The Deep Horizon Oil Explosion

The Deep Horizon oil rig explosion was categorically impacted by bias decision making. The leaders that day executed from a heuristic view, and also from an overconfidence bias.

The two corporations colliding that day, BP and Transocean, underestimated the calamity occurring right before them. Twenty anomalies occurring simultaneously did not cause significant alarm to make a drastic and immediate decision to prevent the explosion. The team minimized the probability that the rig would explode.

Due to the complexity of that day, and the many people and processes involved the team exhibited an overconfidence bias in their decision making (Kinicki, Kreitner, 2003). BP had succumbed to a false sense of security since they had not had anything