Corporations have no moral compass and therefore have no concern for anything other than stockholder profits.

That indictment of corporate America is personified in the fate of BP chief Tony Hayward.  Hayward spent 20 years as a corporate ninja fighter before becoming head of BP three years ago.  Although he promised to focus on safety and to change the company’s champagne culture, he managed the latter and failed at the former.

Stockholders were pleased that he was making the company fiscally stronger but didn’t notice, didn’t know, or didn’t care that the safety issue was a pending oil well explosion.

Now, after more than three months of being bothered with the distraction of a Gulf oil disaster, Hayward has been replaced as head of the corporate giant.  If a moral compass existed, Hayward would be limping away from BP in shame and poverty as he was fired and stripped of any company benefits.  Not so.  Hayward is being sent to Russia to a plum BP post with a pay raise. Hayward got rewarded for being inconvenienced with the Gulf oil spill!

I have friends who are BP stockholders.  They are morally focused and environmentally conscious.  Over the years, they have enjoyed the financial success of their stock but have been hard pressed to come up with defenses for the company’s environmental practices.  With a corporation as large as BP, few stockholders have the knowledge, ability, or clout to have an impact even if they tried.

That’s not the America we started out to be.  That is the America we have become.  And, after more than a century of corporate control, it will be impossible to reclaim the moral compass.   There will be other disasters.  I’d place bets on Russia for the next fuel-related disaster.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 5:18 am and is filed under Business, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.