The American Fur Company Case Study

Case Study:

The American Fur Company

1. How would you evaluate Astor in terms if his motive, his managerial ability and his ethics?

a. In terms of motives, managerial ability, and ethics, Astor can be regarded as a man with little or no morale. His motives were very selfish and had no ethics. He was self motivated by profits to become the largest and only American Fur company, owning 99.9% of the stock and going out of his way to crush rivals, monopolizing the industry. His managerial abilities were great, allowing him to expand and get furs essentially for nearly nothing, making profits on all parts of the labor including transportation and wages. Ethics this man did not have, creating a company on what sounded like ethics promising to deal with Indians honestly and issue stocks to other, neither of which happened.

b. What lesson does his career teach us about the relationship between virtue and success?

Virtue and success have no relationship in Astor’s case. Astor had high success but poor or very littler virtue. Even to the end of his life he contributed little to society. For Astor success was a virtue and failure was not an option.

2. How did the environment of the American Fur Company change in the 1830s? What deep historical forces implicated these changes?

a. In 1832, people believed that the trade of furs was what was causing the spread of cholera. This made people stop wanting to trade furs. Then in 1837, the steamboat, carried smallpox up the Mississippi, killing over 17,000 people. Also in the early 1800s the trend changed from fur to silk .

b. The historical forces that implicated these changes were globalization, inequality, nation state and chance.

3. What were the impacts of the fur trade on society in major dimensions of the business environment, that is, economic, cultural, technological, natural, governmental, legal, and internal?

a. Economically, the furs were light so it was easier for traders to transport by mules, barges, and ships to eastern ports and then to Europe. Profits were enormous.

b. Governmentally, with Astor, they

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