Reread the Management Focus on Unocal, and answer the following questions: (Second page)
Summary 100-200 word count
a. Was it ethical for Unocal to enter into a partnership with a brutal military dictatorship for financial gain?
b. What actions could Unocal have taken, short of not investing at all, to safeguard the human rights of people affected by the gas pipeline project?
Sustainability at Umicore
In introducing Umicore as the most sustainable multinational firm in the world for 2013 on its Global 100 Index, Doug Morrow, vice president of research at Corporate Knights, a Toronto-based media company, said that sustainability is "recognizing that a corporation's long-term interests are intellectually and financially consistent with resource efficiency, proactive health and safety practices, and responsible leadership."
"Sustainability is when what is good for a company is also good for the planet, and vice-versa," added the editor in chief of Corporate Knights, Toby Heaps.
Umicore NV, formerly Union Minière until 2001, is a multinational materials technology company headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. The company was founded in 1989 as a merger of four companies in the mining and smelting industries.
Subsequent to the merger, Umicore reshaped itself to focus on technology-related businesses such as refining and recycling of precious metals along with the manufacturing of specialized products from precious metals.
As a solid and respected company, Umicore has been included as a component of Belgium's benchmark BEL20 index since its inception in 1991 (BEL20 is the benchmark stock market index of Euronext Brussels, the Brussels Stock Exchange).
Umicore's core business areas or divisions are Catalysis, Energy Materials, Performance Materials, and Recycling. Catalysis is involved with abatement of global automotive emissions and production of compounds for use in chemicals, life science, and pharmaceutical industries.
The materials produced by Energy Materials can be found in a number of applications used in the production and storage of clean energy. Performance Materials applies its technology and know-how to the unique properties of precious and other metals (to achieve safer products). Recycling treats complex waste streams containing precious and other nonferrous metals.
Across these four business areas, Umicore clearly defines its sustainability objectives and goals, which address market orientation, multiple stakeholders, and corporate social responsibility.
The company's financial objective is to achieve double-digit revenue growth, with the goal of generating an average return on capital employed of more than 15 percent annually. Such a goal is market oriented with a clear, bottom-line financial expectation for performance. For corporate social responsibility, the focus is on two issues.
Environmentally, Umicore focuses on reducing its carbon footprint by 20 percent, reducing the impact of metal emissions on water and air by 20 percent, and investing in tools to better understand and measure life cycles of its products.
Socially, Umicore focuses on achieving zero lost-time accidents, reducing body concentrations of metals to which employees have exposure, and individual employee development. Umicore also takes a strong stand in its stakeholder management, stating that all of its sites are expected to identify key stakeholders and engage with the local community.