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Blood Banana Case

Decent Essays

BUSA 4980
10/24/12
Case analysis

Blood Bananas: Chiquita in Columbia

As learned in class, the advantages of international business are great, but so are the risks. Some of the risks involve ethical issues as the ones Chiquita faced doing business in Columbia. Chiquita was the first to successfully internationalize banana trade; Chiquita did so by paying special attention to retail development and followed industry trends. Their competitive advantage was acquired when the company revolutionalized the banana trade by using refrigerated ships for the first time.
Chiquita was involved in paying bribes to Latin American government officials in exchange for preferential treatment, encouraging US coups against smaller nations, putting in …show more content…

Before a company decides to internationalize, many researches should be done on culture, political situation and so much more. Knowing other countries’ laws and regulations will prevent such lawsuit against your company. Codes of conducts, ethics hotlines should be provided to employees and that has to come from the top management. Companies should look at long-term goals versus short-term goals; companies whose culture is to just make profits at any cost faces these type of situation Chiquita faced often. Even though outsourcing is a great way to cut back on costs, companies should be very careful which countries they select to outsource in to prevent them from having a bad reputation. For example if a company chose to outsource in let’s say Nigeria, things are very corrupt and doing business, outsourcing from there could be very profitable but in a very un ethical way. How you want to represent your firm depends on the character of you as a CEO. Either you make unethical decisions and get profitable very fast and get shares doubled in the wall street at any cost, or you have ethics and you rather do things right and slowly get to profits. Strategic planning is extremely important in doing business abroad, abiding by your core values and helping the community, making sure the public recognizes your firm in a positive always attract customers which generate more revenues. The current CFO Fernando Aguirre believes

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