Thunderbird School

A corporate strategy article by Thunderbird students Timothy Houston, Timothy Mayberry, Adam Yestrepsky, Matthew Allred and Bhawin Khanna

The changing environment of the upstream crude oil procurement industry and recent catastrophic accidents have created numerous issues for British Petroleum (BP). International oil companies such as BP face the challenge of entering markets which are dominated by national oil companies that receive subsidies from local governments and beneficial treatments. BP also has a tarnished public reputation driven by the Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill, which makes global and domestic operation even more difficult. The recent disasters within the oil procurement industry also have driven tighter environmental regulations that require new approaches and techniques to crude oil isolation. BP has developed a comprehensive program to tackle these new hurdles for its upstream oil procurement division. This plan is known as “Project 20K” and involves new technology, unique approaches to regulations, and new business strategies.

A corporate strategy article by Thunderbird students Shen-Chun Lin, Aimee DeGrauwe, Eli Darby, Monica Willbrand, Raymond Caruso and James Moore

CSR: The Reputation Necessity

For most companies, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a face-saving, repair mission in reaction to some recently identified social injustice or industrial accident.  Examples of reputation saving CSR have been seen with Nike’s early reaction to substandard working conditions or Union Carbide’s Bhopal tragic explosion in 1984.  At best, most companies treat CSR as a cost center line item akin to corporate publicity or charity, where a separate division within the organization implements a “community outreach” program.  Although these programs do have merit, they are mainly counter balances to the damages a corporation’s normal operations have on the community and environment.  This inefficiency lies in the fact that many firms’ CSR attempts pit society and business against each other, when in reality they should be dependent.  In addition, CSR tends to push firms into thinking generally, rather than about shared value.  In the developed world, national and regional laws help regulate and limit the damage a company’s presence can have at large. From environmental regulations, to worker safety standards, many US and EU companies meet or exceed the bare minimums laid out by governments.

A corporate strategy article by Thunderbird students Eric Chown, Mike Grey, Nicholas Kincaid, Steve McCaa, Charles Midthun and Srikanth Venkatasubramanian

Mei Huang's family has moved from Beijing to Shanghai and she misses her old friends. She had a great day in school today and has met a new boy -- she is really excited and wants to share the news -- what are they up to and wouldn't it be nice to just chat real time, even if it was online -- but the current service provider has strict limits on this capability. ... Wen Li met with a group of friends last night and they know there is something wrong with the way people are being treated by the local businesses -- the bosses seem to have no feeling or responsibility to the workers. This leads to thoughts about the Tiananmen Square uprising and the reasons for the demonstrations -- but there is no way to search for anything related to this period, everything is censored. ... Hui Zhong has been working on a report on the river systems in China, but the word for river “jiang” is the same as that of a former head of the communist party and searches for political information are taboo. (Ford) So she needs to be somewhat vague, and the information returned doesn't meet her needs. There must be a better search engine that understands more than exactly what is typed, something that understands what she wants or is looking for.

A corporate strategy article by Thunderbird students  Amanda Bhatia, David Freeman, David Wilson, Geoffrey Christanday, Jennifer Mousseau and Matthew Larson

As China’s economy develops, so do the prospective opportunities for foreign firms eager to sell their goods and services to these new Chinese customers.  However, many multinational corporations have already tried and failed – and yet – what makes these MNC’s keep coming back?

On March 6, 2012, Boeing and COMAC (Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China) announced[i] to the world that they will be joining forces for the first time ever, in creating a “collaboration agreement to partner in areas that will enable commercial aviation industry growth in China and potentially around the world”.  This partnership sounds well intentioned, but could make Boeing, and even Airbus (their current main competitor) nervous as to their future prospects in China and the future global market.  Will Boeing's partnership with COMAC provide Boeing with an opportunity to meet strong aircraft demand forecasts in China in coming years, or instead mean the creation of their own competitor?