Alcoa’s Core Values BUS 250 Corporate and Social Responsibility The Aluminum Company of America, also known as Alcoa, is a corporation that has made the choice of investing in people and technology to make business compatible with environmental and social sustainability. Alcoa’s core values in business are; integrity, safety and health, quality of work, treatment of people, accountability, and profitability. Alcoa’s ethical work climate is diverse, encourages open communication and learning, and community outreach. The company’s strategy encourages employees to be the first to brainstorm ideas for improvements and innovations.

They are also supported to take responsibility and ingenuity by rewarding them financially and non-financially. Among the diversity they expect a work environment that employees are respected, valued and encouraged to contribute to the company. The ethical criterions that Alcoa uses are principles. They conduct surveys among the community through focus groups to find new programs that will help the environment. Alcoa is committed to improve the quality of life within the communities their employees live and work. Their principles also are geared towards research and development of innovative products and environmental issues.

Alcoa is highly committed to the preservation of natural resources and environmental stewardship, they believe it is the right thing to do and a key factor to exceptional value to shareholders. Top management commitment to their values played in important role in their transformation. The leader of Alcoa, Paul O’Neill, began with reducing the amount of products sold and widened the range of business globally. Alcoa also created a new office, Environmental Health and Safety, at the corporate level to comply with each country’s environmental and health standards.

More responsibilities were also given to front-line managers and field managers, reducing higher management positions within Alcoa. The managers conducted performance goals and became responsible for operating plans. To support a strong ethical culture Alcoa created a confidential phone line called Compliance Line. To ensure employees maintain integrity without possible scrutiny, the line was made to report and express concern of violations of state, federal or company policies. If a problem is reported the company investigates the situation. Alcoa transformed their company to reflect the core values they encourage.

Through the communities globally, they support employees to use integrity and responsibility to make the environment livable and safe. References: http://www. alcoa. com/global/en/careers/whats_it_like_env. asp Alcoa’s website on the work environment http://files. harc. edu/Projects/Archive/Reports/EnvironmentalDecisionMaking. pdf Alcoa by Jurgen Schmandt and Sunil Tankha, Houston Advanced Research Center, Center for Global Studies Lawrence, A. T. , & Weber, J. (2011). Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy (13th Ed. ). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.