Acuity’s Workplace Campus Employees at Acuity, an insurance provider in Sheboyga

by Caaltu · May 24, 2024

Acuity’s Workplace Campus
Employees at Acuity, an insurance provider in Sheboyga

Acuity’s Workplace Campus
Employees at Acuity, an insurance provider in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, enjoy amenities beyond the imagining of the average U.S. worker. The company offers flexible workdays, on-site leadership training, tuition reimbursement for continuing education, and company scholarships. Its $130 million campus also provides an on-site fitness center complete with a climbing wall, a garden, and a cafeteria serving nutritious meals. Employees are offered the services of an on-site massage therapist, and there are on-site banking and dry-cleaning services.The campus was designed to be a showpiece at the entrance to the town of Sheboygan. In fact, it features a working Ferris wheel and a theater-in-the-round that seats two thousand, which the company makes available for community events and town hall meetings.Critical ThinkingWhat do you think about a company that would build a multimillion-dollar workplace campus that also serves as a center for community events?
What does the investment communicate about the company’s core values and stakeholder focus?
Should company facilities be only for employees?
Oasis Collections
Oasis Collections is a real estate rental marketplace or platform similar to Airbnb, with a few key differences. Founded in 2009, the company fills a market niche by matching house and condo owners with travelers who want something more personal than a hotel but more upscale than a room in someone’s house.Oasis sought venture capital funding but was turned down multiple times. An IPO was not feasible because the company was too small. This financing quandary demonstrates the limited access to capital that often forms a barrier for entrepreneurial startups to overcome. Oasis’ founders turned to sources often used by entrepreneurs, including a mix of seed funding from founders, friends, and family, and angel funding from a private investor. The company operated on a relatively tight budget for several years.In 2017, Hyatt Hotels decided to invest $20 million in Oasis, after it had proven it had a niche in the access economy. Steve Haggerty, Hyatt’s global head of capital strategy, said the investment “reflects Hyatt’s established strategy to super serve the high-end traveler by offering new experiences beyond traditional hotel stays. Travelers who book Oasis Collections homes are . . . leisure and often business travelers who seek more space for a longer time, but also want the peace of mind, personalized service and amenities they expect when staying with Hyatt.”62 Hyatt apparently now sees the access economic model as a force it cannot afford to ignore and has chosen to embrace and fund it. Oasis has the capital to expand its footprint, so CEO Parker Stanberry spends most of his time traveling to sign up new properties and new customers. “We definitely have our work cut out for us,” he says. “We’ve got to hustle hard every day.”63Critical ThinkingCan a sixty-year-old traditional hospitality corporation and a new access-economy startup thrive side by side? Or will the experiment crash and burn?
How likely is it that a big business in a similar type of industry would buy up the related access-economy business or use their market power to crush them instead of integrating the new model as Hyatt did? Defend your answer.
Textbook: https://openstax.org/details/books/business-ethics
Please answer each of the questions in these case studies from chapter 10 in short paragraphs. No reference needed or citation. Please paraphrase information from textbook.