a. Should firms take stances on contentious social issues? Discuss. b.Should fir
ID: 420875 • Letter: A
Question
a. Should firms take stances on contentious social issues? Discuss. b.Should firms take stances on political issues? c. Describe union membership trends in the USA. What are implications for strategic planning in firms such as Boeing or Heinz or Caterpillar? d. List some legal/ethical ways to gather competitive intelligence. List some illegal/unethical ways. e. As value of the dollar rises, USA firms doing business abroad see their profits fall, so some firms raise prices of their products to offset the decrease in profits. What are some risks of raising price?
Explanation / Answer
Answer C:-
Answer:According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the union membership rate (the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union) in the USA was 11.8 percent in 2011, down slightly from 11.9 percent the prior year. The numberofwage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.8 million, also showedlittlemovement over the year. By comparison, in 1983, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers. Highlights from the Bureau’s 2011 data are as follows:
* Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (37.0%) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.9%).
* Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 36.8%, while the lowest rate occurred in sales and related occupations (3.0%).
* Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.
* Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate (24.1%) and North Carolina again had the lowest rate (2.9%).
Boeing recently built a manufacturing plant in Charleston, South Carolina because SC is basically a nonunion state. Heinz and Caterpillar also look to build new manufacturing plants in nonunion states. Sometimes, if the only choice is to locate in a heavily unionized state, then firms will locate offshore, but Europe is much more unionized than the USA.
Answer D:-
Answer: Various legal and ethical ways to obtain competitive intelligence include the following:
Some illegal/unethical ways include bribery, wire tapping, conducting job interviews with no intent of hiring but rather simply to gain information, lying, sabotage, coercing, and stealing.
Answer E:-
: Trends in the dollar’s value have significant and unequal effects on companies in different industries and in different locations. A low value of the dollar means lower imports and higher exports, which helps U.S. companies’ competitiveness in world markets. Manufacturers in many domestic industries actually benefit because of a weak dollar, which forces foreign rivals to raise prices and extinguish discounts. The value of the dollar changes some every day, but generally in 2014-2015 the value of the dollar was very strong and thus profits of USA companies with a lot of revenue from abroad were lowered on average six to seven percent. Why the lowered profits? Because, for example, 100 euros earned in Europe, when translated back to U.S. dollars for reporting purposes, the 100 euros is worth maybe $75. To combat this “loss,” some companies try to raise prices in their European or Mexican stores, but that carries a risk of alienating shoppers, angering retailers, and giving local competitors a price edge. Some advantages of a strong dollar, however, are that companies with substantial outside USA operations, see their overseas expenses, such as salaries paid in euros, become cheaper. Another advantage of a strong dollar is that it gives American companies greater firepower for international acquisitions. Another advantage of a strong dollar is that companies that import benefit from greater buying power, since their dollars now go further overseas.
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