Case Study

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 1

Dave Atkins was a bright individual who was being groomed for the Supervisor's position in a medium-sized manufacturing firm. After his first year as Assistant Supervisor, the officers of the firm were starting to include him in major company functions. For instance, today he was attending the monthly financial statement summary given at a prestigious consulting firm. During the meeting, Dave was intrigued at how all the financial data he had been accumulating was transformed by the consultant into revealing charts and graphs.

Dave was generally optimistic about the session and the companys future until the consultant started talking about the new manufacturing plant the company was adding to the current location and the costs per unit of the chemically plated products it produced. At that time, Rodolfo Cantu (the President) and Kurtis Orozco (the chemical engineer) started talking about waste treatment and disposal problems. Kurtis mentioned that the current waste facilities were not adequate to handle the waste products that would be created by the ultramodern new plant in a manner that would meet the industry's fairly high standards, although they could still comply with federal standards.

Dave Atkinss boss, Karen Miller, noted that the estimated cost per unit would be increased if the waste treatment facilities were upgraded according to recent industry standards. While industry standards were presently more stringent than federal regulations, environmentalists were pressuring strongly for improving regulations at the federal level. Rodolfo mentioned that since their closest competitor did not have the waste treatment facilities that already existed at their firm, he was not in favor of any more expenditures in this area. Most managers at this meeting resoundingly agreed with Rodolfo, and business continued on to another topic. Dave Atkins did not hear a word during the rest of the meeting. He kept wondering how the company could possibly have such a casual attitude toward the environment. Yet he did not know if, how, or when he could share his opinion. Soon he started reflecting on whether this was the right firm for him.

Questions:

1. Who are the stakeholders in this case, and what are their stakes?

2. What social responsibility does the firm have for the environment? How would you

   assess the firms CSR using the four-part CSR definition presented in Chapter 2?

3. Identify the different competing standards at issue in this case. Which standard

   seems most defensible for this company considering all factors?

4. How should Dave reconcile his own thinking with the thinking being presented by the

   firms management?

5. What should Dave do? Why?