Business Case Studies,Corporate Governance & Business Ethics Case Study, Flour Corp's Business Ethics Practices: Creating Six Sigma Standards in Staying Corruption-Free

Code : GOV0003

Year : 2004

Industry : Consulting

Region : USA Europe

Teaching Note:Not Available

Structured Assignment :Not Available

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Introduction: Adecco was an outcome of a series of mergers, which started with Adia and Ecco joining hands in 1996.While Adia was a personnel services company in Switzerland, Ecco was a staffing firm from France. Since the merger, Adecco made several other acquisitions to become the largest employment agency in the world (Annexure I). Adecco had offices in around 4,500 locations in 60 countries. By 2003,Adecco ranked either number one or two in around 12 of the 13majormarkets in the world and had the highestmarket share of over 30% in Italy, Spain and France.4 It generated annual revenues of about CHF 25 billion by 2003.5 Staffing was its biggest business contributing to around 90% of the total revenues.6 The rest was contributed by its career management and e-recruitment services.

Olsten, a temporary staffing firmestablished in 1950 in NewYork, was acquired byAdecco in 2000. This acquisitionmade it the leading staffing agency in the USmarket. The technical expertise and vast network of Olsten helped it raise its revenues in US market after this acquisition. According to John Browmer, CEO,Adecco, its operations in USA, Germany, Switzerland, UK and Italy were the major contributors towards the profits in 2001...