Energy Industry Diagnosing Corporate Culture Proclamations

Culture

I decided to look at the corporate culture at BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil. The corporate culture at BP has come under fire for emphasizing cost-cutting over things like safety and the environment (Hays, 2013), so the company has had to take a look at how it defines its corporate culture. The company's culture splash page immediately talks about its donations to the arts, and history thereof in the UK. It is interesting that it echoes the same information about donating to a handful of high-visibility UK cultural institutions (because donating to the Tate offsets Deepwater Horizon, right). BP actually notes as a community achievement the fact that it pays tax -- over ?6bn in the UK in the past five years. Let that number marinate a bit, thinking about BP's revenues in that time.

Chevron's website talks a lot more about its corporate culture, "The Chevron Way." On this page, the vision and values of the company are elaborated -- there are seven key values outlined that describe a lot about how people within the company are to interact with one another, with customers and with other stakeholders. Honesty, high performance, diversity and partnership are among the values highlighted. ExxonMobil's website outlines several facets of the corporate culture, including safety, ethics, discipline, diversity, community & society. Many of these elements are described in greater detail.

The values are different for these companies. The two American companies have a lot more to say about their corporate culture, which is interesting because one would think BP would want to control the narrative about its corporate culture. ExxonMobil's discussion about culture is overtly geared towards potential employees, while Chevron's is aimed at a more general audience including both customers and potential employees. BP, based on its website, does not seem keen to discuss its corporate culture, or it has no idea what its culture might be. Where it does touch on the subject, it uses the vaguest language imaginable, for example " We respect the world in which we operate. It begins with compliance with laws and regulations. We hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards and behave in ways that earn the trust of others."

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Each energy company's website contains a broad array of information about the company and its operations. The sites are aimed at a fairly general audience, so the content tends to be generic, and this goes for all three companies. But there is breadth of information on each site about the company's history, values, financial performance, and products. ExxonMobil perhaps says the least on its website but for the most part there is not much difference between the sites with respect to the types of content covered, only I the tone of the content.

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