Deepwater is a competitive business ethics simulation game designed to provide experiential learning in business ethics courses, particularly in the context of oil exploration and production. Players manage an offshore oil company while making decisions that balance profit with ethical considerations, reflecting the complexities and moral challenges encountered in a hazardous industry. The game emphasizes the consequences of decisions on operational and financial outcomes, promoting critical reflection on ethical decision-making.

1. Deepwater
A Competitive Business Ethics
Simulation Game
Wayne Buck, Ph.D., MBA
Assistant Professor of Business Ethics
Eastern Connecticut State University

2. What is Deepwater?
A Competitive Simulation Game
• Developed as an experiential learning
exercise for business ethics courses
• Players (teams or individuals) manage an
oil exploration and production company
operating in the deep offshore waters of
the Gulf of Mexico.
• Inspired by the 2010 BP Deepwater
Horizon oil spill.
• Multiple rounds of play.
• Scoring based on business performance
or ethical outcomes.
The drilling floor of an offshore oil rig
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3. What is Deepwater?
A True Simulation Game
• Genuine simulations utilize symbolic
models of real processes and systems.
• These models are designed to replicate
the behavior of the modeled systems.
• Player management decisions serve as
inputs to the model – the "moves" in a
simulation game.
• Model outputs are the effects on the
modeled system of players decisions
• These outputs drive scoring.
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4. What is Deepwater?
The Deepwater Model
• Mathematical representation of
drilling and production operations of
offshore deep water oil rigs and
(simplified) oil company financials
Exogenous Variables
• Market oil prices, Gulf weather
Player Decisions
• Crude oil production
• Spending on maintenance, safety,
lobbying and capital investment
• Major equipment overhauls
• Crew scheduling, including training
• Acquisition of additional oil wells
• Investment in Arctic Ocean
exploration project
• Company financial management,
including debt 3

5. What is Deepwater?
Financial Outputs
• Revenues, expenses (including
depreciation), profitability; assets,
liabilities, equity; cash flow
• Financial ratios
• Company credit rating
Operational Outputs
• Crude oil production
• Blowout events
• Accidents, including worker injuries
and fatalities
• Crew size, hours worked
• Equipment condition metrics
• Government safety inspections
• Cost of fines
• Social cost of damage to environment Simulation Financial Report
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6. What is Deepwater?
Not a Typical Strategic Simulation
• Risk oriented, not market oriented
• Outcomes driven by operating
decisions, not market demand
• Key model outputs are harms to
others:
– Oil well blowouts
– Worker injuries and fatalities
– Safety violations
– Environmental damage
– Social harm
• Outcomes determined by
probabilistic model, not mechanistic
cause-and-effect or "canned" results BP’s Deepwater Horizon
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7. What is Deepwater?
Probabilistic Model
• Loss event outcomes not
1.4%
mechanistically
determined by player 1.2%
decisions 1.0%
BO Probability
• Player decisions affect the 0.8%
probability of a loss event
0.6%
• Probability functions not
0.4%
intended to be realistic
0.2%
• Functions are engineered
to provide players with a 0.0%
1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5
pedagogically rich
Production Multiple
experience
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8. What is Deepwater?
The Ethical Challenge
• No arbitrary, ad hoc ethical dilemmas.
• Players make ordinary, day-to-day
business decisions in a hazardous
industry trying to balance pursuit of
profit against risk of harm to workers,
the environment and society.
• Deepwater immerses players in the
complexities of business decision-
making while managing morally perilous
business activities.
• Deepwater exposes players to the
uncertainties and ambiguities of
business decision-making.
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9. What is Deepwater?
The Benefits
• In Deepwater, players experience the
conflict between profit-making and
doing the right thing.
• The multi-round approach provides rich
opportunities for reflection, both in-class
and through journaling.
• Deepwater prepares players to handle
the ethical complexities of business
decision-making and sharpens their
perception of ethical risk.
• Because of the possible dramatic
consequences if something goes wrong,
Deepwater doesn't tell players that
relativism is wrong, it shows them.
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10. What is Deepwater?
The Benefits (cont.)
• At the same time, Deepwater
demonstrates to players that it is not
easy to decide what is right and wrong –
and that it is not easy actually to act
ethically.
• Deepwater awakens and nurtures
players' moral imaginations.
• Deepwater prepares players to cope
with moral misfortune – the reality that
"it rains on the just and the unjust alike."
• Deepwater develops players skills at
spotting, understanding and reacting to
emerging ethical challenges
• Deepwater discourages overly simplistic
explanations of moral failure in business.
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11. Deepwater Development
Player Comments
"I loved this simulation. I thought it was
a great project to teach us ethics and
responsibility. I was always excited to
come to class and see where my rig
ranked and was always hoping that my
rig didn’t blowout. I was put in many
situations where I found myself thinking
about what to do, be ethical or make
money. Sometimes I think that I was a
little unethical mostly towards the end
when increasing the rigs profits was
crucial to stay in the game and earn the
extra points onto our final grade."
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12. Deepwater Development
Player Comments (cont.)
"People think there is good or evil with
no in-between - but this exercise puts us
in that in-between position. We can see
how managers make decisions to benefit
themselves (because we might make
decisions to benefit our grade while we
are producing way too much oil and
injuring employees or blowing out) and
why they make these decisions."
"Sometimes you can't understand why a
certain person made that bad decision
until you are that person."
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13. Deepwater Competitors
Ethics-LX (www.ethics-lx.com)
• Online case discussion of a specific fictional business ethics dilemma
with automated feed-back on stakeholder reactions to student's
decision
The Ethics Game (www.ethicsgame.com)
• "Hot Topics Individual Simulation:" 1st person cases that present
participants with specific ethical dilemmas; answers are scored
• "Core Values Team Simulation:" Competitive simulation game; simple
model that outputs marginal impact of ethics decisions on revenues
and expenses
Capsim (www.capsim.com)
• Competitive simulation game; students take over a poorly performing
manufacturing company
• Ethics "plug-in:" mini-cases that present ethical dilemmas; players'
ethical decisions impact company performance
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14. Biography
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15. Dr. Wayne F. Buck
Academic Snapshot
• Assistant Professor of Business Ethics
Eastern Connecticut State University
• Teaching focus: Business ethics,
corporate strategy, entrepreneurship
• Research focus: Constructing a new
framework for understanding corporate
moral failure by adapting a systems
theoretic analysis framework from
industry safety engineering originally
developed at MIT.
• Research focus: Developing effective
business ethics simulation games
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16. Dr. Wayne F. Buck
Education
• M.B.A., Wharton School of Business
• Ph.D., Yale University
• M.A., Southern Illinois University
• B.A., California State University,
Northridge
Previous Academic Positions
• Yale University
• Carleton College
• Southern Connecticut State University
• University of New Haven
• St. Joseph College
• Albertus Magnus College
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17. Dr. Wayne F. Buck
Business Experience
• Partner & COO, MarketStance
• Principal, Second Stage Consulting
• Managing Director, RedKey Education
• AVP, Conning & Company
• Director of Market Research, Aetna
• Consultant, Center for Applied Research
• Investment Services Officer, Connecticut
Savings Bank
Not-for-Profit Experience
• Founder and Executive Director, Film Fest
New Haven
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18. For more information, contact:
Dr. Wayne Buck
(203) 623-9482
wayne@businessethicssimulation.com
www.businessethicssimulation.com
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