Communication in Responsible Business: Strategies, Concepts, and Cases - First Post

Mack Trucks - Responsible Business

This is my first post about this new study line. I chose a company called Mack Trucks, which is an American symbol as well as being related to the last company that I’ve posted about, Volvo Group.

Mack Trucks was founded in 1900 by Jack and Gus Mack in Brooklyn, NY and was first known by Mack Brothers Company. Now days, Mack Trucks is part of the Volvo Group, which employs more than 90,000 people, has production facilities in 19 countries and sells their products in more than 180 markets.

All this information can be found at www.macktrucks.com , the visitor has just to click on the link ‘’CORPORATE’’ which will lead to an institutional page about Mack. Why am I saying all of this? Because this is my study line on this post. I’m going to analyze if Mack Trucks can be considered a Responsible Business according to the topics proposed by Roger N. Conaway and Oliver Laasch in the book ‘’ Communication in responsible business – Strategies, concepts and cases.’’

According to Roger and Oliver a responsible business is ‘’ A responsible business (committed company) is a company that has made a credible commitment and taken action to tackle its immediate responsibilities toward a broad set of stakeholders, and progressed toward its long-term responsibility to become a sustainable business. Conaway, Roger N.; Laasch, Oliver (2012-08-12). Communication in Responsible Business: Strategies, Concepts, and Cases (Kindle Locations 289-292). Business Expert Press. Kindle Edition.’’

From this concept I went to Mack’s website to find out information about the company, because it’s not enough to just be a responsible business The company has to communicate their initiatives and what they have done for society and  the environment to company’s stakeholders. So once I was surfing on the website, I clearly saw the link ‘’CORPORATE’’ and clicked on it and this link took me to another page full of info about the brand and the company.

what I'm trying to say is that before I know if Mack is or isn’t a Responsible Business, the communication on it was already working. It was organized, with good content on the website which allowed me do my research about this topic and about the company. To see if Mack is or not a Responsible Business I used as a parameter six topics the book says every company has to have to be a R.B.  They are: Ethics, Philanthropy, Responsibility, Sustainability, Citizenship and Entrepreneurship.

On Mack’s website, I easily found on the ‘’Corporate’’ page information about Sustainability, what Mack is doing and as a truck company is trying to help the environment, even being directly and not directly responsible for pollution. On the left side there’s another link ‘’Corporate Social Responsibility’’ which has reports and the info about what Mack Trucks is doing about ‘’ Contributions, Disaster Relief, Environmental Care, Ethics, Partnerships, Public Policy and Safety’’.

After analyzing what Mack Trucks have been doing as a R.B. and how the company is communicating these actions, I asked myself, "is Mack Trucks a Sustainable Business?" And, or are they ‘’Walking the talk’’ or ‘’Talking the walk’’?  I’ll talk about these and more topics in the next post about Mack Trucks and how communication should be used in a responsible business.