Planning in Zurich Financial Services

Planning in Zurich Financial Services

This paper evaluates the planning function of management and describes how legal issues, ethics, and corporate social responsibility impact management planning at Zurich Financial Services. Zurich Financial Services (Zurich) is an insurance-based financial service provider, with headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1872 Zurich has offices in more than 50 countries and employs about 57,000 people. They provide insurance and risk management solutions and services for individuals, small and mid-size businesses, large corporations and multinational companies. Zurich is the second largest in general corporate business worldwide, second largest general insurer in Europe and the third largest general insurer in the U.S. (Zurich, 2006).

Management is the process of working with people and resources to accomplish organizational goals (Bateman & Snell, 2004). Management is divided into four functions and the first one is planning. Planning is specifying the goals to be achieved and deciding in advance the appropriate actions needed to achieve those goals (Bateman & Snell, 2004). Zurich's goal: "We want to become the leading global insurance group in our chosen General-Insurance and Life Insurance markets, consistently delivering top-tier results for our shareholders." (Zurich, 2006). When planning to achieve this goal issues like legal issues, ethics and corporate social responsibility were critically important to Zurich's decision- making process. Legal issues, the act or an instance of, relating to, or concerned with law: legal papers. (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2000). Ethics is the system of rules that governs the ordering of values and corporate social responsibility is the obligation toward society assumed by business. The socially responsible business maximizes its positive effects on society and minimizes its negative effects. (Bateman & Snell, 2004).

From Zurich's core values derive basic principles that serve as added reference points for their activities. These principles center on creating value, trust, respect, fairness, cooperation, compliance with legal and other obligations, sound governance and corporate citizenship. Together with their values these principles form their fundamentals and are part of their code of conduct (Zurich, 2006). Some of these core values are customer dedication: starting with the needs and expectations of their customers, pioneering: energy and willingness to innovate continuously and creatively explore new options, excellence: superior performance and aiming for the highest quality, employee contribution: recognizing that every employee counts and assisting each to give his or her best and integrity: guiding ourselves by what is proper and what makes us professionally and personally proud. (Zurich, 2006).

At Zurich, the term "corporate responsibility" is used in a broad sense to designate their developmental work in various areas. As part of corporate responsibility Zurich understands the connection between a company's interests and those of society, and taking corresponding actions as "citizens" of the communities and countries in which they do business. Their