Firmenich: Juggling the short and the long term (Cartoon case)
Formatted like a comic-strip, this case showcases how Firmenich achieved resilience and strong sustainability commitments thanks to its family ownership. The case investigates how family ownership spanning across four generations and 125 years, has influenced the company’s core values and brought a long-term perspective to its strategy, which allowed sustainability, diversity, and inclusion on the executives’ agenda many decades before its peers. The case concludes by illustrating how these core foundational values allowed Firmenich to weather the COVID-19 storm by prompting the organization to react very rapidly, in a display of strong resilience. Firmenich is the winner of the 2019 IMD-Pictet Sustainability in Family Business Award.
- The case aims to illustrate how family businesses tend to have core foundational beliefs that support strong, long-standing sustainability commitments.
Firmenich, Consumer Goods, Cosmetics and Perfumes, Food and Beverage
2020
Cranfield University
Wharley End Beds MK43 0JR, UK
Tel +44 (0)1234 750903
Email [email protected]
Harvard Business School Publishing
60 Harvard Way, Boston MA 02163, USA
Tel (800) 545-7685 Tel (617)-783-7600
Fax (617) 783-7666
Email [email protected]
NUCB Business School
1-3-1 Nishiki Naka
Nagoya Aichi, Japan 460-0003
Tel +81 52 20 38 111
Email [email protected]
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