Corporate-sustainability-responsibility

Ford is doing a phenomenal job with their responsibility as a corporation for protecting the environment and working conditions. Here are some links below that will tach you everything you would want to know about corporate responsibility in regards Ford.

http://corporate.ford.com/about-ford/sustainability/corporate-sustainability

-Annual sustainability report

-youtube videos

-Public Face

Environmental and social

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVfxX29af3Q

video talking about proper worker conditions and "conflict minerals" (John Viera)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GASMgViKgiE&NR=1

video talking about sustainable vision for Ford (John Viera)

reduce C02- ecoboost- technology- fuel economy

running on different typpes of fuels- electric values- not high volume until they can be made more affordable

Taking out weight in vehicles- so vehicles will use less fuel

Long term plan- Introducing Hydrogen and electric run vehicles

95% - vehicles get recycled ...perspective 50% of newspapers get recycled 30% of pop bottles

Ford learning from past Crisis

Ford has had a history of controversy and mistakes in the area of crisis Management that should not be taken lightly. In 1998-2002 Ford had a structural problem with the ford Explorer and the Firestone tires that it carried. Ford did an extraordinarily poor job of managing this crisis. The video below shows an outline of how ford handled the Ford Explorer and Firestone Tire incident that resulted in 250 deaths and over 300 injuries

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhFTw5QvyvY

(claymation video on Ford-Firestone debacle)

As you can see Ford chose to ignore the problem completely hoping that the issue would just go away on its own, even when the management team was aware of the problem and the potential damage that it could cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdxiglfVpKQ

(More serious video on Ford/Firestone debacle)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3RywLAlCak&NR=1

(NBC Dateline special on Ford/Firestone debacle)

This is a prime example of what happens when you hide known facts that could hurt your company's reputation. Ford had the chance to correct the situation much earlier and could have prevented many deaths if they would have acknowledged their mistake. Besides saving lives Ford's reputation would not have taken such a bad hit from the bad press would not have been as severe had the company not insisted that they had done nothing wrong.

Hopefully other Corporations have learned from Ford's mistakes in the area of handling a crisis.

Ford's Global Relations

Ford's Global Relations concept is to maintain their reputation for helping people by providing affordable cars for all. Ford's Ceo Alan Mullaly was quoted at a Stanford Business school class as saying the corporation's main goal is, "opening up the highways to everyone around the world."

_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwz1KlKXP4

Ford's CEO talks to Stanford Undergrads about running a global Corporation

In recent years Ford has scaled back on quantity and has started to produce more quality cars. According to their company website Ford employs 164,000 workers and has 70 plants worldwide across six different continents.

With the Worldwide Web gaining ground in countries across the world the company's website is an important information source for many people outside of the country. Ford uses customized home pages in a large variety of languages to meet the demand from other countries.

Here is an example from Ford's Chinese site:

http://www.ford.com.cn/servlet/ContentServer?cid=1137384171424&pagename=Page&c=DFYPage&site=FCN

As you can see the website is customized for the people of China using their language. The design of the site is scaled back from the modern era so that it is easier for the Chinese to navigate through and become more informed about the Ford brand.

Ford does eye the Chinese market specifically as a place of enormous potential growth. It will be interesting to see how Ford will accommodate to the Chinese culture in order to sell more cars in the world's largest market.

The Ford Corporation hold itself to the highest standards when it comes to sustainability. A large focus of recent campaigns has been put into more fuel efficient, and hybrid model cars in an attempt to improve the world that we live in.

Ford- Investor Relations

Investor Relations are the foundation of a publicly traded company. Strong investor relations stem from great communication to your shareholders as well as to potential investors. The shareholders must be aware of ways that they can invest more money into the company as well as be aware of the company's performance.

The job of the investor relations specialist entails putting together the internal information that is relevant to shareholders. Things like financial results, SEC Filings, Proxy Statements, and Annual reports all fall under the umbrella of investor relations. The average investor may not care about anything outside of stock prices and dividends, but it is important to emphasize transparency between corporation and investor. In todays world financial news travels faster than ever before and it is important that the shareholders are aware of the internal operations of the corporation, the more that they know the better chance that they will hold their investment and maybe offer a larger contribution.

Ford Motors handles their investor relations by offering a wealth of information to shareholders, as well as potential investors from their website. http://corporate.ford.com/investors/investor-overview

Corporate transparency is the main goal when it comes to handling investors, and the tools to attain it include; weekly e-mail alerts about internal events, advertising campaigns, annual meetings, proxy details, sales announcements, financial results, and a weekly e-news (company news delivered by email). All the content is then organized on the website and available to interested potential investors as well as shareholders that may not want to be subscribed to the mailing list.

The company website takes an informative approach and offers press releases on sales forecasts, breaking news and future plans. The main goal of the information is to allow the potential investor to make an educated decision about their choice to invest in Ford. But to also allow the current shareholders to be able to access internal information that deals with their investment.