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Patagonia is one of the most successful companies across the board when looking at concepts such as DEI, attitudes at work, motivation, and sustainability initiatives all of which will be illustrated in this presentation.
These core values shape all decisions made within Patagonia and lead to their mission statement.
“Our Core Values - Patagonia.” Patagonia Outdoor Clothing & Gear,
https://www.patagonia.com/core-values/.
“cause no unnecessary harm”
(Chouinard 15)
Patagonia has followed this mission by using buisness as a force for good.
Examples include joining the Fair Labor Association to create a living wage for their workers (Chouinard & Stanley 58) and donating 1% of total company revenue or 10% of pre-tax profits per year depending on which sum is greater (Zint & Frederik 94).
Chouinard, Yvon, and Vincent Stanley. The Responsible Company: What We've Learned from
Patagonia's First 40 Years. Second ed., Patagonia Books, 2016.
https://archive.org/details/responsiblecompa0000chou/page/4/mode/2up
Zint, Michaela, and Rob Frederick. “Marketing and Advertising a ‘Deep Green’ Company: The
Case of Patagonia, Inc.” The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, no. 1, 2001, pp. 93–113. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/jcorpciti.1.93.
“at Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal…We strive to balance the funding of environmental activities with the desire to continue in business for the next 100 years” (Chouinard 160).
Patagonia has also made a historic choice to have all stock be transferred to trusts dedicated to fighting climate change outside of any person's control (McCormick). This is to ensure the mission and values of the company are upheld and related efforts are properly funded (McCormick).
Patagonia's recent actions seem to imply that they put their money where their mouth is in terms of following their core values
Profit is not the sole motive of Patagonia. Growing slowly and with intent on creating a workplace built on shared company culture and diverse, motivated employees (Chouinard 170) allows Patagonia to grow in such a manner that these core values are distorted as little as possible during the growth of the company (Chouinard 71).
McCormick, Erin. “Patagonia's Billionaire Owner Gives Away Company to Fight Climate Crisis.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 14 Sept. 2022,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/14/patagonias-billionaire-owner-gives-away-company-to-fight-climate-crisis-yvon-chouinard.
Chouinard, Yvon. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.
Penguin Press, 2005. https://archive.org/details/letmypeoplegosur00yvon_0
Patagonia is also committed to creating a diverse workforce culture that encourages working together outside the traditional hierarchical structure (Chouinard 167-168). This is achieved by creating employee environments with diverse religious, social, and political beliefs and attracting people across these spectrums. The company motto is the uniting factor between all these aspects (166-167). An example of this is that over 50% of all jobs are held by women (170).
How Patagonia implements their core values into their organizational structure is thus clearly effective. There are on average 900 applicants applying for every job opening, which shows the attractiveness of their core values (Chouinard 170).
Chouinard, Yvon. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.
Penguin Press, 2005. https://archive.org/details/letmypeoplegosur00yvon_0
Bauer, Talya, and Berrin Erdogan. Organizational Behavior: Bridging Science and Practice, Flat World, Boston, MA, 2021.
“Patagonia.” Fortune, Fortune, 30 Nov. 2017,
https://fortune.com/ranking/best-workplaces-for-diversity/2019/patagonia/.
Bauer, Talya, and Berrin Erdogan. Organizational Behavior: Bridging Science and Practice, Flat World, Boston, MA, 2021.
Chhabra, Esha. “Does Patagonia Have the Answer for Narrowing the Gender Wage Gap?” The
Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 17 Nov. 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/nov/17/us-companies-gender-wa
ge-gap-patagonia-arjuna-capital-salesforce-expedia.
Glenday, John. “Patagonia Climb Ambassador Discusses Gender Identity and Sport in Documentary.” The Drum, The Drum, 7 Oct. 2021,
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2021/10/07/patagonia-climb-ambassador-discusses-gender-identity-and-sport-documentary.
FemiGnarly. “Patagonia's Resistance to Plus Sizes.” FemiGnarly, 20 Nov. 2020, https://femignarly.com/2019/12/05/patagonias-resistance-to-plus-sizes/.
https://youtu.be/ahuiQT4xMdw
Anderson, Bruce. “5 'Ridiculous' Ways Patagonia Has Built a Culture That Does Well and Does Good.” LinkedIn, 27 Sept. 2019, https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-connect/ways-patagonia-built-ridiculous-culture.
“Culture & Life.” Patagonia, https://www.patagonia.com/culture.html.
Positive:
Negative:
“Patagonia Reviews: What Is It Like to Work at Patagonia?” Glassdoor, https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Patagonia-Reviews-E5474.htm.
Mautz, Scott. “Patagonia Has Only 4 Percent Employee Turnover Because They Value This 1
Thing So Much”
https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/how-can-patagonia-have-only-4-percent-worker-turnov
er-hint-they-pay-activist-employees-bail.html
“Culture & Life.” Patagonia, https://www.patagonia.com/culture.html.
Mautz, Scott. “Patagonia Has Only 4 Percent Employee Turnover Because They Value This 1
Thing So Much”
https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/how-can-patagonia-have-only-4-percent-worker-turnov
er-hint-they-pay-activist-employees-bail.html
Sustainability:
Decision-Making + Motivation:
Kamprad, Dennis. “How Sustainable Is Patagonia? All You Need to Know.” Impactful Ninja, https://impactful.ninja/how-sustainable-is-patagonia/#:~:text=In%20the%20US%2C%20Patagonia%20uses,80%25%20compared%20to%20virgin%20fibers.
Melchionne, Laurie. “Sustainability Battle of Brands: Patagonia vs the North Face.” Impakter, 2 Feb. 2023, https://impakter.com/sustainability-battle-of-brands-patagonia-vs-the-north-face/.
Melchionne, Laurie. “Sustainability Battle of Brands: Patagonia vs the North Face.” Impakter, 2 Feb. 2023, https://impakter.com/sustainability-battle-of-brands-patagonia-vs-the-north-face/.
Chouinard, Yvon. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.
Penguin Press, 2005. https://archive.org/details/letmypeoplegosur00yvon_0
Bauer, Talya, and Berrin Erdogan. Organizational Behavior: Bridging Science and Practice, Flat
World, Boston, MA, 2021.
Alutto, Joseph A., and James A. Belasco. “A Typology for Participation in Organizational
Decision Making.” Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 1, 1972, pp. 117–25. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2392100.
Chouinard, Yvon. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.
Penguin Press, 2005. https://archive.org/details/letmypeoplegosur00yvon_0
Bauer, Talya, and Berrin Erdogan. Organizational Behavior: Bridging Science and Practice, Flat
World, Boston, MA, 2021.
Looking at Patagonia's business model and analyzing their core values, practices and policies, and organizational behaviors we can evaluate how good of a job Patagonia does at upholding their mission to cause no unnecessary harm. All of their procedures and programs in place work to minimize harms and as a B-corp, they are ahead of their competitors in regard to issues such as sustainability and DEI. But, due to the nature of being a company that produces goods, there are still environmental harms that exist. They try to offset these harms by "donating" the company to the planet, but there are still emissions that come from producing such goods.
Does Patagonia
uphold its
core values?
Part of Pargonia's value of not following conventional practices is how they pride themself on valuing people over profits. Patagonia’s emphasis on hiring workers that are free-thinkers and highly motivated by the company's core values means that these workers often are motivated to be part of company discussions (Bauer & Erdogan 138). Additionally, we can see how they aren't profit driven through their financial contributions to environmental preservation efforts.
Bauer, Talya, and Berrin Erdogan. Organizational Behavior: Bridging Science and Practice, Flat
World, Boston, MA, 2021.
Justice
Patagonia focuses on racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. Patagonia strives to create an authentic culture. They believe that “An authentic culture starts with the leaders. It's worth the pursuit because authentic behavior binds human beings to one another, reinforces self-identities, and creates a bridge to a sense of belonging” (Mautz). Patagonia upholds their value of justice by creating an ethical work environment through their inclusive and harm minimizing practices and policies.
Mautz, Scott. “Patagonia Has Only 4 Percent Employee Turnover Because They Value This 1
Thing So Much” https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/how-can-patagonia-have-only-4-percent-worker-turnov
er-hint-they-pay-activist-employees-bail.html
Environmentalism
Patagonia is ahead of their competitors in regard to sustainability. For example, “Patagonia uses 7% more recycled materials than Northface when supplying materials and clothes." (Melchionne 1). Additionally, as B-corp they are legally required to weigh the impact that all of their choices have on their employees, their customers, and the environment. B Corporations are evaluated on five different company areas to see whether or not they fit the criteria: environment, workers, customers, community, and governance. Patagonia has performed so well in each area and are top ranked in best places to work for the environment in our world today (Kamprad, 1). There are still areas where they can improve environmentally but they are doing a strong and good job at upholding this value relative to others.
Kamprad, Dennis. “How Sustainable Is Patagonia? All You Need to Know.” Impactful Ninja, https://impactful.ninja/how-sustainable-is-patagonia/#:~:text=In%20the%20US%2C%20Patagonia%20uses,80%25%20compared%20to%20virgin%20fibers.
Melchionne, Laurie. “Sustainability Battle of Brands: Patagonia vs the North Face.” Impakter, 2 Feb. 2023, https://impakter.com/sustainability-battle-of-brands-patagonia-vs-the-north-face/.
Integrity
They uphold their value of integrity by implementing and following moral practices. They go above and beyond to try and mitigate economic, environmental, and social harms. They do this by implement DEI policies and training, and they use a slow and intentional hiring process. We can see that these programs are effective. For example, Patagonia has been praised for having a gender-balanced workforce with 50% or a little over 50% of the employees identifying as women (Chhabra). But patagonia has been less successful in using gender inclusive language and sizing. These are areas where the integrity of Patagonia could improve.
Chhabra, Esha. “Does Patagonia Have the Answer for Narrowing the Gender Wage Gap?” The
Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 17 Nov. 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/nov/17/us-companies-gender-wa
ge-gap-patagonia-arjuna-capital-salesforce-expedia.
Patagonia upholds its value of quality both in their products and by creating a high quality work environment. We can see this through their high levels of job satisfaction. In Chapter 4 of their textbook, Bauer and Erdogan list a handful of factors that impact job satisfaction the factors boiled down to how well an employee was suited for the job and the environment, how well the job matched up to the expectations, and how well the work-life balance was maintained (Bauer & Erdogan 114). In each of these areas Patagonia goes above and beyond to ensure that the employee comes first and that they are satisfied with their work. Scott Mautz wrote in his article, “Patagonia Has Only 4 Percent Employee Turnover Because They Value This 1 Thing So Much”, about some of these Patagonia policies that go the extra mile. He shares, “paying to send nannies on business trips to embrace and support work-life integration, and hosting childcare right on their facilities” (Mautz). This demonstrates that Patagonia is more than willing to take on extra expenses to foster a proper work-life balance and knows how to create a job environment that satisfies their employees. Additionally, they use recycled materials, organic cotton and other imperfect but best alternative options for the materials of clothing (Chouinard 212).
Chouinard, Yvon, and Vincent Stanley. The Responsible Company: What We've Learned from
Patagonia's First 40 Years. Second ed., Patagonia Books, 2016.
https://archive.org/details/responsiblecompa0000chou/page/4/mode/2up
Mautz, Scott. “Patagonia Has Only 4 Percent Employee Turnover Because They Value This 1 Thing So Much”
https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/how-can-patagonia-have-only-4-percent-worker-turnov
er-hint-they-pay-activist-employees-bail.html