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Tom's of Maine

In: Business and Management

Submitted By rzonca
Words 319
Pages 2
Tom Chappel's spiritual perspective IS the company company culture – as he puts it, the company is his ministry. When asked to what extent his spiritual perspective is responsible for the successes/failures, I guess the we have to define what is success and what is failure. For Tom, success is staying true to his values, creating the moral framework and fashioning the entire company upon it. Numbers, or profits, are almost secondary to this. What he considered failures occurred when the company began to make all of its decisions based on profitability, almost to the point of forsaking his ethical & moral standards. What the business world would look at as failures (low profits, or in some years losses), were stepping stones for creating the successful morally & ethically pure business Tom desired. It was, after all, these “failures” which led him to studies at the Harvard Divinity School, which in turn strongly influenced his finalized mission statement & statement of beliefs.

As the initial success of the company grew & Tom hired professionals/young MBA's to expand, there were conflicts (as in the suggestion of adding saccharin to the toothpaste) because the new team was making decisions based on numbers (profit) rather than Tom's vision to commitment to natural products. The addition of saccharin would have achieved more financial success, but would have been perceived as a failure by Tom to go against his own commitment.

The possible risks an organization might encounter when encouraging spiritual expression/values are that the individuals in the organization are not “on the same page”, in other words having differing values that could conflict with each other. This obstacle could be (and was) overcome by a solid mission statement and statement of beliefs. The advantage of this spiritually-inspired business philosophy is that all employees can become empowered by a common spiritual framework, without having explicit connection to any one religion.

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