Contents

Executive Summary 1

Introduction 2

Analysis 3

Internal communication 3

External communication 6

Conclusion 10

Recommendation 11

Internal communication 11

External communication 12

Executive Summary

BP oil spill in April 2010, had incurred serious damage to both the company and publics. Though some internal and external communication strategies were carried out after the accident, more improvements should be made by BP to maintain the safety and reputation. The internal strategies used by BP, employing appropriate communication channels and appointing a CEO who is familiar with American cultures, need to be analysed and evaluated, as well as the external strategies aiming at reacting to
Accordingly, what is going wrong and what can be improved can be realized by employees so that they obtain the information guiding their performance. In other words, more improvements can be achieved.
Another internal strategy of BP after the oil spill was to appoint an American as the new head to replace the former British CEO. Having a British CEO to run the American subsidiary may cause some misunderstandings because of culture differences. In regard to the BP oil spill accident, the British CEO spent a lot of work on how to make him clear when communicating with American employees, but unfortunately, some misunderstanding still existed (Stern, 2010). Furthermore, the communication style and core cultural values of the British CEO are different. For instance, British leader tend to use oblique hints speaking style like “might be worth trying.” or “may not necessarily be such a good idea.” However, US employees might get confused about what their boss want. The oil spill incident heightened the need for BP to assign a leader who knows how to speak to local employees. Alfred G. Smith (1966) defined culture as “a code we learn and share.” It is clear that British and American have different cultures. For example, Americans are well known for their open-minded and direct style, hence they will expect the leader can apologize when they made mistakes. Failure to do so would perhaps cause dissatisfactory among the American society. In this case, Tony Hayward, the CEO denied