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April 29, 2015
Karl Gray
MGMT 447
Corporate Values and Responsibility
In this paper, I will look at the corporate values and corporate responsibility for Verizon
Wireless. I will split the paper into two parts, first exploring corporate values and then corporate
responsibility.
Corporate Values
Corporate values are somewhat of a hot topic. Corporate values and corporate culture
are things in the past that were created by the employees of companies and how they worked
together. Word of mouth regarding corporate culture at successful companies inundates today’s
pop-culture, with larger than life stories of how things are in a successful organization. 2013
movies Jobs (Kutcher) and The Internship (Vaughn) glamorize the corporate culture at both Ap-
ple and Google respectively. These movies portray leadership as larger than life motivators that
create an exciting and unique culture to work for and a rewarding place to be. I believe in fact
organizations can have aspects of corporate culture that make them amazingly rewarding to be
a part of. 2014 documentary Atari: Game Over (Penn) glamorized the corporate culture of Atari
Corporation during the late 1970s and early 1980s sometimes implying it was the best corporate
culture when the company was in its heydays and the employees once leaving would never be
satisfied to work anywhere else again.
Having lived in Silicon Valley for 5 years of my life, I know corporate culture is much dif-
ferent than it is in the midwest. Showing up to meetings in business casual and being over-
dressed would never happen in the midwest. In the midwest we compliment each other on
power ties and designer shoes. In Silicon Valley it is designer jeans and attitude shirts. Flex time
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and telecommuting is mainstream, and employee happiness and retention is the among the top
priorities in this corporate culture. Oracle Inc., headquartered in Redwood City, CA. has a mas-
sive campus which includes many immunities such as cafes, gift shops and even a huge gym,
basketball courts, and a swimming pool all free for employee use (Bort).
Even West Coast companies not in tech seem to be much more relaxed than their East
Coast competitors. I looked up corporate mission statements for Oracle, Google, and Apple,
and they are very modest and understated. In fact, Apple’s mission statement isn’t a mission
statement at all (Farfan). When we compare this to Verizon’s mission statement, there is a host
of differences in the mission statements of the companies (Verizon Wireless). The title of the
document containing Verizon’s mission statement is “Integrity is at the Core of Who We Are”. In
and of itself that is a lofty statement. Start reading on page three, and we read that “Best is our
