Alcoa’s Core Values in Practice
Amanda Ponshock
BUS 250 Corporate and Social Responsibility
Instructor: Sheila Fry
February 2, 2015

“Alcoa began under the name of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company in 1888, changing its name to the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) in 1907” (Lawrence, 2011). This company developed into a large-scale vertical integration that had control over the inputs on aluminum production. In 1985 Fred Fetterolf decided the company needed to document that all employees of the company need to live by: “Integrity, Environment, Health and Safety, Customer, Accountability, excellence, people and profitability” (Lawrence, 2011). When reaching the 90’s CEO Paul O’Neill showed his belief in the importance by having Alcoa implement “a global ethics and compliance program, and the focus on health and Safety was interwoven through the company’s program” (Lawrence, 2011). From what I have read I personally would categorize Alcoa’s ethical work climate under the Benevolence. It can also be put under Principles in some places but I feel it fits better under Benevolence. I feel it should be labeled as benevolence because of the approach CEO Paul O’Neill took when receiving a complaint in 1996 from activist shareholders that the health and safety conditions at a Mexican facility had gone down. O’Neill made a personal visit to the facility and incidents not reported to corporate like the company policy states. Taking the facts into consideration, even though the Manager had high record of sales and profits, O’Neill decided to let that employee go and went under new management. He did this because he cared about his employee’s health and safety and wanted every employee to have the chance to learn and possibly prevent further incidents from occurring. Alcoa management supported the ethical principal that “no employee should leave work in a worse