DURO, Patrick Charles V.

BA 193 Reflective Paper #1

1. Do you approve of the board’s chair proposal? Why or why not? Explain.
In my opinion as a human being, I do not approve of the actions that the director wants
to undertake is because I think it is both immoral and detrimental to building a lasting legacy
and life expectancy for the company. Although I deeply understand that the world of business
and corporate management is often harsh and requires hard choices to be done, I don’t think I
have the guts to decide on such an act. Additionally, regarding the point about the workers
being fine with lesser benefits and compensations, we can see that in US, workers are realizing
that employers are slowly losing their leverage in the business world as employers are forced to
increase wages as they are desperate to hire and retain workers (Semuels, 2021) If left
unattended, workers would get fed up with low compensation for heavy jobs and would resort
to different actions like work strikes or protests to force the hands of employers to heed their
demands, and as such workers are to be considered as the lifeblood of any business, I don’t
think we should ignore these points. The issue of the long run versus short term success could
also potentially sway the decision either way but as a member of the board, I think short term
success should not be in the expense of a longer life company expectancy. Aside from this, due
to the current social and technological atmosphere of the world where people are easily able to
form groups and cancel brands and corporations resulting to losses and a little scandal could
destroy any entity in the blink of an eye, we should be more critical when it comes to making
decisions. Not only should we consider the effects of such decisions on our financial and
business standings, but also on how we would look from the outside and our reputation as
brand and a social entity. Compromise when and where necessary and a considerable layoff of
employees and a prudent switch to automations are hard decisions to swallow but should be
acceptable, however we should draw the line on how we treat our employees as they are part
and parcel of our company.
2. Between the view of Zellerbach and the view of Icahn regarding what the purpose of the
corporation should be, whose view do you agree with more? Explain.
Zellerbach’s view on the purpose of corporations are what we could call today as a form
of stakeholder capitalism. D’Souza (2022) defines stakeholder capitalism as the management
orientation where corporations serve to the interest of all it’s stakeholders, which includes
customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and the local communities. Under this setup,
corporations’ primary goal is to optimize benefits to all its stakeholders to ensure long-term
value creation and the sensibility of it as a business model due its ethical nature. Meanwhile,
Icahn’s idea is more aligned to the idea of shareholder capitalism and a drive to exponentially
increase shareholder value. This train of thinking primarily popularized by economist Fried
Milton in the 1970’s remains to be the major form of management that is present in most of
today’s corporation, where most executives make decisions more in favor of their shareholders
as their prevalent social responsibility. (D’Souza,2022) Generally, as a social being and due to

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our human nature to help preserve our lives and the lives of others, Zellerbach’s idea regarding
the purpose of corporations make better sense since it requires everyone to work together to
achieve a common goal, which is the betterment of all our lives. Additionally, as stakeholder
capitalism puts a bolder emphasis on creating and maintaining value for a far longer period
seems to only show a greater divide between the two ideologies, the successes and failures as
direct result of choosing one over the other becomes more apparent over time and would lead
to a realization as to which is better. Personally though, I do not think that there is no superior
view over the other, as I see either as a feasible strategy when implemented for a specific
purpose and/or situation. For example, I think that one of the persistent reasons why most of
the corporations embraced shareholder capitalism is that it leads to a better driver for personal
and corporate growth since they only need to focus basically on one aspect of the business
which is their shareholder value. This singular focus of attention on both a specific and
measurable business metric helps executives to further develop personal growth as well as the
success of building and maintaining a brand value amidst a societal pressure for companies to
continue growing and expanding, too much and too fast at times. I think that as the years
continue to go by, the pressure has steadily decreased and is now prevailing over something
else. Sundheim and Starr (2020) argue that a rising unrest over the alarming climate crisis and
ever-increasing social challenges such as inequality and the fight for fair pay, has resulted to the
reemergence of the idea of stakeholder capitalism since it was popularized during the 1950’s.
As the social pressure has shifted, corporations must be able to adapt and overcome personal
and outside influences to be able to serve for a greater number of individuals and create a
better lasting legacy. They may as well risk and die trying rather than die getting caught up and
being unable to do anything.

Semuels, A. (2021, October 8). U.S. Workers Are Realizing It's the Perfect Time to Go on Strike.
TIME. https://time.com/6105109/workers-strike-unemployment/
D’Souza, D. (2022, October 3). What Is Stakeholder Capitalism? Investopedia.
https://www.investopedia.com/stakeholder-capitalism-4774323
Sundhem, S. & Starr, K. (2020, January 22). Making Stakeholder Capitalism a Reality. Harvard
Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/01/making-stakeholder-capitalism-a-reality