Changes in governance of corporate risks : Evidence from British Petroleum's response to the Deepwater Horizon Incident through narrative reporting

Abstract

This chapter explores how British Petroleum (BP) responded to the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) incident by articulating how BP actors changed how corporate risks are governed. Drawing on the Institutional Logics Perspective (ILP), this case study over the period 2008–2017 utilises NVivo software for the content and discourse analyses of BP’s Annual Reports (ARs). The outcomes outline that Risk Governance (RG) is a hybrid organisational practice within the BP’s Risk Management (RM) system that moves post the DWH incident beyond mitigating concerns of strategic and operational risks to consider prospect identification and assessment of safety and geopolitical issues. This study provides conceptual support for the ILP in how multiple logics coexist in managing BP’s material risks. This study has several implications: for the accounting literature, in how risk explains Corporate Governance (CG) change; for policymakers, in reconsidering the guidelines that regulate CG and assess RM; and for organisations, in reporting not only internal concerns but also geopolitical threats.