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Image Crisis at British Petroleum

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Image Crisis at British Petroleum
Bp’s BRAND IMAGE
More packaging than substance ?

Introduction:

Corporate image symbolises the values an organisation stands for. Organizations can create it to define themselves or get branded due to their actions. Therefore, its more important to have a the right image that reflect an organization’s commitment to quality, excellence and its constructive role in the society. British Petroleum (BP) is a major enterprise to redefine its core values in the light of its ethical considerations. It is an example of antagonism between its core business and it’s core values. Since years it has been subject of criticism more than any other oil producer for failing to deliver on its commitments of environmental protection, ethical business model and health / safety procedures. A series of accidents have also undermined BP’s credibility of going green and the range of disparity between its business values and business practices is anyones guess. In order to assess the extent to which BP has been successful, we will equate its position with respect to the extrinsic factors like industry macro-drivers, strategy implementation, crisis management and intrinsic factors such as size, capital, costs, technology and location. It is the change of dynamics between these extrinsic and intrinsic factors that decides the amount of resources that can be allocated to bring about any change.

We will also aim to explore how BP is affected by dynamics of a business sector on which its customers are rather dependent and shareholders who are looking for the return on their investment. The kind of leverage BP has to sideline its ethical commitments and favor profit generation. There are unexploited oil reserves in this highly profitable industry and switching to alternative energy solutions cannot viably offset current technologies brought about by years of research and billiols in investment. How does BP plan to manage this change across the company and time of implementation is
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