Exxon Valdez

My final case study is over the Exxon Valdez case. Looking at this case like many cases it relates with public relations. The study of this case can be looked at in many ways relating to PR. One way is that the president of exxon was not on the scene to clean, which looks bad for a company. It was a disasterous scene killing so many animals, and he could have helped clean up like everyelse. This company could definately have used a crisis mangement plan. This case is horrible and if they would have had a plan, which they should have had since they are a billion dollar company, they could have moved faster and been more prepared in this incident. Also what kind of people are they hiring, the capt. of the ship was drunk when he was operating the ship when it crashed. What was he thinking when he was drinking. This case is sad, because he hurt a lot of our wildlife around Alaska. Seems like Exxon should have gone under, surprisingly they are still a profitable company.

Diversity

The links posted on the class blog, give good examples of diversity within real companies. The PRSA diversity tool kit, was awesome. I could definately see it being very useful in the future in different careers. I'm not in my career field yet, but after looking at how some companies handle diversity it is really important to get into the right job, and see how they handle diversity. If a company takes diversity importantly, than overall the company is probably going to be good. If the company doesn't take it seriously than the company is going to be shallow and filled with all people of the same ideas, which could limit the company in many ways. I like how Booz Allen Hamilton's company breaks diversity down in MANY ways. Which is great. Also I like how they put this up on the web, so people know how this company works before you even look at them. It's important to look for places who are well diversified.

Guest Speaker (Koji Fuse)

Monday's class was interesting with our guest speaker, professor Koji Fuse. Although hard to understand with his thick japanesse accent, which he explain his accent very well to us, made the class very stimulating. He spoke a lot about Japan and US and our culture differences. Mr. Fuse said the most important resasons to study interpersonal communication is as following: 1.Economic 2.Globalization (30-40% out profit US) 3.Technology 4.Demographic and 5. Peace. His discussion was very educational and fill with good information. He tried his best relating it to situations for us. My favorite part of the discussion was his stories from when he worked in Japan.

He spoke a lot about Hofstede's model and related it in comparison to Japan and US. He also spoke a lot about non-linguistic stuff and how it relates to high and low context cultures. He brought up good points and I personally took a lot from the discussion.

FDA & Mercury in Fish

This blog is about the article over industry money fans debate on fish. This article contradicts the rule of no fish while pregnant. How can something be proven for so long, then people just say something else, (like some fish is alright now) and people just go along with it. I think its important to find out the background information of where these findings are coming from. Some companies will take money and say anything for the person who gave the money. This is so ethically wrong, because people could get hurt. Especially from these findings about the fish being alright. The company took thousands of dollars to say this, and what if it isn't completely fine, and the future of Americas kids, now have birth defects because these mothers were told it was alright. I don't understand how the FDA would say its okay now about the fish, and scientist are saying its not. I sure wouldn't try eating fish if I was pregnant. It may be alright to eat fish now, but why risk it, because some company said from research that its alright, but yet they gave all this money for them to say it. Something seems 'fishy' about this whole situation.

Armstrong Williams

The article that talks about the No Child Left Behind is a sad article. This article has a lot of scandal in it. I think it is sad that the government was involved in the scandal, and no appologies were said. This was a lot of money spent, and not really broadcasted.
As for the PR spot on this issue, Ketchum was in the wrong. Ketchum sounds like a really bad PR firm. They should have advised the spokesperson. He wasn't a PR professional, and it was not his fault because he wasn't advised on how to conduct himself. It is sad that the blame was put on him, instead of the agency. They look like a bad agency especially since they just played ignorance to this whole situation.
Key in this article was the ROI. Relationships, Opinions, and Identities all three are keys to have a good company.

Corporate Social Responsibility

The article we read in class about South African Wine Industry promotes ethical practices, so a interesting article. I think they are trying to make it better, but its hard to emply rules in foreign countries where this is how they have always done things, and its their mean for survival. It is a tough issue. We discuss this issue a lot in my business classes and it is looked at more as a market/money/survival issue rather than in this class as a ethical issue. I enjoy looking at it in both ways.
The issue we brought up in class of GAP was weird. They are trying to do one thing, but yet their company all the way through the chains doesn't work that way. The child labor laws are a big issue with many companies. It is a moral and ethical decision that is hard to make by companies. The key I learned out of this article is to tell about your disclosures before someone else does. It will save your company a lot of trouble in the long run.

Eron Movie

I enjoyed watching this movie. I knew about the Eron case, but not in detail what happened like the movie protrayed. Those CEO's were awful. It is scary knowning there are people like that in corp. America. The electric scandel in California, was one of the worst things in the movie. Its sad how they just didn't care about humans at all. Money can make people do horrible things. This is a good example.
I thought it was interesting to see what other companies were involved with them. The companies I saw, are well known. Makes you wonder and judge about their characters.
The issue we brought up in class was a good one, about gas. Possibly it could be going on. You would think that they could use this case as an example to explore to make sure scandals like the Eron case are not going on.