Business Ethics Alcoa

As part of our comprehensive course in Business Ethics we have conducted a comparison analysis between two major international aluminum corporations Alcoa and Rusal. The main objective of this report is to examine and compare ethical standards and corporate practices of both companies.

The report is divided into three parts. The first part contains an in-depth analysis of Alcoa, its history, current situation and its ethical principles. Part two provides an outlook on Rusal. Part three contains a comparison analysis of the ethical codes and principles of the two aluminum majors.

Specific issues that are covered in the present work include:

The methodology of the research includes the following three steps:

* A survey of the publicly available information including national and relevant reports, web-sites, etc;

* Interviews with employees of the target companies;

* Analytical benchmarking of the target companies.

Introduction into the Industry

The aluminum industry is an extremely competitive and highly consolidated sector with six major corporations accounting for over 40% of global output. This can be explained by the high entry barriers that are related to the specifics of aluminum production.

The process of aluminum production includes bauxite extraction, production of alumina and smelting of aluminum. The scarce bauxite resources have already been split among the key aluminum producers. Moreover, the extraction of bauxites require significant investments.

Also aluminum-producing companies need to own proprietary technologies and have steady access to cost-competitive energy.

Rusal: history and current situation

RUSAL is the world’s largest aluminum producer and one of the world’s major producers of alumina. The company was consolidated in 2000 and, following its merger with SUAL and the alumina assets of Glencore, became the global aluminum industry leader in 2007. RUSAL employs over 72,000 people across the globe.

The company...