effort on improving upon the established Generic Building Blocks to maintain their competitive advantage. The best way to measure success may be through Benchmarking with other companies and products, while striving to combat organizational Inertia by identifying barriers to change, ensuring quality corporate leadership, and appropriate judicial power is applied internally. A Company must remain flexible enough to meet our ever-changing customer demands. Second, I would suggest that they exercise caution in the area of defining the existing business goals, by continually asking and reviewing three questions: (1) Who is being satisfied? (2) What is being satisfied?, and How are customer needs being satisfied? This will enable Dow Chemicals to broadly define their business, and prevent getting trapped in any one segment of the industry by major shifts in demand.Third, I would caution stockholders to exercise prudence with respect to goal guidance and control of Dow Chemical. Status, power, job security, and income normally drive senior managers. Stockholders can control on-the-job-consumption and empire building by applying governance mechanisms, such as a board of directors with an outside director appointed as chairperson this will facilitate an impartial view and suggestion, and gearing CEO compensation towards a stock-based compensation plan.Fourth, I would encourage Dow Chemical to embark upon a positive public relations, Marketing, and Human Resource campaign. In 1984 Union Carbide had chemical spills in Bhopal, India, which was then settled with the Indian government. However, ill feelings may still prevail among the populace. Social responsibility leads to profitability. This could be achieved by Dow Chemicals Human Resources Department aggressively hiring local residents and getting employees involved in the decision making process, safety precautions, developing committees and methods of employee feedback, and training. Public ...
