Active investors are required to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board.” Discuss

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Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets Project Report and Thesis contact [email protected] www.mbacasestudyanswers.com ARAVIND – 09901366442 – 09902787224 Business Ethics Case Studies CASE STUDY (20 Marks) An experienced and knowledgeable Indian tourist guide suggested to a foreign tourist whom he was guiding that it would better to give up the program of going around the places in the city and instead visit a plush five star hotel whose nightclub featured a good cabaret. The guide, further, said that he would explain his life story which could give a clear picture of poverty in India. Answer the following question. Q1. Explain the unethical issues in this case. Q2. Give an overview of the case CASE STUDY (20 Marks) Jill has always had trouble focusing. In middle school and high school, she has struggled to maintain her attention on class, homework, and other academic responsibilities. If not for her own determination and the encouragement of her parents, she probably would have never gone to college as she does now. However, with midterms just around the corner, her inattentive tendencies are flaring worse than ever. And with poor grades after her first semester, she needs to do well on these tests to keep her GPA above her scholarship’s cutoff. Fortunately, a friend of hers, one familiar with Jill’s problems, has a prescription for Adder all and offers some to Jill so she can concentrate better during finals. Jill only plans to take the pills this one time considering summer is so near. She doesn’t think she’s getting an advantage because her peers can already focus better than she can. She really needs higher grades this semester to keep her scholarship. Answer the following question. Q1. Is it right using stimulants without a prescription? Comment. Q2. Give your views on the case. CASE STUDY (20 Marks) What's on the minds of the people serving on boards or hoping to be? What can be learned about corporate governance trends by knowing the answer? What do the issues business executives are wrestling with add to the picture? Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics provides quarterly programming for Silicon Valley business executives through its Business Ethics Partnership. Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance provides annual programming for board directors and others aiming to explore corporate governance hot topics. The Silicon Valley Director's Exchange, affiliated with the Rock Center, provides monthly programming on similar topics. I serve on the board of SVDx, staff the Markkula Center's Business Ethics Program and attended the recent Rock Center Director's College at Stanford. Listening is perhaps an underrated activity, but opportunities to do so at these programs in the first six months of 2015 reveal these trends worth watching for the remainder of the year and into 2016. They also helped to illustrate the shifts in corporate governance trends over the past decade. The pendulum is swinging back from concern solely with shareholders to a broader set of stakeholders, from the vantage point of the corporate boardroom, based on comments across a variety of topical discussions and panels. Board directors and governance scholars readily accept a board's role in protecting the interest of shareholders but can also now draw links to shareholder interests from the interests of other constituents, such as employees or the environment, when considering the impact of climate change. The introduction of KKR's Green Portfolio, in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund in 2007, is one example of direct ways environmental impact is being accounted for in business, but it is not the only way. Board directors are fully engaged on the impact to a company's Long term value not only of measures taken to ensure the company's sustainability, but the planet's as well. Thoughtful exchanges in discussions about public relations, mergers and acquisitions, and climate risk and opportunity as a disruptor suggest that directors accept that corporations need to account for broader interests because these interests do have an impact on shareholder value. Additionally, demographic trends, like the increase of millennial in the workforce, introduce a need to consider what those workers are seeking in their relationship with employers. Diversity of perspective has long been supported in research and practice as a goal boards should pursue when assembling participants. Corporations are experiencing greater vulnerability to activist shareholders if an investor's point of view is not represented on the board in the current environment. The rise of LBOs and the reality that many activists are larger corporations than the ones they target highlight a balancing act being played out in boardrooms: acknowledge more stakeholders as their interests affect share price over time but be sure current shareholders feel first among equals. At a minimum, add active investors to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board. Answer the following question. Q1. Give an overview of the case. Q2. “Active investors are required to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board.” Discuss. CASE STUDY (20 Marks) In an address to Bay Area government officials during the Center’s quarterly Public Sector Roundtable, Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian spoke about affordable housing in the Bay Area, using the ongoing housing dispute at Palo Alto’s Buena Vista Mobile Home Park as a case study. Although invisible to many, Buena Vista has been a fixture of Palo Alto since the 1920s. But depending on how the litigation plays out, the mobile home park’s 400 residents (consisting of approximately 117 families and 100 children) face the very real possibility of having to leave their homes, their town, and maybe even the entire Bay Area. When Simitian, the son of a teacher, moved to Palo Alto in 1967, he went to school with a group of kids from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. He shared classes with the son of an air conditioning mechanic, the daughter of a high school custodian, and the daughter of the CEO of Hewlett Packard. Simitian recalled that in 1967, nobody thought it unusual that kids of modest means went to the same school as the daughter of HP’s CEO. These kids would eventually grow up to become mayors and middle schoolteachers; there was no limit to what they could aspire toward. Unfortunately, Simitian said, the uncertain fate of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park vividly demonstrates that’s not the case in today’s Silicon Valley. A few years back, Buena Vista’s owners decided they wanted to sell the mobile home property. Given the high demand for land in the Bay Area, it was reasonable to assume that a developer would buy the park and immediately replace it with more lucrative housing. The average Buena Vista household currently makes $35,000 per year. Rent at Buena Vista is approximately $750 per month. If the residents are forced to leave as part of the sale, but wish to remain in Palo Alto, they’ll be faced with the prospect of paying three to four times that much. And the neighboring cities aren’t much costfriendlier. Despite the mobile home park’s invisibility, the people who live at Buena Vista do a lot of the work that Palo Alto residents have come to rely on. One female resident makes sandwiches in the deli at Molly Stone. Another works at the Four Seasons hotel in East Palo Alto. A third resident was the Rotary Club president of East Palo Alto. Simitian noted that it’s harder to “otherize” people once you know who they are and what their place in the community is. The dispute over the closure of Buena Vista is ultimately a city issue, but Simitian felt early on that something had to be done for the 117 families. Months and months of work have resulted in public backing from local newspapers, school board members, mayors, council members, and an astoundingly successful rally in which 500 people from all parts of the economic spectrum gathered to support their fellow community members. The city of Palo Alto and the county have now set aside millions of dollars to help settle the dispute with the property owners and keep the residents of Buena Vista in their homes. Despite these impressive efforts, the opposing parties are still deadlocked in litigation. With many questions unanswered for the residents of Buena Vista, the question posed by Simitian to the Public Sector Roundtable was, “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?” In Palo Alto in particular, there’s a 3to1 jobs to housing imbalance. When new housing does pop up, it’s $4,000amonth housing for people who work at high tech companies. Simitian explained that this Bay Area housing problem has developed into a major traffic problem, as people who work in the Bay Area can no longer afford to live in the Bay Area. Monday through Friday thousands of people shuffle in and out of the Bay Area from remote places like Tracy and Gilroy. These people aren’t just sandwich makers and hotel concierges. They’re law enforcement officers, firefighters, and nurses. Additionally, local small businesses are having great difficulty attracting employees. It’s a dynamic that Simitian believes does not create the kind of community we’re looking for. One member of the Public Sector Roundtable suggested that the case of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park is an argument for the need for common good. In Simitian’s 1967 Palo Alto, everybody in the community was given a shot. Not a guarantee, but a shot. Now as the community separates into those who can afford to live within the city limits and those who cannot, that opportunity, the participant said, may very well get taken away. Some members of the community will mattero ffactly state that not everyone gets to live in Palo Alto, or Mountain View or Los Altos. The economics simply don’t justify it, they reason. And while Simitian acknowledges that this may be true, he maintains that if we want to have the kind of community where we can go to the deli and say “Hi Sally,” we need to do the best we can for as many as we can. So exactly who is responsible for determining the fate of our community experience? The state? The city? The market? Simitian explained that it’s often human nature to pass the buck and task someone else with solving the collective’s problem. But when a man in a crowd drops to the ground from an apparent heart attack, isn’t it everyone’s responsibility to do whatever they can to help? Housing is usually a regional issue, but it’s typically handled city by city. Simitian pointed out that one challenge is that different cities have different visions for what their city is all about. For instance, the community members of a small, sleepy town might shy away from an initiative to bring affordable housing within its borders because of the stigma that “affordable housing” implies. A lot has been made over the last few years about the 117 families whose community member status hangs in the balance. The question has been raised: Why these 117 families? Simitian believes that one problem with talks about affordable housing is that the people who need the housing most are never in the room when the conversation is happening. The abstract affordable housing dilemma does not often have a human dimension, but with these 117 families, he pointed out, the human dimension is undeniable. You can go to the mobile home park and actually see these people. It’s a real, immediate concern. Answer the following question. Q1. Explain why the affordable housing was necessary in the Bay Area. Q2. Comment on the question posed by Mr. Simitian in the roundtable “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?” Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets Project Report and Thesis contact [email protected] www.mbacasestudyanswers.com ARAVIND – 09901366442 – 09902787224

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Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets Project Report and Thesis contact [email protected] www.mbacasestudyanswers.com ARAVIND – 09901366442 – 09902787224 Business Ethics Case Studies CASE STUDY (20 Marks) An experienced and knowledgeable Indian tourist guide suggested to a foreign tourist whom he was guiding that it would better to give up the program of going around the places in the city and instead visit a plush five star hotel whose nightclub featured a good cabaret. The guide, further, said that he would explain his life story which could give a clear picture of poverty in India. Answer the following question. Q1. Explain the unethical issues in this case. Q2. Give an overview of the case CASE STUDY (20 Marks) Jill has always had trouble focusing. In middle school and high school, she has struggled to maintain her attention on class, homework, and other academic responsibilities. If not for her own determination and the encouragement of her parents, she probably would have never gone to college as she does now. However, with midterms just around the corner, her inattentive tendencies are flaring worse than ever. And with poor grades after her first semester, she needs to do well on these tests to keep her GPA above her scholarship’s cutoff. Fortunately, a friend of hers, one familiar with Jill’s problems, has a prescription for Adder all and offers some to Jill so she can concentrate better during finals. Jill only plans to take the pills this one time considering summer is so near. She doesn’t think she’s getting an advantage because her peers can already focus better than she can. She really needs higher grades this semester to keep her scholarship. Answer the following question. Q1. Is it right using stimulants without a prescription? Comment. Q2. Give your views on the case. CASE STUDY (20 Marks) What's on the minds of the people serving on boards or hoping to be? What can be learned about corporate governance trends by knowing the answer? What do the issues business executives are wrestling with add to the picture? Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics provides quarterly programming for Silicon Valley business executives through its Business Ethics Partnership. Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance provides annual programming for board directors and others aiming to explore corporate governance hot topics. The Silicon Valley Director's Exchange, affiliated with the Rock Center, provides monthly programming on similar topics. I serve on the board of SVDx, staff the Markkula Center's Business Ethics Program and attended the recent Rock Center Director's College at Stanford. Listening is perhaps an underrated activity, but opportunities to do so at these programs in the first six months of 2015 reveal these trends worth watching for the remainder of the year and into 2016. They also helped to illustrate the shifts in corporate governance trends over the past decade. The pendulum is swinging back from concern solely with shareholders to a broader set of stakeholders, from the vantage point of the corporate boardroom, based on comments across a variety of topical discussions and panels. Board directors and governance scholars readily accept a board's role in protecting the interest of shareholders but can also now draw links to shareholder interests from the interests of other constituents, such as employees or the environment, when considering the impact of climate change. The introduction of KKR's Green Portfolio, in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund in 2007, is one example of direct ways environmental impact is being accounted for in business, but it is not the only way. Board directors are fully engaged on the impact to a company's Long term value not only of measures taken to ensure the company's sustainability, but the planet's as well. Thoughtful exchanges in discussions about public relations, mergers and acquisitions, and climate risk and opportunity as a disruptor suggest that directors accept that corporations need to account for broader interests because these interests do have an impact on shareholder value. Additionally, demographic trends, like the increase of millennial in the workforce, introduce a need to consider what those workers are seeking in their relationship with employers. Diversity of perspective has long been supported in research and practice as a goal boards should pursue when assembling participants. Corporations are experiencing greater vulnerability to activist shareholders if an investor's point of view is not represented on the board in the current environment. The rise of LBOs and the reality that many activists are larger corporations than the ones they target highlight a balancing act being played out in boardrooms: acknowledge more stakeholders as their interests affect share price over time but be sure current shareholders feel first among equals. At a minimum, add active investors to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board. Answer the following question. Q1. Give an overview of the case. Q2. “Active investors are required to the matrix of skills to consider when seating an effective corporate board.” Discuss. CASE STUDY (20 Marks) In an address to Bay Area government officials during the Center’s quarterly Public Sector Roundtable, Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian spoke about affordable housing in the Bay Area, using the ongoing housing dispute at Palo Alto’s Buena Vista Mobile Home Park as a case study. Although invisible to many, Buena Vista has been a fixture of Palo Alto since the 1920s. But depending on how the litigation plays out, the mobile home park’s 400 residents (consisting of approximately 117 families and 100 children) face the very real possibility of having to leave their homes, their town, and maybe even the entire Bay Area. When Simitian, the son of a teacher, moved to Palo Alto in 1967, he went to school with a group of kids from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. He shared classes with the son of an air conditioning mechanic, the daughter of a high school custodian, and the daughter of the CEO of Hewlett Packard. Simitian recalled that in 1967, nobody thought it unusual that kids of modest means went to the same school as the daughter of HP’s CEO. These kids would eventually grow up to become mayors and middle schoolteachers; there was no limit to what they could aspire toward. Unfortunately, Simitian said, the uncertain fate of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park vividly demonstrates that’s not the case in today’s Silicon Valley. A few years back, Buena Vista’s owners decided they wanted to sell the mobile home property. Given the high demand for land in the Bay Area, it was reasonable to assume that a developer would buy the park and immediately replace it with more lucrative housing. The average Buena Vista household currently makes $35,000 per year. Rent at Buena Vista is approximately $750 per month. If the residents are forced to leave as part of the sale, but wish to remain in Palo Alto, they’ll be faced with the prospect of paying three to four times that much. And the neighboring cities aren’t much costfriendlier. Despite the mobile home park’s invisibility, the people who live at Buena Vista do a lot of the work that Palo Alto residents have come to rely on. One female resident makes sandwiches in the deli at Molly Stone. Another works at the Four Seasons hotel in East Palo Alto. A third resident was the Rotary Club president of East Palo Alto. Simitian noted that it’s harder to “otherize” people once you know who they are and what their place in the community is. The dispute over the closure of Buena Vista is ultimately a city issue, but Simitian felt early on that something had to be done for the 117 families. Months and months of work have resulted in public backing from local newspapers, school board members, mayors, council members, and an astoundingly successful rally in which 500 people from all parts of the economic spectrum gathered to support their fellow community members. The city of Palo Alto and the county have now set aside millions of dollars to help settle the dispute with the property owners and keep the residents of Buena Vista in their homes. Despite these impressive efforts, the opposing parties are still deadlocked in litigation. With many questions unanswered for the residents of Buena Vista, the question posed by Simitian to the Public Sector Roundtable was, “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?” In Palo Alto in particular, there’s a 3to1 jobs to housing imbalance. When new housing does pop up, it’s $4,000amonth housing for people who work at high tech companies. Simitian explained that this Bay Area housing problem has developed into a major traffic problem, as people who work in the Bay Area can no longer afford to live in the Bay Area. Monday through Friday thousands of people shuffle in and out of the Bay Area from remote places like Tracy and Gilroy. These people aren’t just sandwich makers and hotel concierges. They’re law enforcement officers, firefighters, and nurses. Additionally, local small businesses are having great difficulty attracting employees. It’s a dynamic that Simitian believes does not create the kind of community we’re looking for. One member of the Public Sector Roundtable suggested that the case of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park is an argument for the need for common good. In Simitian’s 1967 Palo Alto, everybody in the community was given a shot. Not a guarantee, but a shot. Now as the community separates into those who can afford to live within the city limits and those who cannot, that opportunity, the participant said, may very well get taken away. Some members of the community will mattero ffactly state that not everyone gets to live in Palo Alto, or Mountain View or Los Altos. The economics simply don’t justify it, they reason. And while Simitian acknowledges that this may be true, he maintains that if we want to have the kind of community where we can go to the deli and say “Hi Sally,” we need to do the best we can for as many as we can. So exactly who is responsible for determining the fate of our community experience? The state? The city? The market? Simitian explained that it’s often human nature to pass the buck and task someone else with solving the collective’s problem. But when a man in a crowd drops to the ground from an apparent heart attack, isn’t it everyone’s responsibility to do whatever they can to help? Housing is usually a regional issue, but it’s typically handled city by city. Simitian pointed out that one challenge is that different cities have different visions for what their city is all about. For instance, the community members of a small, sleepy town might shy away from an initiative to bring affordable housing within its borders because of the stigma that “affordable housing” implies. A lot has been made over the last few years about the 117 families whose community member status hangs in the balance. The question has been raised: Why these 117 families? Simitian believes that one problem with talks about affordable housing is that the people who need the housing most are never in the room when the conversation is happening. The abstract affordable housing dilemma does not often have a human dimension, but with these 117 families, he pointed out, the human dimension is undeniable. You can go to the mobile home park and actually see these people. It’s a real, immediate concern. Answer the following question. Q1. Explain why the affordable housing was necessary in the Bay Area. Q2. Comment on the question posed by Mr. Simitian in the roundtable “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?” Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets Project Report and Thesis contact [email protected] www.mbacasestudyanswers.com ARAVIND – 09901366442 – 09902787224

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