福来鸡的案例研究The Case Study of Chick-Fil-A

发布时间：2016-08-31 06:56

随着时代的进步，同性婚姻已经成为被社会的主流讨论的一个话题。更多的精英们开始采取对同性恋中立的态度。在这种情况下，公司命名为福来鸡保持对同性婚姻的保守态度，这引起了一些公关危机。这家公司是反对同性恋，导致许多同性恋婚姻的支持者开始抵制来自福来鸡产品。在这种压力下，公司陷入了进退两难的境地。为了解决这个问题，大坝凯蒂，，该公司的总裁提出了以下三种解决方案。
With the progress of the times, same-sex marriage has become a topic that is discussed in the mainstream of society. More elites begin to take a neutral attitude towards homosexuality. In this case, a company named Chick-Fil-A maintained a conservative stance towards gay marriage, which caused its some public relations crises. This company was against homosexuality, resulting in that many gay marriage supporters began to boycott the products from Chick-Fil-A. Under such pressure, the company fell into a dilemma. In order to deal with the problem, Dam Cathy, the president of the company brought forward the following three solutions.

•Maintain the original strategy •保持原有策略

In terms of the first solution, Chick-Fil-A will keep their conservative stance and use the Bible to guide its business decisions. The advantages of their religious belief are shown as follow. First of all, it was foundation of the establishment of the company, many years of its successful management experience has verified the feasibility of this management principle; second of all, devoting to the religious belief was the company’s culture, which has always been the company's brand image, and this brand image has been recognized by many consumers. Finally, most of the staff and part of the customers were devout Christians and they were very proud of their faith. This common faith brought them together, which reduces the company’s costs for establishing the trust between consumers and the company. Therefore, changing the faith of the company may lead to a huge risk for maintaining its customer sources.

•Take a compromise principle 取一个折衷原则

Considering the second solution, the company may reformulate its management mode and its management principle may have nothing to do with the religion. Reasons for choosing the solution include: many Christians and other religious groups today gradually change their conservative stance towards gay marriage, if the company changes its original policy, it shows the attitude to keep up with the times; moreover, if the company decreases the impact of the religious beliefs on its management, it will become more rational in management, which will set it free from the pressure of public opinions. Additionally, if the company can be open on weekends, it will bring more additional income. However, there is also a negative impact, if the Chick-Fil-A changes its original faith in management principle, its employees may not adapt to the change, which may affect the stability of its staff. Besides, this change may also lead to the trust crisis, making theold customers lose their common faith with the company and they may go to choose other companies.

•Adopt a balanced attitude 采取一种平衡的态度

Judging from the third balanced approach, it will keep the original business model, and at the same time it maintains a neutral attitude toward homosexuality. To be specific, the company will not publish anti-gay remarks any more, as a result, the attack comments from the homosexual marriage supporters will quiet down gradually. Then the company can begin to focus on some charity work, so as to shape a good corporate image. This balanced solution may allow the company to avoid the risk brought by a sudden corporate reform and can alleviate the pressure arising from the public opinions.
To carry out a comprehensive comparison analysis on the above three solutions, the author believed that the president of the company should take the third business strategy. Considering from the characteristics of the culture of the American society, it is a country in the world with the largest number of immigrants, multi-ethnic and multi-racial, multi-religious situations co-exist in American society, American culture thus has a variety of features (Niculescu, 2013). Salad Bowl theory well describes the phenomenon of American multicultural society, which means that many different cultures co-exist in the U.S., it is like a large salad bowl, it does not fuse the cultures into a single, similar culture, but keeps each culture maintain its own uniqueness (Bhattacharya and Groznik, 2008). From the perspective of multiculturalism, the Chick-Fil-A kept their conservative stance and used the Bible to guide its business decisions, which was wrong, because this strategy adopted an exclusive attitude towards other cultures, which goes against the mainstream values of multiculturalism in American Society. If Chick-Fil-A reformulates the management mode, leaving religion completely out of the company management's strategy, which is also questionable, because the values of multiculturalism emphasizes mutual respect, different cultures should maintain their own characteristics. The second strategy will make the company completely lose the characteristics of their corporate culture, and therefore it is undesirable. The third strategy takes a more balanced management strategy and adopts a more neutral attitude towards same-sex marriage. This on one hand reflects its respect for other cultures by maintaining its old tradition, on the other hand, it contributes to reducing the criticism from the public, it is also consistent with the mainstream values of American society. To conclude, these three strategies have their strengths and weaknesses. Personally, the author supported the third method, because its controllability and reliability are higher than the other two.

References文献

Bhattacharya, U. and Groznik, P. (2008). Melting pot or salad bowl: some evidence from U.S. investments abroad. Journal of Financial Markets, 11(3), 228-258. 
Niculescu, R. M. (2013). In search of a dream at the crossroads of inculturation and the integration within an inter-cultural society – challenges of Immigration. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 81(28), 400-404.

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