Last March 20th, our group went to Manila Boy's town for Service Learning activity. This charity is located in Parang, Marikina. Let me get this out of my chest... OH MY GULAY THOSE BOYS WERE SO MAKULIT! Due to the
increasing number of small children roaming helplessly in different places of
Manila without their homes and families, lost along the way and/or abandoned by
their parents, the creation of Foundling Home was established. The Mahay
Foundling Home was built to create a place to keep children away from harm and
at the same time be afforded of the needed love and affection for their normal
growth and development.
Their vision is to
provide shelter, education, utmost care, protection and guidance through a
package of residential care and services of the institution that will
adequately prepare the children for Christian living, good citizenry and better
future.
There is need for children to inculcate moral values and positive attitudes so they can become productive, responsible and healthy members of the community. They should be provided with learning opportunities and enhance their socio-economic stability, self-sufficiency and social responsibility. There is a need to develop self-worth and sense of dignity and proper perception of their roles as members of the family and the community.
Our Service
Learning included the following activities:
1.Good Manners and Right Conduct
Session– Integrate positive values, attitudes and habits to their daily
activities such as table manners, greetings, and performance of simple
household chores
2.Waste Management Session – educating
the kids on the importance of recycling and its impact to the environment
3.Fun Learning Activities –
playing, storytelling and team games which offers opportunities for creativity,
camaraderie and teamwork
It was tiring but rewarding. At the end of the day, learned a lot and we will cherish this experience forever.
Our group discussed the Marcopper Mining Accident.
The
first operations for the Marcopper mine date back to 1956, when the company
Placer Dome Limited became active in the area by undertaking extensive
geological mapping and drilling. Mining operations started in 1969 through the
exploration of the Mt. Tapian ore deposit, containing copper concentrate, as
well as gold and silver.
The
first disaster happened in 1993, when the Marcopper silt dam in the
Maguilaguila creek collapsed and flooded nearby villages and the Mogpog River,
which has long suffered from recurring floods due to siltation caused by the
collapse. The colors of the river, ending in the Tablas Straight, have ranged
from peach to brown to gruesome red and toxic green or violet. Flooding was so
severe that several houses were swept away. Livestock, crops and farmland was
destroyed, the river was heavily polluted and two children were drowned.
Our group's objective for the case analysis was to be able to determine what Marcopper should have done after the accident so we could resolve its environmental and social impact.
Our group presented 3 alternative courses of action :
1.Continue not doing anything
2. Continue Operating
and participate in the cleanup effort
3. Discontinue mining
but do other business using current resources and participate in cleanup effort
Based on the Markkula
Framework, we recommend ACA 3(Discontinue mining but do other business using
current resources and participate in cleanup effort) due to the following
reasons:
Improve the environmental
and social condition in Marinduque
It will ease the tension
between Marcopper and the people of Marinduque and build a relationship of
trust
Marcopper will gain public
acceptance, improve its branding and most likely gain customer loyalty
Marcopper will gain investor
confidence
Company leaders and their
employees can take genuine pride in their accomplishments knowing that
they abided all the rules or hurt people by accomplishing their goals
The Royal Dutch/Shell Group forms one of the world's largest
businesses. It has a complex corporate organization which consists of more than
2,000 companies worldwide ultimately controlled by two parent companies. The
"Shell" Transport and Trading Company, a U.K.-registered company, has
a 40% interest in the group, and the remaining 60% is owned by the Royal Dutch
Petroleum Company, a Netherlands company. Collectively, the group is involved
in oil and gas exploration, production, refining, transportation, and
marketing. It has large interests in chemicals--it was probably the world's
ninth, largest chemicals business in the late 1980s--and diversified activities
in coal and metal mining, forestry, solar energy, and biotechnology. MOSOP campaigned against the environmental damage caused
by oil extraction in the Ogoni region of Nigeria and for increased autonomy for
the Ogoni ethnic group.
Should Shell continue its operation in Nigeria given the various human rights violations and environmental deterioration related to its business operation? There are strengths and weaknesses to this scenarios mainly : Strengths
Shell is the largest in size
and revenue in the global oil industry. It is a leader in the
LNG(Liquefied Natural Gas) where a portion of resource some from Nigeria.
Due to the strong
exploration capability in Nigeria, there is a guarantee of continued activity
and increase in financial growth over the decades.
Weakness
Human Rights and
Environmental Issues can degrade the image of the company due to different
regimes and policies. Due to its strong presence in Nigeria, the company
might be forced to withdraw because of security problems and attacks on
production.
Shell’s ethical code of
conduct has become under scrutiny due to different allegations of
corruption. Employees were involved in various deals to pay bribes to the
Nigerian military and other foreign citizens. The company also hid the
nature of the payments to avoid suspicion.
In our opinion, Shell should continue business
but operation will be based on international regulations and ethical
considerations due to the following reasons:
It will ease the tension
between Shell/Military and the Ogoni Tribe and build a relationship of
trust
Promotes better culture on
ethics and a higher sense of social responsibility amongst the employees.
Employees produce best in an open and ethical environment.
Shell will gain public
acceptance, improve its branding and most likely gain customer loyalty
Shell will gain investor
confidence
Company leaders and their
employees can take genuine pride in their accomplishments knowing that
they abided all the rules or hurt people by accomplishing their goals.
Lamoiyan
is the company that manufactures Hapee Toothpaste in the Philippines. With
prices 30% lower than the leading brands, Hapee is the 3rd
toothpaste brand in the country. Moreover, this is a company where corporate
social responsibility is embedded in its vision and mission statements.
Tangibly, they are employing hearing-impaired individuals to work in the
assembly line and foster a culture of tolerance among its employees (i.e. basic
training on sign language to non-hearing impaired employees etc). While there
are both upside and downside to investing in the skill set of hearing-impaired
employees, a threat presented in the case is the lowered costs of competitors
by outsourcing marketing, accounting and operations to third-party agencies.
Given all that best practices, How do we sustain Lamoiyan Corporation
despite competitors’ efforts in decreasing production costs (i.e.
Contractualization and outsourcing)?
The Group presented 3 alternative courses of action :
1. Maintain the status quo of the company and
continue leveraging the employees’ skillset
2. Complete transition to contractualization and
outsourcing
3. Devise retrenchment program for hearing-impaired
employees to decrease long-term cost
The group chose alternative 3 which I totally agree because of the following reason:
·The
transition of competitors to outsourcing is still a threat.
·There
are other ways to control costs in the company to maintain market lead, in
terms of price.
·Based
on the Markkula Analysis, this is the ACA that is most in line with the
company’s mission and vision statements.
·There
are various ways available to support growth employees and still leverage on
this (i.e. loyalty of employees, quality of the products)
Gap faced several labor cases, more particularly on child labor from their different factories worldwide. In El Salvador, their partner Mandarin Oriental paid it's workers about 12 cents for assembling clothes that would've retailed for $20 in the US. Workers would have to work for long hours with very low wages. There were reported violence against union supporters, sexual harassment from the supervisors, lack of drinking water, and even not being allowed to use the rest rooms and being forced to sweep the factory grounds under the hot sun as punishment. In Honduras, 13 yo girls worked 13-hour shifts and paid only 31 cents an hour. Girls would have to undergo pregnancy tests, had to work without overtime pay.
We could try to understand this case from different perspectives. On the outset, working can be harmful to the physical, mental and moral development of a child. Child labor is defined by the International Labor Organization as 'work that deprive children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity.' From the perspective of the children who live off from work, they can argue that we do not understand the depth of poverty in these countries. Families rely on child labor so they can survive. Children do not have to attend school because education was not compulsory. Come to think if it, working did not deprive them from going to school because they did not have to in the first place. From a business point of view, outsourcing from third world countries compounded by hiring underage workers drops overhead costs. However, companies cannot withstand the negative publicity associated with this practices--that is, if the company gets caught. How do we solve this problem then? We should have a way to improve the standard of living. A universal public education should be a norm and an imposed child labor law that prohibits this problem must be in practice. In the mean time, companies should at least provide a best working environment to these children.
The
movie ‘The
Smartest Guys in the Room’is a comprehensive history and analysis of
the rise of Enron and its dramatic and catastrophic collapse. It starts when Ken
Lay becomes CEO of Houston Natural Gas and concludes with the collapse of Enron.
Along the way it paints a fascinating and compelling picture not only of what
Enron did as a company, but also the personalities that ran it and the details
of where and how it went wrong.
The core of the Enron story is the people,
an array of brilliant, egotistical, and arrogant executives who create a
corporate culture that selects for raw intelligence and vicious competition and
discards most of the social virtues typical of a corporation. Both the
intelligence and the arrogance come through clearly. Whatever else those
involved in the Enron story were, they were smart. The company was filled with
people capable of solving advanced equations in their head, and brilliant
economists who came up with both revolutionary trading techniques and ways of
exploiting legal loopholes before anyone else. That it captures not only the
weaknesses but also the strengths of Enron and shows how much talent was let
loose in an environment with no effective controls.
I think that one of the obvious systemic causes of the Enron
scandal is the legal and regulatory structure. First, laws regulations allow
firms to provide consulting services to a company and then turn around and
provide the audited report about the financial results of these consulting
activities. This is an obvious conflict of interest that is built into the
legal structure.
Second, a private company like Enron currently hires and pays its
own auditors. This again is a conflict of interest built into the legal system
because the auditor has an incentive not to issue an unfavorable report on the
company that is paying him or her.
Third, most large companies like Enron are allowed to manage their
own employee pension funds. Again, this is a conflict of interest built into
our legal system because the company has an incentive to use these funds in
ways that advantage the company even when they may disadvantage employees.
And fourth, most companies like Enron have codes of ethics that
prohibit managers and executives from being involved in another business entity
that does business with their own company. But these codes of ethics are
voluntary and can be set aside by the board of directors. The managers and executives,
of course, have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of the company and
its shareholders, But the law leaves considerable discretion to managers and
executives to exercise their own business judgment about what is in the best
interests of the company.
Add to
this, in an individualistic point of view, managers at Enron grew arrogant,
thinking themselves as invincible. Due to its leaders, there was a tendency for
the company to seal itself off from forces on the outside. Or perhaps it was
the corporate culture in which they operated that led to the problem. They had
rank-and-yank performance appraisal system, which eliminated anyone who fell
behind, survival of the fittest as they say.
It
was painful to watch the outcome of this scandal. However, I am more pleased
that I had the opportunity to watch this movie as this shows an accurate
picture of what us, the future leaders would have to deal with in the near
future.
Ok, it's the second time we have an ethics analysis regarding Ford. Hopefully this is not indicative of the company's priorities and values nowadays. Here's the link of the case.
To summarize: Car has tire/gear problem. Ford blames Firestone. Firestone blames Ford. People die.
According to investigation, there were 46 deaths and more than 300 incidents involving the Firestone tires in Ford Explorer. There was a tire recall but long after all the injuries and deaths. Of course the company face a lot of mounting lawsuits.
Who then should be accountable? According the the presenters, the Explorer's lack of stability was mainly due to lower recommended psi and also due to the modifications which were made to the Firestone ATX and Wilderness tires. Ford Executives however, put the blame on Firestone with now the infamous statement 'it is not a vehicle problem and is a Firestone problem'.
The group presented various alternative courses of action at the moment when Ford and Firestone knew about the issue. Ford should have not lowered the psi and modified the firestone and wilderness tires just to lower costs and pressured to hasten the quality assurance process just to meet the release/introduction deadline. Ford should have at least sent a notification to their consumers of the modification made. Firestone on the other hand, should've had their own quality control and made sure that the tires attached to the car would be on par. They should not have signed-off releasing the car without their recommended psi. This case wouldn't have been as messy if they did not point fingers at each other and blame one another for the fault that is clearly directed at them both. It would be best that when this issue came about, they immediately recalled the units, modified its configurations and changed it cars. The cases filed were dragging and left an unpleasant taste in the mouth.
