Ethical Dilemma

The only ethical dilemma that I can think of happened on my internship.

I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As part of that, we don't believe in consuming alcohol, coffee or tobacco.

Naturally, not everybody believes the same, which is fine and it's certainly not right or fair to push those beliefs or values on everybody.

The dilemma comes when you get to or have to associate with people who don't believe the same way. Where is the best place to draw the line or should a line even be drawn?

People inviting you on coffee breaks?
Happy hours?
Late night or other events/parties?

All of the above events could have people consuming things that I don't believe in using--even though they may not offer it to me after knowing that it's not something I do.

How would you solve this potential ethical dilemma?

Company Mis-Alignment

JB's Alignment Analysis

Link:

http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/news/2011/03/07/jbs-family-restaurants-files-bankruptcy.html

Overview:

JB's Family restaurant's filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I chose this article because it is something I relate better with. We had a JB's in the town where I grew up and went there occasionally--always viewed it as a treat and loved going there as a kid. It turns out that they filed for bankruptcy earlier this decade as well, back in 2001 shortly after 9/11 and blamed that misfortune on the terrorist attacks. (However, this does not appear to be the case for all restaurants across their industry.)


Strategy:

To create a family-like atmosphere for people to enjoy.
Breakfast (the thing for which I most remember the restaurant) appears to have been their biggest advantage. JB's also had lunch and dinner menus.


Structure:

The company had a mix of franchised and corporate-owned restaurants, 48 total--half of which are closed or will be closing.

Systems:

Unknown, but they did have large amounts of debt for the amount of assets that they owned.

Shared Values:

Atmosphere of Family Values.

Skills:



Style:

It appears that JB's Leadership favored taking on large amounts of debt.
http://phoenixbankruptcynews.com/2011/03/jbs-family-restaurants-declare-bankruptcy-after-decades-of-business.html

Staffing:

The company had 300-400 houred and salaried workers.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/2011/03/11/20110311tempe-jbs-restuarants-bankrupt.html


Mis-Alignment?

There may be a few areas where JB's exhibited signs of mis-alignment. For one thing, it appears that their competitive advantage was in their breakfast offerings--yet they continued investing in other meals. Perhaps they should have looked at lowering their investment in lunch and dinner and focused more heavily on their breakfast advantage.

Also, there may have been a mis-alignment with their strategy of operating company-owned restaurants as well as franchised restaurants. Trying to do both may not have played to their management strengths and in turn weakened their ability to do either one well.

Rio Tinto Dives Back Into the Fertilizer

Here's the link:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rio-tinto-chief-aims-to-return-to-fertilizer-field/article1902846/

Looks like Rio Tinto's CEO Tom Albanese wants to get back into the fertilizer industry. Looking at it from the lenses of some of the strategy concepts that we've learned in class this year, it is interesting because apparently Mr. Albanese believes that Rio Tinto can find a niche in the market that will allow them to make money.

Going back to Porter's 5 forces... The one that seems to have the biggest impact on this decision is the lack of a barrier to entry. Rio Tinto already has some of the necessary equipment and land to make this work. So it is easier for them to get in this business.

Euro Strategy

This journal post comes from the the following url.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/no-clear-strategy-to-save-the-euro/

I thought it would be interesting to look at an article for strategy about the total lack of a strategy.

It appears that Europe is having a difficult time knowing what strategy it should pursue to preserve its Euro. It's in trouble because of countries like Greece (and a few other potential countries, like Ireland and Portugal) literally declaring bankruptcy.

The result of this lack of strategy is the severe weakening of the currency and European influence and power. Truly, the absence of strategy is worse than following a mediocre or perhaps even poor strategy.

Good luck Europe! Find a strategy and get everybody on board.

Friday, Jan 21, 2011

Google reports that it is returning back to its roots in order to better attack Facebook.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-21/google-turns-to-co-founder-page-to-step-up-attack-on-facebook.html


I think this is interesting, especially in the light of recent events that show that Facebook is registering more face time (pun intended) with users than Google is. It seems that Google is starting to feel a little threatened by this.

Google's move appears to be a slight shift in strategy as it takes its founder and promotes him to CEO. Maybe they're trying to pull an Apple, and get that original vision back in to bolster the company take it on to even greater heights. (Mainly because of the lack of universal success for other Google products, like Wave and Buzz among others)

It'll be interesting to see how this affects Google's strategy over the next several years.