Kogod Case Competition Focuses on FIJI Water and Corporate Social Responsibility
Students who participated in the 22nd annual American University Kogod School of Business Case Competition were asked various questions that examined the roles of “green washing” and corporate social responsibility (CSR) as they related to FIJI Water.
150 student competitors joined in on the 72-hour race to develop a plan of action for the bottled water company, pushing participants beyond the confines of financial statements and organizational structures and creating a wide array of proposed solutions.The FIJI Water case opened the students’s eyes to the realities of modern business practices—we currently live in a time when the consumer can track every action a company takes during production and can publically comment on those actions on the web.
“The case was very amorphous in nature,” said long-time judge Susan Traver, MBA ’84 and a regional president for BNYMellon in D.C. “There was a lot of room for the students to take as wide an approach or as deep as they wanted and that made for very diverse presentations.”
For many students, selecting a case like FIJI’s was exactly why Kogod stood out among business programs.
“I knew when I was planning to return to school that I wanted to be somewhere that would nurture my passion for making the world a better place and provide the business skills necessary to do so,” said Cate Johnson, MBA ’15 and member of a winning team. “Giving us a case like [FIJI’s] for this competition is exactly what I would expect from Kogod.”
