Accumulating Trouble: Complex Organization, a Culture of Silence, and a Secret Spill

Society for the Study of Social Problems

Accumulating Trouble: Complex Organization, a Culture of Silence, and a Secret SpillAuthor(s): Thomas D. BeamishSource: Social Problems, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Nov., 2000), pp. 473-498Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of SocialProblemsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3097131Accessed: 27/10/2009 15:18

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Accumulating Trouble: Complex Organization, a Culture of Silence, and a Secret Spill

THOMAS D. BEAMISH, University of California, Davis

Over a period of thirty-eight years, Unocal Corporation spilled as much as 20 million gallons of petroleum into Central California's Guadalupe/Nipomo Dunes fouling the ground water, the beach, and other habitat producing what may be the largest petroleum spill in United States' history. A whistleblower finally reported this

spill in February of 1990, which led to the shutdown of their oil field, fines, and criminal charges. Through the

analysis of oilfield social and organizational dynamics, this article makes three interrelated contributions to current understandings of hazard creation and response and organizational deviance. First, it builds on and extends research on "man-made disasters. " I argue that commonplace social and organizational structures, combined with equally unremarkable, yet incrementally cumulative petroleum spillage to produce a remarkable outcome-millions of gallons of petroleum contamination. Second, in addressing the social dynamics at the oil

field, I develop the theoretical concept of a culture of silence to capture the collective secrecy that surrounded the spill once the local workgroup recognized the danger it presented to their ongoing organizational viability. Finally, an understanding of these social and organizational dynamics suggests significant policy ramifications concerning the viability of current industrial self-regulation as a strategy for monitoring environmental

compliance.

According to Barry Turner in his ground breaking work, "Man-Made Disasters," (MMD) catastrophes rooted in human origins are not "bolts from the blue" (Turner 1978, p. 33). Rather, systematically analyzing disaster scenarios reveals important preconditions, namely, that MMD involve early signs that are often misinterpreted and even ignored (Turner 1978,

p. 86). A handful of important scholars have extended Turner's early observations, agreeing that organizational and cultural contexts can both precipitate such events and keep them from

taking place (Clarke 1989;'Lee and Ermann 1999; Morone and Woodhouse 1986; Perrow

1986; Sagan 1993; Vaughan 1996, 1999; Weick 1993). Turner and these others do not consider disaster events to be "accidental." An accident is an unexpected and unintentional event that is the product of chance. In contrast, "man-made disasters" are most productively viewed as socio-technical problems that involve social, organizational, and technical processes that,

together, produce devastating consequences. Specifically, Turner (1978) showed that hazardous contexts often include a starting point steeped in culturally or institutionally accepted norms of safety that presage disaster scenarios. Obviously, better understanding this early "incubation period" is important in order to avoid disaster onset and the subsequent salvage and readjustment (Turner 1978, p. 85).

The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the generous funding support of the University of California, Toxic Research and Teaching Program (TRTP) and the U.S. Minerals Management Service (contract # 14-35-0001-30796). The author would also like to thank Harvey Molotch, John Mohr, Jacqueline Romo, Thomas Burr, Nicole Biggart, Loren Lutzenhiser, Todd Hechtman, John Foran, Britta Wheeler, Leonard Nevarez, Krista Paulsen, anonymous Social Problems reviewers and editors for helpful comments. Direct correspondence to: Thomas D. Beamish, Technology, Energy, and Soci- ety Program, Institute of Governmental Affairs, University of California, Davis, CA 95616. E-mail: [email protected].

SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 47, No. 4, pages 473-498. ISSN: 0037-7791 ? 2000 by Society for the Study of Social Problems, Inc. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

474 BEAMISH

This study focuses on the early stages of Turner's MMD model, illustrating and extending our understanding of these processes through the analysis of a case: the Guadalupe oil field spill. In contrast to the iconographic Exxon Valdez debacle with its complementary array of oiled birds and dying sea life, the Guadalupe spill was caused by four decades of chronic leaks that accumulated on land, underground, and that, periodically, leached into a bordering river and the Pacific Ocean. A system of corroded oil bearing pipes owned by Unocal Corporation emptied a clear, diesel-like petroleum thinner called diluent into their oil field and surround-

ing environs. By 1990, local operations had spilled as much as 20 million gallons' of diluent into San Luis Obispo County's Guadalupe/Nipomo Dunes Complex-a National Natural Landmark (see Figures 1 and 2).2 This is currently the largest recorded petroleum spill in U.S.

history. The Guadalupe/Nipomo Dunes Complex is a biome the Department of the Interior

describes as," . . . the largest relatively undisturbed coastal dune tract in California. ... No

comparable area in the Pacific Coast possesses a similar series of freshwater lagoons and lakes so well preserved, with minimal cultural intrusions and harboring such great species diversity. The area serves habitat for both rare and endangered plants and animals, besides being one of the most scenically attractive areas in Southern California" (Arthur D. Little Consultants, et al.

1997). Additionally the spill has contaminated a local fishery, a popular recreation area, and has settled on top of the ground water, threatening future water supplies for a water-deficit

region. Turner's (1978) research on man-made disasters relied, almost exclusively, on official

governmental documentation to tease out conclusions. He was not able to examine how deci-

sion-making processes unfold in situ. However, my research on the Guadalupe spill involves

empirical data that is rarely available: I obtained first- and second-hand accounts depicting how organizational protocols and occupational culture played out "on the ground" in creat-

ing, normalizing, and eventually, covering up an enormous environmental debacle.

Research Strategy

I began participating in research on the Central California petroleum industry in 1990

(see Beamish forthcoming; Beamish 2001; Beamish, et al. 1998; Molotch and Freudenburg 1996; Molotch, et al. 1998). Specifically, I explored the creation of and response to the Guad-

alupe spill over a two-and-a-half-year period commencing in 1996, through intensive interviews

(and impromptu conversations while in the field), ethnographic participation in local events related to the spill and the local oil industry, and archival data collection. Corroboration between these data sources was an integral part of identifying patterns and verifying conclusions. In the first instance, I conducted thirty-nine in-depth field and telephone interviews with

"key-informants" drawn from four primary groups: members of the local oil industry who were directly involved with or knew something of the spill, government regulators investi-

gating it, community members concerned with it, and environmental activists protesting it.

Thirty-five of these interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and systematically analyzed. Four informants were uncomfortable being taped, so these interviews were restricted to interview notes. Quotations cited are verbatim from the transcripts or interview notes unless oth-

1. The Guadalupe spill's current estimate ranges between 20 and 8.5 million gallons of diluent with the lower

figure forwarded by Unocal officials and the higher number provided by local, state, and federal regulatory agency personnel. The second largest spill in U.S. history, the Exxon Valdez tanker accident, is estimated to have involved between 10.1 and 10.8 million gallons of crude oil (Birkland 1998; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 1992; The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1999).

2. National Landmark status is a designation conferred by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, which acknowledges the national significance of the Dunes as an exceptional and increasingly rare coastal ecosystem.

Accumulating Trouble 475

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erwise cited. Outside of these 39 interviews, I also had access through a colleague also studying the regions oil industry, to three other transcripts of workers from San Luis Obispo who commented on Unocal, regional oil production, and related matters. On many occasions, sponta- neous conversations also occurred while conducting field research, as well as in the hallways, waiting rooms of offices, and in the homes of those I intended to interview, with individuals I had not originally contacted or planned to meet. I also pursued related ethnographic contexts (for example, site tours, public forums, and visits to the beach and dunes to speak with fisher- men, surfers, and so forth), compiled and analyzed a substantial collection of archival materials

476 BEAMISH

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(environmental impact reports, spill remediation plans, inter-agency correspondences, etc.), and closely followed local3 and national media portrayals from 1989 onward.4

Important features distinguish this case from the typical scenarios addressed by previous empirical investigations. First, the circumstances and the setting of the Guadalupe spill depart

3. For example, in collecting newspaper stories related to the spill for the period between 1989 and 1996 in the San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune, the regions only major daily, I found 325 stories that focused on "petroleum" as a topic area. Eight stories covered oil as a relatively neutral and specific topic area, 246 treated oil spills as a

specific topic area, and 71 covered offshore oil as a specific topic area. 4. For the national search, I used the University of California MELVYL "news" program, which looks for words

used in headlines. Five leading U.S. newspapers are indexed in this system: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The

Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal. I searched via computer for headlines mentioning the

following words or phrases: "Guadalupe Spill," "Unocal Oil Spills," and "California Oil Spills" (as well as a combination of

synonyms for these). Over the six-year period, 1990-1996, the National Press devoted nine stories to the Guadalupe spill.


from the technically complex, tightly coupled, and non-linear interactions that have been the primary interest of much "accident research" (see Morone and Woodhouse 1986; Perrow 1984; Sagan 1993; Vaughan 1996; Weick 1993; Weick and Roberts 1993). The loose organizational coupling that characterized intra- and inter-field relations, the use of unsophisticated technologies, the linear qualities of pipeline transport and metering, and the long duration of the spill, all set it apart from those previously examined. Second, accident theory has focused, almost exclusively, on settings that hold the potential for acute and catastrophic outcomes (LaPorte and Consolini 1991; Morone and Woodhouse 1986; Perrow 1986; Roberts 1982; Sagan 1993; Vaughan 1996; Weick and Roberts 1993; Wildavsky 1988). This study focuses on a gradually developing problem that was ultimately as catastrophic as the "normal" subject of accident theory. Third, this study is unique for its analysis of the "stages" that comprised the "incubation" of a major environmental disaster (Turner 1978). By identifying the additional phases the spill went through as the outcome of social and organizational processes, I add to Turner's notion of a "starting point" and show a side of industrial crisis that is seldom exposed.

My interests in this case are to convey how banal social and organizational characteristics in a low-technology setting can lead to alarming results-but of a crescive and insidious type. It is out of such commonplace structures, coupled with equally unremarkable, yet incrementally accumulating trouble, that destructive consequences emerge in the long-term. This throws into question Lee Clarke's assertion (1989) that "all important accidents, by definition, produce social disruptions" (p. 158). In some cases, as this research explores, they do not, which is precisely why such events need more research attention.

Finally, this research has significant policy ramifications. Unlike traditionally conceived forms of law enforcement that are predicated on the belief that lawbreakers will do everything within their power to avoid getting caught, local, state, and federal agencies charged with enforcing environmental regulations depend heavily on the violator to inform the authorities of transgression(s). This "safeguard" against environmental degradation is codified as law through a number of state and federal statutes. By juxtaposing the premise on which self- report legislation is based (that compliance is assured when coupled with the threat of steep fines), to the organizational and cultural qualities that characterized oil work at the Guada- lupe field, I show how flawed it is (c.f., King and Lenox 2000). Because our current system of industrial monitoring is premised on the assumption that industrial dischargers will self- regulate their activities (Skillern 1981; Wolf 1988; Yeager 1991), the significance of understanding cases in which they do not, and why they do not, is crucial.

The potential for heavy fines, criminal charges, and the closure of the field (all of which have transpired) begs the question of why self-report did not happen. The qualities that describe the social organization of the oil field-managerial hierarchies, a formally defined system of seniority, internal promotion, and strong social cohesion-appear benign and are, indeed, common across many work places (Jaques 1990). However, it is in and through such a seemingly innocuous organizational environment that one of the largest petroleum spills in U.S. history was created, left unacknowledged, and for some time, actively denied. As Diane Vaughan has noted in her 1999 article, "much organizational deviance is a routine by-product of characteristics of the system themselves," systems instituted to achieve an end efficiently and non-problematically (p. 274). She figuratively refers to this as the "dark side of organizations."

The intersection of three elements helps to explain why field workers remained uncon- cerned with continued spillage for so long and why they concealed it from government regulators once they recognized the threat it posed. First, similar to Turner's articulation of a "starting point," the intra-organizational routines that arranged the oil field provided a cognitive template that engendered basic assumptions about how work was to be done and where a worker's responsibilities lay within this larger framework. Second, and intertwined with the first, the occupational culture at the field lent work routines social stability, playing an important cohesive role in the field's total social organization. In so doing, the field's fraternal social

478 BEAMISH

milieu furnished social pressure(s) that pointed workers towards making the "appropriate decisions" when confronted with choices. Third, inter-organizational isolation, founded in a loosely coupled relationship with other corporate branches and regulatory agencies, insulated the field from outside intervention and intensified the power that production routines and cultural solidarity had over workers. I should stress, at the outset, that individual and organizational self-serving motivations were also part of what would eventually become active denial and cover up of the spill. My analysis does not suggest either "over-socialization" or pure self-serving "evil" intent. Rather, I chart a middle course, based on what the data suggest, and uncover how decent people can, in fact, participate in dirty work (c.f. Vaughan 1996, 1999).

I begin by addressing the case as a physical event. I then introduce the analytic frame from which the rest of this paper's argument emerges. This includes a brief, but focused, look at the "bounding" qualities that organizations have on individual and group rationality, and the "collective mind" that it promotes (Weick and Roberts 1993). Next, I focus on the three elements outlined above-intra-organizational routines, work-culture, and inter-organizational isolation-that characterized the oil field to expose their part in both acclimating participants to the slowly evolving trouble, and in promoting a culture of silence once it was

recognized as a liability to organizational survival. Finally, based on the empirical observations made of this case, I outline how the social dynamics contradict the basis of self-report legislation. Following a brief account of the local context and physical properties of the spill, I turn

my attention to the analysis of its creation and why it was not self-reported by Unocal Corpo- ration's local operators as the law requires.

The Place of Contamination

The Guadalupe Dunes and oil field are located in Central California, 30 miles south of the

city of San Luis Obispo (population 41,950) and 65 miles north of the city of Santa Barbara

(population 86,000). (See Figures 1 and 2 for regional maps.) The oil field encompasses approximately 3,176 acres (six square miles) of largely undeveloped oceanfront land. Oil

exploration and production began at the Guadalupe Dunes in 1947. In 1953, Union Oil of Cal- ifornia (presently Unocal Corporation) purchased the field and expanded operations. At its

peak in 1988, there were 215 producing wells with a production rate of approximately 4,500 barrels of crude oil a day (Arthur D. Little Consultants, et al. 1997). The crude produced at the site, characteristic of the central and south coast of California, was extremely viscous with a

density that resembles peanut butter. Unocal used a number of methods to enhance the

recovery of this crude; one of these was the injection of petroleum thinners into well bores to loosen this thick oil, making lifting and piping it easier. Diluent was the primary distillate used at the field to "dilute" this local crude (Stormont 1956). It was first used (and spilled) at the field as early as 1953; a notoriously leaky "spaghetti" piping system was installed in the early 1970s (Arthur D. Little Consultants, et al. 1997).

As a contaminant, diluent's current and future physical impacts are more difficult to char- acterize than if it were crude oil, the gooey black profile of which is easier to identify. While a less blatant contaminant than crude oil, diluent contains carcinogenic chemical solvents such as benzene, toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene, which make it potentially more toxic (these are referred to as BTEX's. See Mckee and Wolf, 1963).5 Controversy remains over its level of

5. As a caveat, what is known of the field's contamination has continued to grow worse as Unocal excesses are uncovered, while solutions to clean up remain elusive (outside of leveling the field and destroying the dunes in the process). For example, oil sumps, with hundreds of thousands-perhaps millions-of gallons of crude oil were uncovered in 1997 and 1998. In 1999, PCB's were also found in and around tank farm areas in the interior of the field (Sneed, 1999). For all its surface beauty, underneath and throughout the dunes are a beastly set of problems (California Coastal Commission, 1999, p. 5).


toxicity and how long it continues to be toxic when released into the environment. Estimates of the biological breakdown of diluent at the site can be as high as 10,000 years if the spillage is left to itself.

Intra-Organizational Complicity

The part that complex organization plays in bounding the rationality of group members is well represented in organizational theory. It is a process of socialization that is grounded in

organizational imperatives to maximize efficiency (Jepperson 1991; March and Simon 1958; Merton 1940; Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Weick and Roberts 1993). Increasing efficiency entails the promulgation of extensive, predictable, and consistent programs to guide the actions of those that inhabit them, so that they achieve some specific or designated function

(Perrow 1986; Simon 1957; Turner 1978). Work systems, like the one at the Guadalupe oil field, regiment how individuals relate to one another and their environment, and in so doing, dictate many of the terms of localized rationality (March and Simon 1958; Merton 1940; Vaughan 1996; Weick 1979). However, as Weber observed at the turn of the century, ratio-

nally striving to achieve an end can also lead to irrational outcomes (Weber 1952; see also Merton 1936; Perrow 1986). This insight helps us understand the creation of the Guadalupe spill. By internalizing and carrying out local organizational edicts, workers at the field eventu-

ally put themselves out of work and subjected the larger organization, Unocal Corporation, to

significant public relations damages and to large financial costs. Thus, in order to understand why chronic spilling of petroleum would be unsurprising to

oil field personnel, we need to address how oil work was organized. Over time, as the petroleum extraction was rationalized from its early, and rather loosely organized, entrepreneurial roots, it evolved into an elaborate system of work.6 Institutional assumptions were integrated into worker consciousness through daily enactment, becoming habitual with time. In this

way, work routines fostered assumptions about what were important and unimportant refer- ents. For many years, spilling oil was considered unimportant.7

We must also distinguish between data and information. According to Clarke (1993), information is data transformed to aid in choice-making. In addressing the difference between "raw data" and "information," Clarke (1993) emphasizes that, while they may be objectively the same, it is through social structure and culture that meaning is imputed to one (data), converting it into the other (information): "The processes through which data are amassed and made sense of determine whether they become relevant information or are dismissed (or simply tolerated) as background noise" (p. 315). In short, organizational frameworks provide a context that confers meaning, turning data into usable information on which (appropriate) choices can be made. On this, Perrow (1997) agrees, explaining the power of organizations to delimit reality in this manner: . . . organizations have a profound (and quite essential) ability to shape beliefs and values of their employees, to construct worlds that only outsiders find unrealistic ... a successful organization is one that consistently and pervasively reinforces beliefs in its core phantasies (Perrow 1997:72; see also Clarke and Perrow 1997).

6. Historically, oil work was a semi-autonomous activity left to the skills of a head driller and his hand picked crew of workers at each field (see also, Davidson 1988; Haslam 1972; Quam-Wickham 1994; Romo 2000; White 1962; Yergin 1991).

7. For the sake of comparison, a turn of the century perspective on oil in the Gulf of Mexico and early California is informative. Oil "gushers" evoked images of progress, events that we now refer to as oil spills. Historian Joseph Pratt (1978) writes of this period: "In the rush for instant wealth, oil wealth, oil was seen as black gold, not black sludge. The gusher was an ecological symbol for this early period-photographs of the Lucas Gusher went out across the world, showing the magnificent spectacle of the six inch stream of oil rising more than 100 feet above the top of the derrick. So powerful was the image that wise well owners arranged to turn on similar gushers for the entertainment and persuasion of potential investors. In this atmosphere of uncontrolled exploitation, few cameras recorded what happened to the gushing oil after it splashed to earth" (p. 4).

480 BEAMISH

Nevertheless, it would be improper to conceive of organizational structures as residing "outside" the individual worker. While founded in programmatic settings, routinized organizational processes are also reified and perpetuated in individual cognition through consensual val- idation (Weick 1979; Weick and Roberts 1993). Organizational systems act as a "grammar, in the sense that it is a systematic account of some rules and conventions by which sets of interlocked behaviors are assembled to form social processes that are intelligible to actors" (Weick 1979, p. 3). In large measure, information is not data until it appears consistent with positions already held (Clarke 1993). Moreover, preferences do not necessarily precede action as typically conceived in means-ends notions of rationality. Rather, they often lend retrospective sensibility to what has already transpired (Cohen, March, and Olsen 1972; March and Olsen 1979).

Functionally, then, organizational actors (a.k.a., workers) are directed to perform based on organizational scripts (institutional rules, protocols, programs, and organizational rou-

tines). These are internalized and cognitively reiterated when enacted (c.f., Berger and Luck- mann 1966; Goffman 1959). Simply put, "a way of seeing is always also a way of not seeing" (Turner 1978, p. 49).

A "Starting Point"

In its early stages (1953 until 1978/1979), the spillage at the Guadalupe field was neither

troubling nor was there anyone to whom to report it. Because it was part of routine fieldwork, it received little attention. According to those who read the diluent meters that tracked the

coming and going of the petroleum thinner, "many times there were little leaks; that was just normal" (interview 1996). Another worker, quoted in a local newspaper, went so far as to refer to the leaks in this way: "Diluent loss was a way of life at the Guadalupe oil field" (Friesen 1993).

Consequently, petroleum loss concerned few people, if any, at the site until the 1980s.

Dumping hundreds of gallons of diluent into the dunes, as long as it was one gallon at a time, was an ordinary part of production. This is not a great leap of reason; oil work obviously involves oil. As an illustration, until the 1970s, Unocal sprayed the field's sand dunes with crude oil to keep them from shifting, making field maintenance and transportation over them easier.8 If spraying crude oil over the dunes was non-problematic, why would diluent leaks which were

largely invisible as soon as they hit the sand, be unsettling? While workers mention that they became alarmed in the 1980s as puddling diluent periodically appeared as small ponds on the surface of the dunes, the chronic leaks, themselves, evoked little attention. At Guadalupe, the

normalcy of spilling oil of all kinds (crude oil, lubricants, and diluent) worked to blunt perceptions of the leaks and escaped petroleum as problematic. The leaks were an expected part of a

day in the life of an oil worker. According to workers quoted in the local press:

A backhoe (operator) at the field ... for 12 years ... cited "an apparent lack of concern about the immediate repair of leaks or the detection of leaks." Diluent lines would not be replaced unless they had leaked a number of times or were a "serious maintenance problem ..." Although workers checked meters on the pipelines and looked for leaks if there was a discrepancy, often, a problem wasn't detected until the stuff flowed to the surface, said ... a field mechanic (Greene 1993b, p. A-1).

By both historical and contemporary accounts, oil spills are a common occurrence at oil field operations, in general (Pratt 1978, 1980).9 But this does not help us understand why, once the spill was recognized by field personnel as a significant problem, they would continue

8. The vestigial clumps of crude oil are still observable in areas throughout the oil field. I asked a Unocal chaper- one during one of the site tours where the asphalt clumps had come from. He replied that Unocal's practice until the 1970s had been to spray the field's dunes with crude oil, especially along roadways, to keep them from shifting (impromptu conversation 1997).

9. Personal visits to oil field operations, interviews concerning other fields in the region, and historical accounts of oil work all converge: petroleum production has been a messy business since its origins in the late nineteenth century.


to deny it and, thus, fail to report for a decade or more as specified by state and federal law. A first step to understanding why workers failed to report their spill to the authorities once it had "tipped" towards a grievous problem, necessitates attending to the vocabulary, structure, and enactment of work, and how these factors not only molded worker perceptions, but also kept them from reporting the spill outside their local work group.

The "Company Line" 1978-1993

Organizationally, oil work at the field was arranged, like many traditional industrial settings, around a hierarchical seniority system. Recruitment and promotion were internally derived, meaning the fieldworkers relied on their immediate foremen and supervisors for instruction, guidance, and ultimately, future chances at success (promotion, salary increase, choice of shifts, and so forth). According to a fieldworker, "They don't bring people in from the outside. Most of the time it was in-house" (interview 1997). Hierarchy, as an organizational strategy through which authority is exercised, responds to an organizational need to guide subordinates in their work. Hierarchy invests authority in the supervisor as the embod- iment of organizational imperatives.

Nonetheless, the "efficiency" of strictly programming duties and defining powers does not come without a trade-off. The strength of an organization's hierarchy and the power those in positions of authority wield, while immediately "efficient" for getting tasks done, has other costs in the long run, costs that potentially make strict hierarchies less attractive as an organizing principle. For instance, increases in the efficiency of decision-making (in a strict hierarchy) can decrease the general sense of personal responsibility. Hierarchy, as an organizational structure, relieves individuals from responsibility over making decisions concerning what is right or wrong socially (substantive-rationality in Weberian terms) and promotes, instead, insulation from a sense of moral culpability (Hummel 1987; Vaughan 1996).

Such organizational structures are an important characteristic that holds a great deal of responsibility for Unocal employees' silence regarding the Guadalupe spill after it was recognized as a threat. In the following quote, a field worker articulated the change for him from normal to problematic spill. There was nothing to worry over when isolated puddles formed on the sand under leaking pipes. The worry started when diluent began to turn the ocean brown in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The look of an ocean-based spill provides the tipping point when impressions of what was normal quickly changed:

You come up and you see a clamp ... (on a) diluent (pipe) line. It is leaking. You tighten it up, you change it, you ... fix it and it ... has made a puddle. That is not something you would turn in. When it went into the ocean ... and you see the waves break and they weren't breaking white ... (but) brown water, there is a problem. (That happened) some time in the 1980s . . . We all knew right then ... we had some kind of problem. Well, we all kind of estimated it could be rather large considering that this field had been here so long before we ever got there (interview 1997).

Corroborating his impressions, another worker quoted in the local press remembers finding large concentrations of diluent that were no longer the "leaks" that had created them, but looked more like a bona fide "oil spill": "In 1980, a large puddle of diluent had saturated the sand and bubbled up to fill a spot 5 to 10 feet wide...." He told investigators that he and his coworkers realized, at the time, there were problems with the diluent system "even though management seemed to ignore the problems" (Greene 1993b, p. A-i).

The problems brought on by "normal operating procedures" were, by this time, obviously destructive. This became especially apparent with accelerated rates of spillage during the mid- 1980s, which periodically slowed oil production at the field (Greene 1992, 1993a; Rice 1994). Yet, instead of self-reporting the spillage, the field workers turned to denial and secrecy. At this point, in rather Orwellian fashion, supervisors at the field engaged in double speak, making claims no one believed, which everyone accepted, for their own, as well as collective rea-

482 BEAMISH

sons. For example, a field worker commented on the "company line" that supervisors and foremen took about the spillage, as well as the knowing looks and shrugs their explanations elicited from those who worked the pipelines, pumps, and storage units, and who saw everyday the diluent lost into the dunes:

One day down at 5X (a well head and extraction site), I took a shovel and dug down by where (the ocean) came up on the sand, and diluent started coming out.... We talked (to the workers who had witnessed it), and we reported it to Union's (i.e., Unocal) foreman. They said, "if anybody asks, tell them to talk to the superintendent." At a safety meeting the superintendent says, "Ah, well, a boat probably went by and emptied its bilges." We all looked at each other and went (shrugs), you know, come on (interview 1997).

He also commented in interview on the increasing intensity of the spillage as the field's pipeline infrastructure deteriorated, saying:

Once it hit that point (in the mid-1980s), it was hundreds of barrels a day-a couple of hundred a day being missed, and you know only one barrel out on the surface is allowable ... We used to talk about it (the spillage). Everybody knew. The fact that we would lose 200 barrels a day, you would think that... we ... were having a problem.... But it was business as usual (interview 1997).

At this time, workers realized their jobs were increasingly in jeopardy with a potential field- wide shut down. Worker opinions were divided between those who wanted no part of the

newly defined problem and those who wondered what the consequences of discovery would be. Moreover, fellow workers were torn. Some acted as if "they didn't know anything and didn't want to know anything, all they wanted to do was keep their jobs." Others admitted

they "had a problem and wondered when, and if, it would come out." Once the leaks were perceived as threatening, they imbued local organizational routines

with a form of "institutional schizophrenia." That is, according to Bensman and Gerver (1963, p. 597), when conflicts arise between public ideology (i.e., it is against the law to spill) and institutional action (i.e., continued spilling) individuals are likely to separate the two. They shift between the two "levels" employing "a form of double-think" that "is a major result of means-ends conflicts" (Bensman and Gerver, p. 597). At Guadalupe, workers separated themselves from the continued spillage by unhinging it from a right-or-wrong conceptualization. By the 1980s, workers knew spilling was wrong, but only if they were responsible for it. Given the hierarchy in the field, they were not; their managers were.

The hierarchical insulation from responsibility, thus, helped to keep workers who watched diluent spill into the dunes from feeling it was their obligation to do something about it. When relieved of making decisions, people tend to cede their personal responsibility to those who are in control (Asch 1952; Milgram 1974). Structurally, the field's hierarchy consisted of five

general levels. New workers began as utility persons; they worked their way to pumper and then to field mechanic; and, if able and having a long enough tenure at the field, they could become foremen. Over the foremen were the field supervisors, who headed operations at

specific fields; over them was a superintendent who oversaw Guadalupe and another oil operation in the area.

Parallel to the field's organizational hierarchy was a formally defined seniority system that distributed authority within hierarchically defined categories. 0 In a seniority-based system, newer workers rely on those above them, those who have already done their jobs and learned their lessons, to manage and inform them on how to perform field duties (Bensman and Gerver 1963; Glazer 1987; Sherman 1987). As one worker put it:

I had to learn about equipment that I had never used. I was assigned to be with other people that had been there for a lot of years ... they would break you in. That is how you would learn (interview 1997).

10. Seniority was represented as grades within the five general worker categories, i.e., a mechanic could be a mechanic one, two, or three, which referred to his "seniority" and hence responsibilities at the site.


Functionally, the lower ranking workers at the field left reporting of the spillage to the foremen who were to notify the field supervisor. In turn, the supervisor was to inform the regional superintendent, who, at that point, was to tell environmental experts within the corporation, corporate executives, and the appropriate government agencies. Those at the lower rungs, in particular utility men, pumpers, mechanics, and contract workers such as vacuum truck drivers, were not in a position to report the spill outside of this hierarchical system-at least not without breaking rank and risking sanction (Elliston, et al. 1985; Glazer 1987).

When the second of two whistleblowers-a worker on disability leave who was "dis- gusted" by the lies he watched a Unocal supervisor tell on television (Greene 1992; Paddock 1994a; Rice 1994)-informed the authorities that the spill extended into the interior of the field and was being covered up by managers, Fish and Game wardens raided their local offices (more on the first whistle blower below). They found plume maps and well logs delineating petroleum spills that local field managers had not reported. Those maps indicated that local managers had been keeping nominal track of the spills since the 1980s, even if they were not reporting them outside their field's workgroup to corporate managers or to government authorities (Finucane 1992; Greene 1992, 1993a; Paddock 1994a, 1994b; Rice 1994; White 1993). Claims that mangers kept the spillage quiet are corroborated by other field personnel interviewed for this research, as well as those quoted by the press. For example, an environmental compliance specialist at Unocal's local offices related that he was "sicken(ed) and dis- heartened ... because it (the spill) could have been prevented and should have been cleaned up way before now" (Rice 1994, p. 31). He would leave Unocal after local managers chastised him for spending $200,000 on the clean up of another oil field site close to Guadalupe. He left "still unaware of what had happened at Guadalupe" (Rice, p. 31). Furthermore, he and another environmental specialist were quoted as saying "they were kept at arms length". . . Unocal managers ... consider(ed) the environmental compliance department as a "necessary evil" (Rice, p. 31).

In fact, in the mid-1980s, when the spilled diluent had reached sizable proportions, workers did report it to their foremen a number of times, but that information remained with the foremen and their immediate supervisors. According to a California Fish and Game warden interviewed for this research and who deposed Guadalupe oil field employees as part of the state's investigation, told that in 1986, workers had suggested to foremen that they install pumps to gather lost diluent. The foremen rejected this proposition because they "didn't want anyone to know that the diluent was there to be seen" (interview 1997). In a worker's words:

I think it (information of the spill) went to one spot... it did not get reported higher up ... I was always under the assumption that they tried to keep it in their little area (the local area) and keep it a little secret (interview 1997).

In addition, another worker remarked:

I don't know. It went up the chain of command. It went to the foreman and he reported it to his boss. It stayed local (interview 1996).

The culpability of all the workers at the field, but especially that of field foremen, coupled with the field's organizational characteristics, meant knowledge of the spill stopped before it could get out:

Each field is its separate own little field. We were (at Guadalupe) kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So, once we reported to our superior (a field foreman), then he has to report it to the field supervisor, who has to report to the regional superintendent, who then reports it to Los Angeles. Somewhere along the line, I think it stopped. I think that it stopped with the field supervisor (interview 1997).

This field worker is describing a loosely coupled organizational arrangement (Perrow 1984; Weick 1976, 1995). Weick (1976) defines loose coupling as organizational units that

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are "somehow attached, but that their attachment may be circumscribed, infrequent, weak in its mutual affects, unimportant, and/or slow to respond" (p. 3). In the oil field's case, the coupling within the local field and between the local field and corporate offices occurred through both technical responsibilities and the authority of office (I take up inter-organizational loose coupling in a subsequent section). Yet a great deal of flexibility existed between these units as long as certain ends were met. In this case, that petroleum continued to be produced and sent off-site at the expected rate. Given the local field's autonomy and their collective interest in

remaining a viable production unit, not "telling" outsiders (again, both corporate and regulatory officials) made a great deal of sense.

Management's overt resistance to reporting the spill is also made explicable by their accountability for its long-term occurrence and the punitive consequences they confronted if "found out." The vertical organization and internal promotion which characterized the field meant many of these managers, over the long-term, held a great deal of (retrospective) responsibility for the spillage. Once a worker made it into management, he was implicated in all those years of spillage. Thus, of all those at the field, the foremen, supervisors, and superintendent had the least motivation to tell once they realized how big the spill truly was. They not only had the longest history with the spillage, but also stood to lose the most. A worker at the field explained why managers were not motivated to report the spillage, grounding this assertion in those foremen's long-term knowledge (and hence, accountability) of the field's chronic leaks:

His motivation not to tell? Well, if he came out and told, how is he going to explain all the years in between? What are they going to say? "Oh, well, we decided to tell you now, but let's forget those other years." Plus, there was a time that the (field supervisor) was a foreman at Guadalupe, before I came there. I know that during that time, they also had diluent problems (interview 1997).

From the perspective of those in the lower echelons, breaking rank and telling outside the proscribed line of command created a triple jeopardy. Not only did they take a chance of

being personally associated with an organizational offense, but they also would have been

informing on co-workers and endangering their careers by implicating their superiors. One does not succeed within a vertically organized work setting by "ratting out" one's superiors or co-workers (Bensman and Gerver 1963; Elliston, et al. 1985; Glazer 1987). Fear of reprisal (social and organizational) was clear in my discussions with field personnel; it was expressed by wardens who related their interactions with subpoenaed field personnel; and it appeared in the local press:

Current employees contacted for this story were surprised and dismayed their names would become public because of what they told the (state) investigators. They worried about their superiors and co-workers at Unocal finding out (Greene 1993b, p. A-1).11

Workers at the Guadalupe field did not want to go over the heads of their field foremen, supervisor, or superintendent because "there is somebody above you and someone above them and someone above them. One thing that you don't want to do is break the chain of command ... that causes friction" (interview 1997). To inform could have had repercussions on everything from the work hours one received, chances of promotion, and ultimately keeping one's well-paying job (Romo 2000).12

11. I found similar problems in contacting oil field personnel. One of the major constraints involved legal liability. Most potential respondents who represented the legal side (state Attorney General, Unocal lawyers), as well as both current and former Unocal employees were largely unwilling to speak to me (formally at least) about the spill, because of

potential liabilities. 12. Oil work does pay well. Average yearly income in California's petroleum industry was $40,000 in 1990-this

for a job that requires no college education or advanced degree. In comparison, the average yearly income for comparable jobs such as retail workers in California was $13,000, and for the manufacturing sector $25,000 (California Statisti- cal Abstracts).


Negative sanction, however, is not the only condition encouraged by such an organizational framework. The promise of upward mobility-promotion-also reinforces allegiance to established hierarchy (Collinson 1999; March and Simon 1958; Sagan 1993). Organization- ally, internal mobility motivated conformity to organizational rules (both written and unwrit- ten), but also sponsored a strong identification by individual workers with the field as a social organization. This is a double edged dynamic: it coerced those who may have informed into keeping quiet (Garfinkle 1956) and it implicitly reinforced such good behaviors as not telling by advancement, kudos, and so forth (Bensman and Gerver 1963; Glazer 1987).

A Culture of Silence

While these organizational routines provided an overarching framework through which work occurred, they did not, by themselves, wholly determine behavior at the field. The normative framework that prevailed there was also the outcome of an oil work sub-culture and individual worker instrumentality that conjoined to further normalize the spill and then keep news of it inside field operations. Turner (1971) defines industrial sub-cultures as complex aggregations of norms, job roles, social definitions, explanatory frameworks and moral injunc- tions, the existence of which are crucial for the maintenance of continuity in human activities within industrial endeavor. In the case of worker agency, while both worker roles and social membership in the field's culture strongly influenced individual choice, individuals also acted according to their own interpretations of those structures based on personal needs. Fieldwork- ers applied corporate directives in ways that would further their own continued social and financial viability and not always to the benefit of larger corporate interests. Ironically, individual agency is also observable in the whistleblower's decision to report the leaks after a decade or more of personal silence.

Surprisingly, Unocal's field managers did report oil on the beach in the winter of 1988. They reported to the National Response Center (NRC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board. However, as the following excerpt from the 1988 spill report makes clear, those accounts were not admissions of responsibility; rather, field management claimed that the oil did not originate at their field:

Samples sent to its (Unocal's) research lab shows source was not from the Monterey Formation (oil from petroleum reservoir under the Guadalupe Dunes) or injection fluid (diluent) used in the Guadalupe field. Thus, sampling (by Unocal) shows source is not Union's [sic] operation (California Regional Water Quality Control Board Spill Report 1988).

To understand more fully why workers would now keep quiet about a spill they knew was patently illegal while field managers covered it up and lied to authorities about its origins, we must also look beyond matters of hierarchy and seniority to address individual motivations and the social glue that bonded workers to their work group. In short, we must attend to the dominant social milieu at the oil field to view how social relations between workers also played into the initial normalization of the spill and, importantly, how they reinforced the intra-organizational conditions that silenced self-report. Taken separately, both structural and cultural explanations would predict that self-report was unlikely; together, they make self- report appear a dubious regulatory strategy.

Vaughan's contribution to our understanding of organizational conformity sheds light on why, when spillage at the Guadalupe field became a significant problem, the leaks continued and why field personnel actively denied them. According to Vaughn (1996), one of the most significant lessons that her work on the Challenger accident reveals is how "[t]he formation of a worldview ... affects the interpretation of information in organizations" (p. 409). She goes on to relate how, in the Challenger case, this entailed environmental and organizational con- tingencies that generated "pre-rational" orientations that shaped collective sensemaking in

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the setting. This worldview worked to normalize signals of potential danger, fostering the reit- eration of mistakes that had negative consequences. Furthermore, she adds, it is not only in the original development of group goals that deviance is normalized. It is also in their reitera- tion that the incremental expansion of normative boundaries takes place. This incremental

expansion not only habitualizes the participants to deviant events, but increases their toler- ance for greater levels of deviation (p. 409).

This neatly captures both the initial tendency of oil field personnel to see the diluent releases as unproblematic, to accept ever larger petroleum releases (by the late 1980s hundreds of barrels at a time), and ultimately to accept the spill as part of the job. Vaughan's comments also illustrate a nexus of circumstances and social elements. Organizational structures affected field culture, but equally as important, field culture lent these routines stability (or more precisely their ramifications-the spill and the silence regarding it). The field's cultural milieu, thus, played an important cohesive role in normalizing deviance at the field, providing strength and "inertia" to the field's total social organization (c.f., Becker 1995; Hannan and Freeman 1984; Vaughan 1996).

Social Ties and Field Secrets

In general, oil work is noted for its strong fraternal work culture (Collinson 1999; David- son 1988; Hasalm 1972; Quam-Wickam 1994; Romo 2000; White 1962). The cohesion that characterized the setting through time is, in part, an outgrowth of the work itself. According to Nancy Quam-Wickham (1994), who documents California's oil industry and the production culture that drove it, "Solidarity between oil workers grew out of a distinctive set of conditions .... The work process demanded teamwork among members of any individual work unit: producing oil was a synergistic process" (p. 26). The oil industry's strong normative culture is founded in a long history of extraction that has promoted unity among its workers. Quam-Wickam's characterization of the historical traditions of oil fieldwork, continue to apply to the culture that existed at the Guadalupe field up until its 1994 closure.

Workers at the Guadalupe field inherited and developed a set of norms and beliefs about what were and were not appropriate in-group behaviors. This is a normal part of group unity. Moreover, that this unity led to the cover up of an ongoing petroleum spill becomes more understandable (even if socially inexcusable) when we address the threat it posed to each individual at the field, as well as the local organization as a viable whole. Socialization and the

persistence of group goals, according to March and Simon (1958), is an outcome of two

important socio-cognitive mechanisms. The first of these resides in the ontology of the individual decision-maker, it being the outcome of the selective perceptions sponsored by group goals. As group imperatives are internalized, individuals become the gate-keepers of their own focused attentions.

The second is an outcome of intra-group communications. The vast bulk of what we know is not based on first hand knowledge, but rather on second- and third-hand accounts we receive from others in our reference group(s). Thus, social settings produce frames of reference that act as perceptual filters; the consonance between first-, second-, and third-hand accounts of the same phenomena reinforce individual perceptions that lends to the overall persistence of "collective mind" (Asch 1952; Janis 1982; Vaughan 1996; Weick and Roberts 1993).

As we have seen, the kind of trouble the spill could unleash silenced the field's management. However, the pressure to keep the spill a secret, based in a de facto culture of silence, was not only found in management, but was also observable in the reactions that fieldworkers had when they found out that one among them had called the authorities. The first admission came by an anonymous telephone call to state officials in February 1990. Below, the fieldworker who initially blew the whistle relates being overheard by the field office's secretary and tells of her reaction to his phone call:


I got on the phone in the office. I say (to the health department official), "Okay, I'll talk to you later," and I hear his click, and I'm still on the phone, and I hear another click. The secretary eaves- dropped and heard my conversation. She came in, and she started yelling at me, "What are you doing! We will all lose our jobs!" And I said, "Not if we didn't do anything! If it isn't ours, why would we lose our jobs? We are not going to lose our jobs!" We knew (about the spill). But I never thought it would come to the point where they would shut everything down. What I thought would happen is they would isolate the problem and go on producing (interview 1997).

While it may seem odd that a whistle-blower would use a company phone to notify the authorities, a comment he made in the interview clarifies why he would feel confident doing so. It also sheds light on his own personal struggle in rectifying the spill and his years of participation in its creation (this is also in line with Bensman and Gerver's [1963] articulations of "institutional schizophrenia"). Even the whistleblower did not want to believe the truth of it; that the organization he was a member of was responsible for an enormous oil spill. Com-

menting on his "deep down inside" hopes, the whistleblower wished against what he knew was the reality of the situation-that if the spill were huge, it meant big trouble for him, Uno- cal, and the environment:

I heard rumors that a sewer system line had broken in Guadalupe and there was sewage. At that point, we were like, I did not want it to be ours. I wanted them (managers) to be telling us the truth. And that we could go on (keep working at the field).... I was like, please don't be Unocal (that is responsible).... But deep down inside, I knew ... I got tired of seeing it in the water ... what is going to happen . . . if they just continue (to spill)? What is [sic] the long-range effects? (interview 1997).

Individuals, in protecting themselves from association with the spill, also collectively shielded the organization from harm, at least in the short-term. The punitive measures that could be taken against them-threat of field shut down and loss of jobs-and the social pressure to be silent kept workers at the field from telling. In fact, their reasons for keeping quiet were correct. Once the spill was "discovered" by regulators, corporate headquarters shut the field down. Workers were either transferred or laid off. This, in part, helps explain why field

personnel were tolerant of the half-truths their superiors were telling. Breaking with one's peers and eliciting an out-of-group admission about what was, ini-

tially at least, a "normal" part of production, was unlikely. Even once the spill accumulated and become noticeable, reporting it would mean informing on co-workers and facing their opinions (c.f., Garfinkle 1956). This was the case with the whistleblower who, once it was known at the site that he had called the spill in, was ostracized by many of his fellow workers. In the

following quote, he relates the speed with which the information concerning his telephone conversation with the authorities traveled and the effect it had on his relationship with others:

In effect . . . the minute I left the office (after making the phone call), the secretary talked to another guy on the lease (the oil field) and, as I drove by, I saw them talking. She was talking a hundred miles an hour. From that time on, this guy wouldn't talk to me; a lot of the other people did not talk to me. Some did, some were cool about it. They were like, "Hey, this is not your fault; this is something that was going to come out eventually." A week later, all of a sudden, it was all over TV and everything. I came to work, and they wanted to know, "Did you call the media?!" (interview 1997).

Social sanction is especially salient for individuals who spend most of their week, and over the long-term, their lives, with fellow workers (Glazer 1987; March and Simon 1958). Thus, the obvious damage that reporting the spill could have on one's livelihood was not the only constraint. The worker would also be informing on those s/he worked with-friends, work associates, the fraternity. By informing, the worker would not only jeopardize him or herself, but the others with whom s/he shared strong social ties in the process. 13

13. This came to fruition for one of those that did report the spill. The first whistle blower was fired a few months after reporting the spill and could find only intermittent work in the industry thereafter.

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Inter-organizational Location as Amplification

The preceding sections focused on why individuals did not report the leaks, given the organizational structure and culture of silence at the field. However, the field's structural isolation from outside interference (both physically and organizationally from regulatory authorities and Unocal's head offices) and corporate incentives also worked against self-report. As in

many organizational structures, Unocal was not a monolithic, undifferentiated body, with a

single objective or universally shared knowledge. Unocal's organizational form was comprised of loosely coupled upstream corporate offices, production units, and downstream refinery and

vending segments. Insulation amplified the strength that field routines and the local production culture held over individual perceptions and the choices fieldworkers made.

Because it was largely autonomous from its head offices, the local field's domestic affairs were internal. The reportage of an incident had to go to the top before it could make its way to outside authorities. Because the information stopped in the field's chain of command, it never made it out of the field, where action would/could be taken to stem it. Whatever efficiency has meant-generally speaking, low overhead and high oil production-it has not, over most of the industry's history, included environmental concerns (Pratt 1978, 1980).

If efficiency had included not wasting diluent, then a case could be made that it being lost into the dunes was a flag to those on the outside that something was amiss (in this instance, Unocal's head offices). If hundreds of thousands of gallons of refined petroleum product were

purchased from an external source and subsequently lost, it would seem expensive and hard to cover up. Two important points make this loss sensible. First, as mentioned, part of producing oil was spilling it. Second, like managerial aspects of the field, this, too, was largely an internal affair. The diluent used at the site beginning in the early 1950s originated at Unocal's

refinery situated at the edge of the Dunes-literally part of the Guadalupe field's production infrastructure. Oil extracted from the Guadalupe field was piped to the Nipomo refinery where initial separation took place. Diluent, as a by-product of this refining process, was then

pumped back to the site for use. Once at the field, diluent was stored at a number of tank farms and, from there, transferred via pipeline to individual extraction wells. If production was consistent, lost diluent would not be missed, especially given the normality of spilling and

given the shoddy records that were kept because the actual price of refining was an internal one. Losing diluent cost the local operator little (at least relative to getting caught or facing the

prospects of personally reporting it) as long as they were producing the crude that the head offices expected.

On the other hand, if the field supervisor reported the spills (which had "tipped" toward the obvious in the 1980s), he knew that he had a big monetary and criminal problem on his hands. First, it would tarnish his personal record, reflect badly on Unocal's image as a whole, have the potential to shut down their local operation, and present the possibility of criminal

prosecution.14 Second, the potential fines for not reporting the spill were enormous. Two

examples of the penalties associated with pollution of this sort illustrate the dilemma these field managers confronted when deciding to report or not. The federal Clean Water Act

specifies that violators can be fined between $5,000 and $50,000 a day per violation for being "knowingly" negligent (Skillern 1981; Wolf 1988; Yeager 1991).15 Estimating the potential fines involved for this single act would require starting with the date of the amendment's 1973 passage and calculating daily fines up to 1990 when Unocal ceased using diluent at the field. The estimate ranges between an astronomical $31,025,000 and $310,250,000. Likewise, under California's Proposition 65 (a citizen sponsored "right to know" act passed in 1987), Unocal was also liable for not reporting their release of petroleum into local river and ocean

14. All of which transpired in the end. 15. When taken to court in 1992 and 1993 over the spill, Unocal did not face merely a single charge, but 28 sepa-

rate criminal and misdemeanor violations.


waters (areas frequented by recreationalists). Proposition 65 caps fines against violators at $2,500 per person per exposure day. These are but two examples.

Moreover, the field supervisor and superintendent, personally, stood to lose thousands of dollars in potential bonuses that were paid for meeting corporate expectations. Field supervisors received incentives in the form of commendations, quick advancement, and end-of-the- year bonuses for keeping production costs down and petroleum yields high. High production costs would have resulted from capital outlays for such items as Guadalupe's pipeline infrastructure. Similar to the system that prevailed in the Soviet Union into the 1980s, costs were "hidden" by a reward system that only recognized production goals and the accompanying steady income stream. As such, the primary focus was keeping production high, not worrying over diluent costs that, at least on paper, were trivial (again, because it was a locally internalized cost). According to a Unocal supervisor interviewed for this research, the reason it took thirty-eight years for the spill to be reported by field managers was rather easy to understand from his perspective:

Unocal stonewalled (did not report the spill) the public because local managers received financial incentives to keep costs low (not replacing an aging pipeline system). The corporate culture of the production outfits saw spills as a normal part of their routine (interview 1997).

As the preceding analysis points out, while this is not the only reason that local Unocal managers would continue to spill (i.e., the direct costs to benefits), it certainly provided a strong incentive not to report or stop the leakage at the field once it had become an organizationally ominous problem. Only negative personal and organizational repercussions would have resulted if local managers had reported the spill. As a latent product of the pressures articulated thus far, spilling and not reporting makes a great deal of sense, at least from the production side of the equation.

Conclusion

Explaining why the chronic spillage of petroleum at the Guadalupe Dunes continued unabated for thirty-eight years was concealed by field personnel, was publicly denied by their supervisors and superintendent, and went unacknowledged by Unocal's head offices, is not as simple as it first may have appeared. Popular explanations of industrial mishap (or in this case, negligence) frequently involve prosaic explanations that locate blame in an individual or a cadre of individuals, who, through carelessness or sheer ignorance, precipitate "accidents" (Perrow 1984, 1986; Turner 1978; Vaughan 1996, 1999). Operator error is a primary focus of official blame in 60 to 80 percent of the accident scenarios Charles Perrow (1984) investigates in Normal Accidents. However, through his extensive analyses of a range of organizational settings, Perrow (1997) concludes that, "the story of our time is big organizations and big environmental problems," not isolated individuals creating big problems (p. 67).

Likewise, operator error did not explain why the spillage at the Guadalupe oil field would continue for thirty-eight years without a report of responsibility or efforts at rectification. First, to reiterate, the spill cannot be rightly characterized as an "accident." An accident is an unforeseen, unplanned, and often, sudden event that is the outcome of chance. The spill was not a chance occurrence. Second, responsibility goes beyond an individual or handful of individuals responsible for causing the spill or for keeping it a secret. Guadalupe's contamination occurred over such a long period of time that many different workers operated the pumps, piping systems, storage facilities, and supervisoral positions. At any one time, scores of workers both knew of, and did nothing about, the repeated spills. After thirty-eight years of spillage only two would break the silence; the rest would need to be subpoenaed and compelled to testify. Neither whistleblower would do so for decades, until the spill reached enormous pro-

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portions. The first would call in 1990, after more than a decade at the field. In 1992, the second whistleblower would call authorities when the spill was being tentatively investigated by the authorities (as an outgrowth of the first whistleblower's call in conjunction with signs of

petroleum on the beach). The second was on disability leave when he watched a local supervisor lie about the extent of the spill on the local news. He called the authorities because the

"underground and surface contamination at the Unocal field has [sic] been bothering him for a long time and he could no longer remain quiet regarding Unocal's deliberate cover up" (White 1993).

Another equally limited, yet, somewhat antithetical explanation of why Unocal would choose to deny its responsibility is to envision the corporation as an undifferentiated mass, devoid of individuals, that evinced a singular motivation. The logic out of which this under-

standing emerges, considers Unocal's profit motivations and organizational structure as synonymous and deterministic. Referred to in the literature as the "amoral calculator thesis," according to this line of reasoning, Unocal compared the costs of stopping the spill and reporting to the benefits of not stopping and not reporting. Having weighed the difference, Unocal decided to hide the spill to avoid the direct costs of changing its diluent transportation system or having to pay to clean up what they had already spilled (see Lee and Ermann 1999, p. 43;

Vaughan 1996, p. 39; c.f., Calhoun and Hiller 1988; Szasz 1996). The corporation found it less

expensive and, hence, expedient, to allow petroleum to leak, hoping that no one would notice. As I have shown, while profit lays the foundation for the field's production routines

(which underlies the chronic spillage), it does not, as the sole determinant, explain complica- tions that were the outcome of an interaction of complex organization, occupational culture, and agency.

Put another way, if corporations, such as Unocal, are entirely profit motivated "optimiz- ers," then they should have ceased spilling a valuable petroleum product like diluent. One has to believe that if corporate managers and accountants at Unocal's head offices in Los Angeles and Connecticut were aware of the spillage, they would have called for some kind of action, even if they refrained from officially reporting it. To put the value of the petroleum being lost into perspective, Chevron Corporation, California's largest oil producer, stopped using diluent in its California Fields in the early 1970s because it was of monetary worth:

"(Chevron) found more efficient ways of recovering oil with ... steam, and the diluent was a valuable product". .. that Chevron uses to make things like fuel for jets and locomotives (Einstein 1994, p. B-1).

Even using the low market price of a barrel of Central California petroleum-between 1.5 and 4 dollars a barrel-the estimated 8.5 to 20 million gallons (conservative estimates) of lost diluent would have been worth between $12.8 and $80 million dollars-large sums of money (Nevarez, et al. 1996).16 Furthermore, given the public relations debacle that has followed the

spill (the spill is locally infamous even if it was not national news), the legal fees, the costs associated with the cleanup, and the cessation of petroleum extraction at the field, the costs of the spill have, indeed, become significant. In 1994, Unocal paid $1.5 million in civil penalties for the Guadalupe spill and another $2 million for emergency remediation (Oil and Gas Jour- nal 1994). During 1996, Unocal Corporation dedicated $77 million in reserves to identify the extent of the contamination and begin cleanup of its Guadalupe field and another regionally contaminated site. 7 As of November 1998, Unocal Corporation had spent $40 million on

emergency remedial actions at Guadalupe with the bulk of the cleanup work to be completed over twenty years, as well as another $43.8 million following settlement with the state of Cal-

16. I should note here that the prices I use are those calculated for South Coast crude oil in the 1980s. Crude oil would be worth less than diluent, diesel, kerosene, or gasoline, all of which must be refined in order to be used as a thinners or fuels.

17. The Avila Beach Tank Farm spill is another Unocal problem in San Luis Obispo County, California.


ifornia for the civil case concerning the spill (Cone 1998).18 It is likely that the costs of lost petroleum, the $83.8 million Unocal has thus far spent (or is obligated to spend), and the estimated $100 to $200 million it will spend in the coming years to clean the site, far exceed the costs associated with replacing an antiquated piping and management system that would have stopped the local leakage (Cone 1998; Finucane 1998). To put these dollar amounts (between $183 and $283 million) into perspective, in 1996, Unocal set aside $250 million to handle its environmental remediation worldwide (Unocal Corporation 1997). Logically, in order to pro- tect the real and potential profits of the corporation, it should have focused on stemming the flow of petroleum into Guadalupe's sand dunes.

Similar to explanations rooted solely in operator error, the corporation as a profit machine is a simplistic model that does not explain what is an embrangled nexus of circumstances. The fact that both organizational directions and individual preferences are the inter- active outcome of one another in ways not under the complete control of the organization's master (owner, CEO, or stockholders), complicates understanding how decisions are made and ultimately who is to blame when something goes awry. By integrating an organizational analysis of oil field dynamics with an understanding of power and personal interest, and relat- ing both to disaster theory and the literatures concerning organizational deviance and whistle blowing, I answer why the accumulating trouble at Guadalupe led to no initial recognition and eventually active denial-a reaction exactly the opposite of the desired one. As I have outlined above, the spilling of petroleum at the field, as a meaningful event, went through a number of stages based on normal operating procedures, organizational structures, the social milieu, and the inter-organizational location of the field. In the first instance, the spill's long gestation was characterized by an acceptance of what had already spilled, as well as what continued to spill. Habituation to these conditions led field personnel to overlook, and for some- time misinterpret, signs of petroleum accumulation. This is in line with Turner's (1978) observations concerning the norms of safety that frequently underlie the incubation periods that preceded catastrophic events. To borrow from Perrow (1984), in this case, it truly was a "normal," if not so "accidental," a debacle. However, the spill's normalization was not static. As time passed, individuals at the field not only accepted what had spilled, but as routine spillage intensified due to infrastructural deterioration, workers accustomed themselves to these increases and to the lies of their supervisors, allowing the amount considered "normal" to grow with time.

After it tipped toward an obvious problem in the 1980s, even for fieldworkers used to the sight and smell of oil, the protracted character of the spilling promoted organization-wide complicity that canceled any chance of self-report. If the spill had been sudden and dramatic, regulatory response could have been (more) immediate, individual operator error could have been more easily applied, a select few purged, an apology issued, and (if required) a fine paid.

However, because of the duration over which the Guadalupe spill(s) occurred, multiple workers had direct work experience with it, did not report or stop it, and hence, had a level of responsibility for it. Those who began as utility men at the field and stayed for many years, moved into foremen and supervisory roles, and by the 1980s, knew of the oil under the ground and the continued leakage into the Santa Maria River and Pacific Ocean. They also knew that everyone else was as guilty as they were. Everyone's hands were dirty with spilled oil; everyone's guilt (and personal stakes) assured no one would tell (Becker 1963; Glazer 1987; Sherman 1987). Like Bensman and Gerver's (1963) observations concerning the deviant use of the "tap" screw in aviation manufacture in Crime and Punishment in the Factory, the oil spill at Guadalupe, once it became clear it was a threat, worked to tie field workers

18. It should be noted that complete removal of the site's contamination is not possible. Over the first ten years, the remediation plan calls for the excavation of a select number of problem sites-this is the "first phase" of cleanup. The second phase-ten more years-will involve pilot testing a number of remedial strategies and choosing the one deemed most effective. In the end, nature and time will be the only remedies to the extensive contamination of the site.

492 BEAMISH

together. They shared a collective fate based on their group membership, participation in the spill, and the potential fallout that could result from its discovery (for more on deviance and solidarity in groups and organizations, see also Becker 1963; Dentler and Erikson, 1959; Gouldner 1954; Katz 1977; Sherman 1987).

As for those at the bottom of the field's hierarchy who did not have long-term participation in spilling and not reporting, they had little motivation to report the spill for another set of related reasons. First, everyone chanced losing their jobs with a field shutdown. Second, reporting the spill would have meant informing on their superiors. Third, they would be mar- ginalizing themselves, socially, from those with whom they worked (Glazer 1987). If one reports, it is not simply a personal matter, it is also a moral accusation against other co-workers because they did not report it themselves (Garfinkle 1956; Glazer 1987). The first (and in spirit, the second and third) of these was well articulated by the secretary when she screamed at the whistleblower, "What are you doing! We will all lose our jobs!" As touched on earlier, she was correct. The field, soon thereafter, was shut down, and all those that worked there were transferred, demoted, and in the case of the whistleblower, fired.

Moreover, having such an occurrence discovered on your watch is something no one wants as part of his or her work history (c.f., Collinson 1999; Sagan 1993). And what happens if one takes it upon him/herself to remedy the situation by going as far as reporting it? Even with current whistle-blower legislation, he/she stands a good chance of being marked a snitch, making the old work environment unlivable, at best (ostracized), and off-limits, at worst (fired) (De Maria and Jan 1996; Elliston, et al. 1985; Perrucci, et al. 1980; ). Addition-

ally, work in other outfits for other companies is also off-limits. No one hires a whistleblower

(Glazer 1987; Weston 1981). Inter-organizational location (i.e., isolation) coupled with production incentives, only

worked to increase the odds against reporting any mishap because resistance was located at the top of the local field, the only place given field structure where reporting was formally acceptable. In many ways, local management's resistance to acting proactively to stem the spill once they realized it was a "losing course of action" (i.e., a threat to their continued organizational viability), appears similar to what Barry Staw refers to as, "rising commitment in esca-

lating situations." Such situations are characterized as those in which sunk costs (which can be economic, psychological, social, and organizational, or all of these at once), affect whether individuals or organizations cease a "questionable" line of behavior or escalate their commitment to their current and dubious course of action (Staw 1981, p. 577). What is especially interesting is that in situations characterized by "slow and irregular declines" as opposed to acute and immediate shocks, according to Staw and Ross (1989), the forces of "persistence" in

losing courses of action may in fact grow stronger given organizational inertia (pp. 209-210). This seems especially close, for obvious reasons, to the situation that unfolded at the Guada-

lupe oil field. All of these-organizationally sponsored complicity, the culture of silence, and the inter-

organizational isolation of the field-combined to make reportage of the spill improbable. Tell-

ing was unlikely until it got so bad that insiders (field personnel) and outsiders (regulators), alike, could no longer fail to recognize it; a society of environmentalists was there to be concerned about it, and an insistent local media refused to ignore it. These are all factors that soci-

ety can ill afford to either count on or, in fact, wait for.

Theoretically, then, this study builds on research that attends to the precursors of man- made disasters, looking at the conditions under which the long incubation and slow accumulation of dangerous circumstances occur (Turner 1978; Vaughan 1996). Specifically, the forgo- ing analysis of the causes of, and responses to, the Guadalupe spill by oil field personnel adds to organizational theory concerned with "how aspects ... normally associated with the bright side of organizations are systematically related to the dark side" (Vaughan 1999, p. 292; see also recent articles by Clarke 1989, 1999; Collinson 1999; Lee and Ermann 1999; Perrow 1984, 1997). This research has also stressed the importance of combining a view of power and


interests with organizational and cultural qualities as integral to a disastrous outcome- millions of gallons of petroleum spilled over nearly four decades that was not remedied or reported as specified by law.

It is worth noting the influence that current self-report requirements had on these events. While the spill is obviously not a product of the current regulatory environment, the largely reactive and punitive form this system takes-combined with a self-report require- ment-engendered its own set of unanticipated consequences. At least in Guadalupe's case, such environmental measures did not encourage the kind of cooperation they were supposed to produce. Once the spill reached troubling proportions, not reporting it became all the more expedient for the local outfit in the face of, and in some measure because of, this punitive regulatory environment. Perhaps punishment coupled with self-reporting represents the worst of both worlds.

This lays bare a fatal flaw inherent to current regulatory system(s) in place to combat industrial excess. Our current regulatory systems implicitly assume through their self-report requirements that, on the one hand, organizations will report on themselves and, on the other hand, that the "masters" of such complex organizations have the power to make their workers tell on themselves. This flies in the face of what this research exposes empirically. The very foundations for producing and reproducing an organization (both at the manifest organizational and latent cultural levels), predicts they would not do so. Thus, even if we were sure that large organizations as whole units would self-report their violations, work groups and individual workers at the local level have the very real capacity to act on their own, despite overarching organizational goals-and do (see March and Simon 1958; Perrow 1984).

The examination of the preceding case reveals a significant dilemma our society faces. Since we are geared for acute crises, our inclination is to stand by as incremental problems incubate, fester, and eventually become catastrophes. The outlines of our most serious social, technological, and environmentally distressing circumstances are etched in mundane circumstances. These qualities are mirrored in a host of other slow-to-accrue, yet, devastating problems that are already manifest or currently becoming so. For example, in 1980, the federal government officially listed 400,000 toxic waste sites across the United States; by 1988, the number had risen to over 600,000, and the list continues to grow. The Environmental Protec- tion Agency designated 888 of these as highly hazardous and in need of immediate attention, with 19,000 others under review (Brown and Mikkelsen 1990; Edelstein 1988; Hanson 1998). Recent estimates put the number of U.S. sites with dangerously polluted soil and ground- water, alone, at more than 300,000 with an annual projected clean-up bill of $9 billion (Gibbs 1999). Global warming is a larger example that I need not develop in detail given its current widespread media coverage. Suffice it to say that it, too, is a product of chronic, incrementally cumulative, and long-term processes that continues to be debated and questioned. The sug- gestion of changing current modes of behavior to cut effluent discharge (CO2) has been actively resisted by nations, industries, firms, and individuals.

While I cannot claim that these troubling scenarios were created and responded to in ways parallel to the Guadalupe spill, I can urge that more research be done on exactly how humans and human systems both create and respond to a class of problems that are ostensibly "silent." Knowing social and organizational propensities is a first step towards defining and creating policy that accounts for how problems are generated on the ground. For instance, how do actors enact, at the interpretive interpersonal and organizational levels, initially innocuous, yet eventually destructive, behavioral patterns, over the long haul, that they are either unable or unwilling to change? In so doing, perhaps more can be done to stem cumulative and devastating outcomes such as the Guadalupe spill before they start. Without a doubt, we can certainly devise a system that recognizes and interdicts such problems more success- fully than does our current one based on self-report. If we cannot, we should brace ourselves for more recurring and ongoing problems such as the Guadalupe spill.

494 BEAMISH

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Accumulating Trouble: Complex Organization, a Culture of Silence, and a Secret Spill

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