— By Lynne Azarchi, Special to the Times of Trenton, Friday, July 16, 2010
Experts are advocating that risk assessment and technical systems be improved to prevent oil-rig explosions in the future. Agreed. We have to improve the systems. But systems are ultimately managed by individuals, and the individuals we cultivate within our organizational and corporate cultures are too often themselves broken — unwilling to report safety violations, proactively fix problems or blow the whistle on corporate negligence.
On the Deepwater Horizon oil platform out in the Gulf of Mexico, issues of safety and risk were routinely ignored by riggers working on the platform, risk-assessment officers and federal regulatory employees. We really need to ask what sort of corporate culture is in place when employees of BP, Transocean and Halliburton didn’t or couldn’t stand up, speak out or challenge the status quo. Instead, they traveled with the herd.
Likewise, regulators either don’t or won’t do their jobs; columnist David Brooks from The New York Times has described the government’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) agency, which manages the nation’s mineral resources, including oil, as both “appalling and corrupt,” and most others concur.
There must be something about this agency and these companies that essentially tolerates layers of self-deception, ignorance and risk-taking on the wrong side of the risk-management equation. What is it about their lack of a sense of responsibility and accountability to the working men and women outside their industry — to lives across entire ecosystems — that enables them to rationalize behavior more suited to a game of Russian roulette than to responsibly providing energy to the country?
Everyone is a bystander. Specifically, these organizational cultures are dependent on a bystander mentality that counts on management, employees and watchdogs to look the other way. This holds true for employees of BP, Transocean, Halliburton and the regulatory agencies. Many were aware of the dangerous safety and risk infractions….