There can be no possible doubt that FOX and the J&J crossed the line between a reasonable compromise and a breach of the corporate ethical principles (Stewart & Paine, n. d.).
In regard to the conflict that Johnson & Johnson had to deal with, the nature of the problem, particularly, the conflict between the ethical values of a company and the possibility of gaining an impressive financial benefit in the notorious Tylenol scandal (The Tylenol crisis, 1982, n. d.), should be brought up. In other words, “a set of principles that you can’t make a profit at the expense of” (Harvard Business School, n. d., 00:02.06) deserves to be mentioned.
Therefore, it is obvious that J&J and FOX should have stopped at some point to check whether the actions that they were taking complied with the basic ethical principles that the two companies were run with. Indeed, as one of the members of the meeting recorded by the Harvard Business School noted, “The question is, which of these things are legitimate demands” (Harvard Business School, n. d., 00:01.53).
Therefore, one must admit that the two firms made very unethical decisions. Nevertheless, both companies should be credited as rather trustworthy and efficient because of their corporate policies, which are clearly based on a range of complex and well thought out ethical values and principles, such as employee satisfaction and the safety of the stakeholders (Ingols & Brem, n. d., p. 49).
Speaking of the organization of the FOX Corporation, one must note its alignment with the six basic considerations for a company organization. First, the strategy was defined quite precisely; likewise, the environment, in which the company was planted, was also quite welcoming.
One might argue that Fox could have set the company’s priorities in a different manner; however, focusing on the manager-employee relationships was also a very legitimate step to make.
The technology issue (outsourcing versus owning) was admittedly downplayed, though. As a result, the choice between different types of technologies was not made in time. Nevertheless, the FOX Company seems to have been making rather efficient use of technological advances (Ingols & Brem, n. d., p. 45).
As far as the culture of the J&J Company is concerned, the Burke video shows clearly that the firm was clearly about to break new grounds and at the very least was doing something very peculiar with the corporate policies on the quality of the services provided to the end customers.
As the video shows, the company was ready to experiment and was not afraid of taking a step in the wrong direction; while such careless attitude towards such an important part of a company’s progress could be considered alarming by modern standards of corporate security, it still had a potential as a power that could be driving the company forward (Our credo values: Johnson & Johnson, 2014).
The stability of the company has been jeopardized several times, mostly due to the aforementioned policy regarding innovations; thus, it can be considered “medium.” The people-oriented leadership, however, creates the premises for bringing the rates of aggression among the staff down, therefore, channeling their competitiveness into more productive activities, such as excelling in their performance (McClown, n. d.).
As a result, the given element of the company organization can be viewed as “high.” The given process is achieved through the introduction of team-oriented leadership strategy. While the idea of focusing on the cooperation between the members of the team cannot be viewed as the foundation for the J&J to develop a team-oriented leadership, it is obvious that the relationships between the employees are not the priority of the company.
J&J is clearly concerned with increasing its revenues by creating stronger ties with its partners and expanding into the global market by offering its innovative technologies to a larger amount of customers.
Therefore, J&J is quite attentive to details, yet, when choosing between orientation on people and an orientation on the outcome, J&J obviously put its stake on the latter.
Indeed, as the video shows, the company leader did not care much about creating the environment in which the staff would feel comfortable; for instance, he would write memos that took him “two seconds” (Harvard Business School, n. d., 00:10.40) to compose and took the staff “two weeks to answer” (Harvard Business School, n. d., 00:10.44).
As far as the management skills of Gretchen Fox and James Burke are concerned, it seems that the latter was preoccupied with the benefits that the company delivered, while Fox was anxious about the relationships between the people working for the company; more to the point, she was anxious about the well being of her staff and their families (Ingols & Brem, n. d., p. 37).
Therefore, the two leaders show equally impressive results yet two completely different levels of involvement.
Hence, the FOX Company can be seen as the one with better controls over its processes. Because of the lack of connection between the staff and the managers in J&J, the use of controls in the firm left much to be desired, whereas the owner of the FOX Company was obviously in control of all the major processes going on in the company. As a result, cooperation between different departments could be improved considerably.
Reference List
Ingols, C.A. & Brem, L. (n. d.). FOX relocation Management Corp. PDF file. pp. 35–49.
McClown, S. (n. d.). Fox Relocation Management Corp. to change name to Fox RPM Corp. Web.
Our credo values: Johnson & Johnson(2014).
Stewart, K. L. & Paine, W. S. (n. d.). Johnson & Johnson: An ethical analysis of broken trust.
The Tylenol crisis, 1982 (n. d.).