Alcoa’s core values

Alcoa was established in 1888 under the name of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, later on in 1907, changing it’s name to Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). In a few years time, Alcoa had industrialized into a broad vertical integration with complete input control over aluminum production. This company’s value-based culture was solid. According to Alcoa, “ In all of our operations, our values and integrity remain the driving force as we achieve our objectives”.(Alcoa, para. 1)

Alcoa’s ethical work climate can be classified as a diverse one due to reassuring open communication, ongoing learning, and providing community outreach. Alcoa conducts surveys among the community through focus groups, this helps the company come up with new programs that will help the environment. Alcoa’s principles are charged towards the research and development of inventive products and issues pertaining to the environment. Alcoa used the ethical criterion, principle. The integrity approach is one where managers may often interrelate with government regulators and the public.

Top management commitment contributed in developing ethical work climate and organizational performance at Alcoa. In the 1990’s, Paul O’ Neil (CEO) implemented the health and safety to the global ethics and compliance program (Lawrence and Weber, 2011, pg. 129). Alcoa employed an ethics and compliance officer whose job was to report to the CEO of the company and to the board of directors That the company’s core values were understood and being reinforced.

Supplement to the ethics program that was created, some other ethical safeguards that had mention in the case study was change in leadership due to compliance issues with the company’s values and policies, conducted investigation to ensure the company was maintaining ethics and compliance, and to repeat safety procedures before all meetings.

References

Lawrence, A. T. & Weber, J. (2011). Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy (13th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. ISBN: 978-0-07-813715-0 HTTP://www.alcoa.com/global/en/about_alcoa/corp_gov/ethics_compliance/info_page/sustainability_metrics.asp