A Look Inside SEI

A company I chose to investigate further was SEI. SEI is a financial services company located in Oaks, Pennsylvania. The company has a large, sprawling campus in Oaks, which is located about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. On its massive campus, SEI features a track, gym, food court, ping-pong tables, extravagant artwork, and more.

Aramark: Food With a Side of Ethics

The company that stood out to me on the list of The World’s Most Ethical Companies was ARAMARK. ARAMARK is a food services company and was the company who provided dining services for my high school. I was curious what ARAMARK had done to earn its spot on the WME (World’s Most Ethical) list. As a food services company, I would imagine ARAMARK has many opportunities to both give back to their community, through providing food or services to the less fortunate, while also having opportunities to cut corners to save money, by skimping on food and sanitary regulations.

I decided to look at ARAMARK’s Mission Statement and see how it matched up with what I could find about their operations. The Mission Statement is as follows:

“Because we value our relationships, we treat customers as long-term partners, and each other with candor and respect. Because we succeed through performance, we encourage the entrepreneur in each of us, and work always to improve our service. Because we thrive on growth, we seek new markets and new opportunities, and we innovate to get and keep customers. And because we’re ARAMARK, we do everything with integrity.”

After digging for information, ARAMARK seems to be doing a lot to try and benefit the community, and is really trying to make a name for themselves as an ethical corporation. ARAMARK has made a company-wide volunteer program to rebuild community centers and provide support for wellness and and nutrition education, promotes trayless dining to help reduce waste, has pledged to reduce the amount of fat, sugar, and salt in their meals, and has called for a 70-80% increase in tomato picker wages. I was happy to see that the company that I paid to feed me for my four years at high school making a real attempt to make a difference in the community and environment as a whole. ARAMARK seems to have set a mission statement focused on all of their stakeholders, and has been holding true to its mission statement in that regard.

A Way to Live, A Place to Work

You’re not going to find (National Outdoor Leadership School) NOLS on any Fortune lists; it falls well outside of the typical corporate lense.  (However, it was #54 for the top 100 places to work according to Outside Magazine.  For those of you not in the know, according to the website, NOLS “takes students of all ages on remote wilderness expeditions and teaches them technical outdoor skills, leadership, and environmental ethics.”  The trips, called courses, range from ten days to six months of backcountry travel in a variety of environmental conditions.

Question for Ed Freeman

My question to Ed Freeman was

“In your book “Managing for Stakeholders”, you write about a technique for managing your stakeholders “to convince the group to want the same thing as the firm”. My question for you is “In the internet age where companies in power can control what gets media attention and what consumers believe, is this an ethical strategy for businesses to implement?”

For some background on why I asked the question, I want to first explain what I thought when I read that passage from Ed Freeman’s book. My interpretation of this was that whatever goals a company has, whether they are to brainwash consumers into buying their products, or sending false information into the press to ignore the environment, etc. When I thought about companies convincing stakeholders to want the same thing as the firm wants, I tend to think of negative examples.

However, the example that Ed Freeman gave suggested a much different approach to this strategy. He believed that Amazon recommending a book that he ended up enjoying was a good example of this strategy being correctly implemented. He also went on to say that the “getting stakeholders on-board” strategy is meant to help stakeholders realize that the company’s goals are in the stakeholders’ best interest as well. This places the responsibility on the company to make decisions that will benefit stakeholders. Although I do not know whether Ed Freeman has clearly explained how companies can make decisions that are in the best interest of the stakeholder, I do think that; if possible, it would be acceptable “to convince the group to want the same thing as the firm”

The Googler

After reading the blog prompt, the first company I immediately thought of was Google. The reason why I chose Google is because after working in New York City this past summer I met numerous individuals working for a variety of companies such as Goldman Sachs, SumZero, Contrarian Capital and last but not least, Google. Of all these firms, everyone told me how they were working extremely long hours, how their bosses were jerks and how their offices were nothing special. All mentioned similar things about their working environments, except for my friend’s roommate, Adam, who had recently began working at Google. Let me start by saying that no one in our friend group called Adam, Adam. We called him The Googler. This is because when he initially joined Google, he not only joined the company of Google, but most importantly, he joined the culture of Google. On Adam’s first day he was welcomed by a colleague greeting him, “Hey!!! You’re a Googler now!” This was the beginning of his incredible job experience. Adam was the only one in our friend group who raved about his work and how amazing everything at Google was. He had constant energy, but most importantly, he did not consider work as work. He sincerely told us how it was his responsibility to provide the best he could for his clients. This is because of Google’s work culture, which all starts with one of their mottos: “It’s really the people that make Google the kind of company it is.” Google’s culture not only embodies everything of a utopian work environment, but most importantly, demonstrates that a good employer leads to good outcomes. Incase you have never seen any of Google’s complexes, next time you’re bored and on the Internet, go ahead and search Google offices. Or take a look at Some of Google’s office spaces here. These offices are insane! Some have bowling allies, nap-pods, rock climbing walls and even hair salons. Oh, and did I mention the free food that the employees also get? It is evident that Google believes in providing the best working environment for their employees in order to get the best quality of work out of their stakeholders in return. Due to theses incredible, facilities and benefits, Adam was truly producing his best quality of work in return and most likely so are other Googlers. Today, Adam, or the Googler continues to work at Google as an account manager for retail clients. He not only loves his job, but truly believes that Google extremely values their employees because it will lead to better outcomes. In addition to constant donations for renewable energy projects and creating their own energy-efficient projects, the efforts of Google exemplify their social responsibility as a major corporation. By providing their internal structure of the company with the best possible aid, Google stakeholders are propelled to externally provide the best for others.

Is Risk Fun?

We have looked at apple extensively this semester. We can establish Apple is extremely secretive about company operations. We observed how apple distanced themselves from the FoxConn Operations with slickness and panache. We looked in depth about the cult-like consumer culture of apple, especially due to their affinity for alliteration. Just kidding.

You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours

In my opinion, being a good employer is the number one thing to having healthy and positive employees. My mom is the executive director of our synagogue, so she is basically in charge of every that works in the building, including the maintenance staff. Rather than just relying on her staff and just giving them orders, she has a much more personal relationship with each and everyone and I think that makes all the difference.

No Longer Motor City

None of my friends or family quite understand my fascination with the city of Detroit. Maybe this fascination turned borderline obsession could best be explained by this tumblr, which I frequent way too often since Professor Marsh introduced me. As a city that’s literally crumbling to the ground, Detroit fills me with this weird combination of disparity and hope for potential reinvention within its deteriorative state.

So am I Going to get in Trouble for Knowing/Supporting This…?

Had I been able to ask Ed Freeman a question

My conflict with conflict

Although the roundtable discussion and lecture with Ed Freeman was way more palpable than I was expecting, I felt slightly unsatisfied with many of Freeman’s answers to questions posed by students and audience members at the night lecture.