PART IV

Crisis Attentiveness

This final chapter, “Crisis in Review: The 2010 Deepwater Horizon Disaster,” exemplifies crisis in action at the early performative and later reflective stages. Once an issue, an argument, or a conflict has become or is a crisis, a corporate structure loses a great deal of influence and control on the outcome. The inner workings of a company are often unmasked in the public arena by a crisis. One discovers the inner core, the values that drive a given corporate structure and its leadership. British Petroleum stumbled energetically and thoughtlessly into a crisis that will continue to resonate in public memory for decades to come.