Greyston Bakery Case Study

Greyston Bakery: The Zen of Philanthropy

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Greyston Bakery: The Zen of Philanthropy

The new CEO appears to have much more corporate business experience than the previous CEO. Should this be a concern for the corporation?

William Mistretta who took over as CEO after Julius Walls resigned has more experience in diverse management roles in the corporate world. Mistretta had around 25 years’ experience in doing corporate business while Walls only experience came from working in a chocolate company and briefly as a Marketing Director in Greyston Bakery Board of management. According to the text, Julius Walls had established a task-oriented system that worked excellently for the company. Walls had a good understanding

Why don’t many companies follow suit?

The Greyston bakery can be termed as a social experiment. While it is a profit-making corporation, the company’s mission and vision are tied to improving social welfare of its employees and the community. The corporation provides job to people shunned by other employers and the society in general. Its full profits are used to fund social activities that include teaching real-life skills to employees, creating housing for homeless people, conducting medical clinics for people living with HIV/AIDS and empowering people to become self-sufficient.

In most cases, profits and social welfare are at odds. In such a case, business executives being answerable to shareholders are likely to focus on the profit-making aspect of the business rather than going against the interest of their shareholders by promoting social welfare at the expense of profits. In addition, research shows that companies actively involved in Corporate Social Responsibility efforts are more likely to be targeted by activists (Kress, 2011). In fact, it has been established that many companies initiate corporate social welfare projects when they stand to gain from those projects. For example, automakers resulted to creating fuel-efficient vehicles when they became profitable; similarly, energy conservation became an important CSR activity when the cost of energy became very costly. As such, the companies are benefiting their society as they follow their own