Timberland: Commerce and Justice

 Timberland: Commerce and Justice

 

Introduction

As the CEO of Timberland, Jeffrey Swartz grew its revenue from $156 million in 1989 to $1.2 billion in 2002. Throughout these years, his leadership and vision were more focused on social issues happening around the globe rather than on his competitors or profits made. He focused to see the manufacturer and retailer of outdoor wear become an active participant in social justice and creating an innovative business model to address those challenges. Upon meeting Khazei, co-founder of a nonprofit called “City Year” which received hundreds of boots from Timberland, Swartz, and Khazei created an alliance, and later on Timberland developed their own company-based community service called “Path to ServiceTM” to grasp the commercial with the social value. Through this initiative, employees were allocated up to 32 hours per year of paid leave for volunteer service. During Swartz's tenure, Timberland established good relationships with other nonprofits such as Share Our Strength and SkillsUSA. He created a context in which the vision of Timberland and its core values were in line with the community

 

Problem Analysis

Motivated by what he called “the instincts of a third-generation entrepreneur”, Swartz generated successful results that helped Timberland at the time to dominate the outdoor footwear industry. However, the company took a financial turn when they posted $22.5million in profits in 1993 sales. The following year, sales remained flat, and the company posted an earnings loss for the first time. Voices within the company questioned the company’s commitment to deal with the Path of Service program and the partnership with City Year. Despite the struggle, Jeff and other leaders within Timberland believed that its community service was and should continue to be a fundamental aspect of Timberland’s long-term strategy. Timberland soon recovered to eventually report steady revenue growth, while not compromising service principles.

 

Recommendations

Timberland’s financial and operational reports demonstrate that organizations can “do well while doing good”. Therefore, I will recommend Timberland to improve on aligning the company’s vision statement with all the stakeholders locally and internationally. With this positive international scale, Timberland must encourage and strengthen leadership, power-sharing, and decision making which in return increases effective communication of the organization’s vision.  My last recommendation will be to evaluate deeply how these nonprofits are affecting the change in the company. Timberland should align itself with a company that shares the same values.

 

Personal Application

Timberland is a great example of leadership. A third-generation entrepreneur changed the company’s initial goal to a more social organization thus creating real solutions for the real people. Swartz was convinced that his new decisions will work and stick with it. The large-scale transformation was possible because of his persistency and vision thus changing the lives of many through the nonprofits organizations.

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