The Implications of NUMMI’s Downfall Today’s globalized economy and corporate culture has given rise to companies who are hungry for hyper-expansion and power. With trade agreements bridging the gap between international governments, companies have been expanding their production across continents with the mentality of maximizing profits and emerging as a corporate leader. However, one company deterred off this path of avariciousness: Toyota’s NUMMI plant thrived not on profit but on helping surrounding communities and upholding an image of mutual trust and respect between the company and its workers. With California already having the second highest rate of unemployment in the United States, currently at 12.3%, the closing of NUMMI in the midst of these troubling times brought 4,700 employees out of work and threatened more than 25,000 jobs statewide. This unfortunate choice of Toyota’s incurred a huge cost among taxpayers, whose tax dollars would be utilized to provide $2.3 billion to replace the thousands of lost jobs.
Shell’s net income also rose to $6.98 billion in the 3rd quarter of 2011, an increase of 100% from the previous year. Does it even seem possible that these companies have posted such high earnings while the rest of the world is in a recession? While oil prices rose due to instability in the Middle East, specifically Libya, oil production was completely halted. How is that feasible in a highly regulated industry? To effectively delve into this topic, we need to examine this from two standpoints: ethical and legal.
The case of Enron is said to be a “smoke and mirrors” act dictated by top executives presenting the positive financial wealth of the company. Shareholders, lower executives, employees, and most American’s were not aware of the grieve financial trouble the company was enduring. Company Culture Enron’s motto was “respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence” and along with that its Vision was “Treat other as we would like to be treated ourselves…” Both the motto and vision were inconsistent with the actual company procedures. Enron had a much different approach to the company culture and reward system they actually used. Competition was the main concept; which led to numerous financial mistakes in future years.
If it were not for the protection of patents, big companies, with their robust capacity, would surpass the small business entrepreneurs in speed and cost of production and thereafter suppress them completely. However, the excludability that patents impose on non owners of the inventions does not see capacity. This helps small business entrepreneurs to practice their own inventions while big companies remain hands-tied. ii) Revenue from licenses, sale or infringement. Licensing ones technology to others is another good way of making money.
Employees surveyed had a high regard for the Recruitment/Selection and Induction/Orientation steps to the HRM Approach, but felt somewhat slighted during the Socialization process, claiming that “managers were so busy doing their own jobs that they could not deal with the individual concerns of new employees.” Despite their threefold process, Telesouth currently suffers a high turnover rate, estimating, at minimum, the cost of turnover at $20,000 per person. Telesouth’s turnover rate should not be so high. Telesouth has no problem attracting a large number of applicants – it is a reputable company within the community. Nearly a quarter of the turnover was in the first six months and 50 per cent in the first year. This means that employees may be disgruntled about the socialization process, and not by the job itself.
2010) is provided below. 1167872 4 Despite the leading position and the good business results, SWOT shows several sources of potential risks for UST. The company is losing market share against new price-value competitors because of slow innovation and late product introduction and extensions. Historically, UST relied on his leading market position boosting earnings with annual prices increases. But in the meanwhile smaller competitors started to quickly erode market share with prices cut.
Alyssa Lisek 03/01/2014 Business Ethics and Society From 7th Largest Corporation to Bankruptcy From 7th Largest Corporation to Bankruptcy The poster child for a new economy, new fresh and innovative corporation and voted most innovative and admired company and the 7th largest corporation of its time; these statements were said in reference to Enron Corporation before they filed for bankruptcy. It is hard to believe that the 7th largest innovative corporation could file for bankruptcy and cause many to lose everything. Many blame Jeffery Skilling who was the president and the CEO of Enron, and while he may not have had any ethics, others can be to blame for this monstrous company and its destruction. Ethics requires that one realizes that an issue may cause harm, acknowledge who that harm could affect, and determine what standard is appropriate (“Ethics” Stanford). In order for someone to have ethics, they would have to acknowledge that what they are doing could affect someone other than themselves and because they are aware of this they change their ways.
Corporations are probably the most influential institutions in the world today and yet many people do not believe that they can be trusted. Instead corporations are widely perceived as greedy, selfish, exploitative, uncaring-and interested only in maximizing profits. And who can blame them? In the last century, huge ethical lapses on the part of big business came to light including scandals at Enron, Bank of America, WorldCom, the New York Stock Exchange, Tyco and AIG. This case takes a look at how Whole Foods vision, strategy and core values not only help them maintain a competitive advantage but that it also allows them to positively contribute back into society as a
During the company’s history from 1987-2006 they experienced above industry growth compared with most of their competitors. However, 2006 was the beginning of troubling times for FoldRite Furniture Company. (Wheelwright and Bellisario, 2012) It was discovered by management that high turnover rates in the manufacturing department lead to slower production and delivery times. These mistakes opened the door for competitors to take business away from the company. In any industry reliability and consistency are key factors to attracting and maintaining repeat customers.
Sunflower Incorporated is experiencing some competitive and quality problems. An evaluations of the company branches indicated that some companies are making huge profits by offering substandard products while other are struggling to keep up with competition. Albanese, who was hired to solve this situation, proposed implementation of standardized pricing and purchasing decision across all regions. Though Albanese’s proposal was great, it was unable to achieve the desired outcome. This is because the proposal involved major changes to the organization purchasing and pricing processes and Albanese did not use the right strategies for managing the change process.