Assignment Task

Memo 4 - Industry Sustainability Initiative: NapaGreen
Memo
Wine may seem an odd industry to be promoting sustainable practices as a prominent feature of its business approach. It`s relatively small by revenue, localized and its products are luxury items for most consumers.
But it is also vertically integrated from ag practices and resourcing through `manufacturing`, storage, packaging and logistics to consumers, world-wide. It is also climate- and water- dependent, it uses a variety of external inputs to protect and improve its harvests, it has a massive solid waste load, there are packaging materials, weight and recycling/re-use issues. There appear to be real possibilities for `circularity`/`waste is food.`
Napa Green is a non-profit company, organized to promote sustainability among wine industry participants across those various roles and stages of production and sale. In this memo, please consider two items:

1. Take a cruise around their website, and rank/describe the top three industry challenges they are tackling, in your view, in terms of their impacts on the natural environment and industry sustainability.
2. Then, please ponder what two initiatives you`d recommend that they pursue next, to broaden the organization`s influence and extend its impact.
   The signature line from NapaGreen`s executive director

I get asked, "Why should I make the effort to be sustainable?" Every aspect of a business extends from and returns to nature. Businesses have an onus to place themselves in the context of the ecosystems and communities on which they depend. A top-down commitment to sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have; we`re facing a climate crisis. Truly successful, responsible businesses serve as leaders and educators, for their children and their children`s children. And time and again these businesses prove sustainability elevates quality and experience.

Memo 5: The Case of the Contagious Cook,

Case of the Contagious Cook

Applying the Hartman Model - what do you advise the company to do?

Case of the Contagious Cook (TFC)
You are a bright, young professional employee, working for a Fortune 100 company, headquartered in a community of several hundred thousand population. The Company has always held safety as a core value, dating from its origins as an explosives maker. Your firm dominates the local culture – it is the best employer, with the best jobs and leading citizens; its influence pervades the landscape. One person has called working there “playing Major League ball, in a sandlot.” In fact, to provide high-quality accommodations for business visitors, your company also runs the best city hotel, with the best restaurants in the region – at one time, it even owned the local newspaper!
It’s November. You are glad that this means you can look forward to gearing-back for American Thanksgiving and the year-end Holidays Season, without worrying about all those late-night papers and challenging exams from your Masters program; they were a major pain (but they did prepare you for your coveted first job with The Company). Annual bonuses are paid December 20th, and this has been a very good year for The Company. To hear your boss tell it, it’s been a good one for you, too.
Your reverie is interrupted by a call from the corporate VP who runs The Hotel/its restaurants. You are ordered to her conference room, immediately. Something’s up! When you arrive, the room already hosts The Company’s chief medical officer (industry leader, oft-quoted in the business press), senior execs from The Hotel/restaurants, and higher-ups in Public Affairs and Legal. Everybody looks serious.
One of the chefs from The Blue Room restaurant in the hotel has just been diagnosed with hepatitis!
As further background, you’re aware that 40% of The Hotel’s annual profits derive from the uber-busy Holidays Season just underway. You also know that there have been rumors that the Executive Committee has been thinking about outsourcing the whole function – it’s hardly a ‘core business’, and major hospitality firms would jump at the chance to acquire this captive ‘niche’ market.
You also know that the local paper just loves to stick a thumb in the eye of The Company when bad stuff happens – it’s as if they want to demonstrate to everyone that they are no longer ‘kept’ journalists! Any scandal could be ruinous to the earnings year and the future of The Hotel – to say nothing of the corporate black-eye and schadenfreude enjoyed by the rest of the community.
The medical officer reports that hepatitis is not something he knows much about, but from med school he recalls that it can be serious, especially for older folks or others with compromised immune systems. There are two varieties, he says, both with significant ‘incubation’ periods before symptoms appear. One is difficult to spread between people; the other is quite contagious. The chef has been tested, but those results take time – they won’t be known for a week. So far, the situation is ‘contained’ – few people outside this room know what’s up.
The hotel exec begins to poll the room. The first few hotel folks tend to minimize the situation – they suspect such sickness often happens in the restaurant business – all those patrons and staff in close proximity, dirty dishes washed nearby, etc. It’ll probably blow over. Legal opines that there are no regs governing this matter. The medical officer equivocates, arguing some of this, some of that, but reaching no definitive conclusion (thanks, doc!).
Now, it’s your turn. What advice will you give the meeting? How should The Company respond? Take some time to chew over these facts, and prepare your best approach to this urgent problem.

Memo 6: Defining Moments

Memo
Please read the adjacent review of Joseph Badaracco`s "Defining Moments." Then, choose one of the dilemmas he proposes* , apply the Hartman analytical model (see PPT, chapters 5 & ^) and defend your resolution of the problem presented. Finally, please briefly critique the model - does it meet your needs in analyzing this situation? Do you like Badarracco`s suggested approach better? Why/why not.

Memo 7 is optional if it can be completed within 4 days otherwise or if the price is not within my budget I will do it my self below is the assignment description for memo 7

Memo 7

Here are Memo topics. There are not enough to parcel out evenly, so feel free to write on any topic (recognizing that someone else is probably also writing on that topic)

1. Shareholder demographics: who invests in Wall Street? How has that ownership profile changed over time?
2. How are public company Board members chosen, really. Are there limits? - taken
3. Demographics of public company Boards. How have they changed over time?
4. Board member compensation, over time and current trends
5. Does the Board act as a `corporate conscience`? What`s its role in ethical performance of company?
6. Other models of Board structure, role, processes.
7. Can Boards control executive comp in the US? What models or processes should they use? Do they need regulation to keep field level?
8. If the law changed to require Stakeholder representation on each public company Board of Directors, what two Stakeholders should be represented on the Board? Why are they chosen as most important?
9. Is there a governmental/societal interest in having diverse membership on Boards of Directors? If not, why not? If so, what measures can be enacted to broaden Board membership beyond the traditional `white patriarchy?