through Hayward’s statements, is the reparation and relief.
What do you make of this situation? How much could cultural awareness and knowledge of American media mitigate the US public’s frustration with BP’s management of this crisis? We’re eager to know your thoughts.
Sean
