Crisis Management: Lessons Learnt from the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill Oil

Abstract

The present paper studies the BP crisis management of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster which occurred on April 20th, 2010. The authors content-analysed a large amount of secondary data from various sources, used the three-phase crisis management model and found that BP management of this crisis failed at many levels. The authors mainly highlighted four lessons relating to the connection between the Corporate Social Responsibility and the crisis management, the importance of the initial response when a crisis occurs, the need for strong stakeholders’ relationship before, during and after the crisis; and the opportunity to learn from a crisis.