Running Head: The J.M.

Smucker Company

Case Study: The J.M. Smucker Company

Changwei Xu

Ottawa University
The J.M. Smucker Company

Summarize

J.M. Smucker Company is a company that sold apple butter at the beginning and has been

established at 1897. For now, it becomes to a famous manufacturer of jam, peanut butter, jelly,

fruit syrups, beverages, shortening, ice cream toppings, oils, and other products in North

America (jmsmucker, n.d.). Except the varieties of the different items they sell and the high

quality of the products, another key factor causes the companies succeed is daily operations

are guided by honesty, respect, trust, responsibility, and fairness (J.M.Smucker, 2017).

The company takes ethical standards very important when they are hiring new employees.

They will do background check for new hiring to make sure they meet the requirement. After

they join the company, they will have an orientation to introduce how company’s success

related to each employee’s ethical standard and the company’s culture. They will also provide

some different examples and let the new hiring understand the different between different

working process. To let them know the importance of teamwork. The company

The company also take environment protection very seriously, they are improving

wastewater management, engage employees to use recycled materials. They know that protect

the environment is the best way to keep the world better and to keep the company can

developing in the future.

Question 1: Why would ethics be important to a company like J.M. Smucker? How can its

focus on values and ethics improve its business performance?

A company’s ethics culture is an important part of the company’s culture, is also one of the

core content of modern enterprise culture management. It can balance the internal and external
The J.M. Smucker Company

relationship between employees by establish an ethics standard, ethics education, and ethics

evaluation. Also, organizational behavior will impact personal success (Griffin). Personal

success is very important to a company’s success. So has a higher ethics standard is very

important to the company like J.M. Smucker.

Sometimes it’s hard to evaluate if one thing is correct or wrong, so ethics can balance the

situation between right or wrong. When something happened, we cannot only judge or blame

the employee about it because the manager is still taking the responsibility if something goes

wrong. But we can evaluate by ethics standard. The ethics standard will affect the employee’s

day by day to let them have a clearer picture for what is the right things to do and what is not

the right things to do.

Question 2: Appearing on “best places to work” lists can increase an employer’s popularity,

even among lower-qualified applicants. The increased volume of applicants can be costly and

time-consuming. What do you feel are the benefits and drawbacks to being on this type of list?

Do you think that it is generally beneficial to be publicly recognized as a good employer? Why

or why not?

In my opinion, being on “best places to work” is definitely a great business signal to the

company. I’ll list some of the benefits and drawbacks that I think may cause to the company.

Benefits:

1. Improving corporate awareness in the industry.

2. Brings more candidates who has relevant capabilities to join the company

3. Make employees feel proud of be one of the members in the company

The J.M. Smucker Company

Drawbacks:

1. Lower-qualified applicants will waste HR department’s time

2. Larger amount of the document will make HR’s working less efficiency

3. May cause the public more focus on the working environment not on the succeed of the

company’s products.

I think to be on this kind of list it’s beneficial to the company as a good employer. The

reason is we can have more candidates to apply for the company and the company can choose

suitable person. The better employees can bring company more profits to make the company

better.

Question 3: Do J.M. Smucker’s values and culture appeal to you as a potential employee? Why

or why not?

I’m really interested on J.M. Smucker’s company culture. It seems fun and fair to each

employee. Also, I’m more interested on the environment protection part. As I know food

industry always caused a lot of waste of foods, water and gas. But for this company, they are

working on how they can use these as renewable energies. And they encourage employees to

use recycled materials, I think it means they can have some special material’s shopping bag, I

heard some brand use pineapple to make bags, and I think it will be really interesting if I can

join the company.

Also, this company takes ethics very seriously, I think wherever we are at, to have a high

standard ethics team member to working with will make the job easier and to make the

company to be success faster.

The J.M. Smucker Company

Conclusion:

After learning about this case, I think high ethics standard can be a important part to make

the company successful and also to help employees to achieve their personal goals. Also this

will helps the company to have a good reputation over the industry.
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Reference

GriffinW.Ricky. Organizational Behavor managing people and organizations.

GriffinW.Ricky.

J.M.Smucker. (2017). The J.M. Smucker Company.

jmsmucker. (n.d.). jmsmucker . Retrieved from jmsmucker: https://www.jmsmucker.com/