Growth at Hubbard's Foods?
ABSTRACT Dick Hubbard is the founder of Hubbard's Foods Limited. The company is a cereal manufacturer located in Mangere, Auckland. This case highlights the entrepreneurial flair that Dick has, as well as his stance on social responsibility. Hubbard's has grown from a micro-business into a large business with 120 staff, while maintaining a family based culture. It is this question of whether the business should grow further that is the focus of the case. INTRODUCTION Dick Hubbard paused for a minute from the notes he was writing for his company newsletter to reflect on the recent changes he had initiated in the company. He thought back to the early days of the business, when he did everything in the company single-handedly, including making the breakfast cereals. He looked out into the company car park and saw that it was almost full. He suddenly realised he was responsible for the livelihoods of many people other than himself. Should he take the next step and expand the company further? Dick contemplated the various scenarios and considered what they would mean for his business... BACKGROUND Hubbard's produce a range of 23 breakfast cereals that are targeted towards the mid-high price ranges in the cereal market. A recent extension to the product range was an organic muesli that is in the very high price range. Hubbard's cereals are distinctive due to their use of New Zealand and tropical fruits and using fruit flavouring to bake the cereals in. Products Hubbard's products are aimed at both the high price range and low end of the cereal market. The high end products have such innovative names as "Berry Berry Nice" and "Bugs 'n Mud" (refer to Figure 1 opposite for a description of two popular products in the range and their ingredients). While the main output from the operation is high quality cereals under the Hubbard's brand, the company also manufactures some product lines for a range of supermarket private labels. These private labels are typically at the lower end of the price range for cereal, such as rice puffs and cornflakes. Demand for breakfast cereal products has a slight seasonal variation. In summer months, consumption is approximately 10% higher than in winter months. The breakfast cereal industry has been undergoing rapid change in the past two or three years, including an increase in the mueslistyle cereals that Hubbard's popularized and an increase supermarket own brands. In addition, there had been huge growth in cereal bars, muesli bars, and breakfast drinks (Hubbard's does not produce any of these). Exact growth figures are not available as the cereal industry is highly competitive. In 2000-2001, Hubbard's exported 14.4% of its production, mainly to Australia, but a small amount was exported to the United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong. In this respect, the company is potentially vulnerable to the fluctuating New Zealand dollar. Financial information for the company is shown in Figure 2, opposite. Competitors In 2001, Hubbard's had an 18.5% share of the cereal market in New Zealand, which makes them the third largest player in the market (exact market share for the competitors is not known). There are three strong direct competitors to Hubbard's in the New Zealand market - Sanatarium, Uncle Toby's and Kelloggs. Sanitarium is a New Zealand owned company that is located in a nearby suburb of Auckland. If either Sanatarium or Hubbard's runs out of an ingredient, the other will supply it if they have it available. A Seventh Day Adventist baker, whose philosophies were strong on healthy living and vegetarianism, started Sanatarium Health Foods over 100 years ago. Sanatarium continues to market their cereals using these philosophies, and has quite a strong focus on sponsoring events and charities, as well as promoting healthy living. Sanatarium's main breakfast cereal products are Weetbix and Cornflakes, and they have entered the cereal bar market as well as the breakfast drink market. …
From Entrepreneur to Mayor: Assessing the Impact of the Founder's Changing Reputation on Hubbard Foods Ltd.
Small businesses have received limited attention from those researching corporate reputation. This paper addresses this gap by examining the development of corporate reputation within a small business in New Zealand. The longitudinal case study locates three distinct stages of corporate reputation building as Hubbard Foods Ltd. grew from small beginnings in 1988 to a firm that now employs 128 people and has a 21% share of the New Zealand cereal market. First, the values of Dick Hubbard, the company founder, were important at start-up as the entrepreneur and the company were viewed as one entity. Second, as the company began to grow, the creation of a family culture and socially responsible company behaviours were key to the reputation building process. In 2004, Dick Hubbard stepped into the political arena and placed the day-to-day running of the business in the hands of an experienced CEO. In this third stage, his and the company's reputations parted. However, the corporate reputation of Hubbard Foods continued to thrive, even though the founder's own reputation came under close media scrutiny and intense political pressure. The reasons for the persistence of the company's good name appear to be related to the constant retelling of a corporate “story”, which captured the core values and competencies that resonated with staff, customers, and other stakeholders. The three-stage model introduced in this paper provides a useful framework for future research into the development of corporate reputation in small businesses. Implications for reputation management are also discussed.
A Rapprochement between Dramatism and Argumentation
Nearly all the rhetorical theories that mark the history of human thought snugly fit argumentation (or at least a recognizable reasoning) into a comfortable place within their account of rhetorical practice. Viewed against that background of history, modern study of rhetoric reveals an enigma: two of the most vital strains of contemporary rhetorical study--dramatism and argumentation--proceed with energetic progress and with no apparent influence on each other. Kenneth Burke's dramatistic theory revitalized contemporary American theories of rhetoric into new understandings of the ongoing rhetorical processes of societal construction, yet argument receives scant attention in Burke's work. Argumentation study has been reinvigorated in this century with new frameworks from informal logicians, students of naturally occurring argument, narrative argument, and followers of Perelman, Toulmin and Habermas; yet only narrative among these approaches shows an awareness of dramatism. With a deep interest in both of these twentieth century movements--the turn toward a social rhetoric and the revitalization of argumentation--I began to find the separation of the two becoming my own schizophrenia. I found that when working in the Burkean tradition, I tended to leave my theoretical work in argument (although not, of course, my skills as an arguer) behind. Similarly, when I worked in argumentation theory I found myself having to forget the lessons of dramatistic theory. In search of the coherence in my own work, and believing that relating the two movements could aid both, a number of years ago I embarked on a project to integrate argumentation theory and dramatism, and the search for the rapprochement began. The project turned out to be extremely difficult. There were some preliminary attempts in my own work and in the work of colleagues (Klumpp, "Dramatistic" and "Pentad", Kneupper; Madsen, "Alternatives" and "Dramatistic"). I began by attempting to find a definition of "argument" consistent with both traditions. I bracketed assumption after assumption of dramatism and traditional argumentation theory but could never get back to the common concept. Finally, I gave up on this approach and took another--familiar to those in similar quandaries--I abandoned the project. But it would not stay abandoned. In studying critical pluralism, and particularly the work of Stephen Pepper, I began to identify Burke's work with the intellectual movement broadly known as contextualism, and with the intellectual movement that Pepper calls organicism.(1) I had begun with a belief that Burke's lack of attention to argument was merely a result of his coming to the study of rhetoric from a different disciplinary home, and that a rapprochement would evolve from an extension of dramatism into the merely ignored theory of argument. But as I understood more about the roots of Burke's work in the broad intellectual movements of our time--contextualism and organicism--I began to believe that the unachieved rapprochement would take me toward adapting argumentation rather than dramatism. I decided to approach my search for rapprochement by developing a contextualist perspective on argument and then returning to the rapprochement project. With that work advanced,(2) I am now prepared to return to the original project and seek the rapprochement.(3) After considering Burke's treatment of argument, I will consider the requisites for contextualist approaches to argument and the characteristics of dramatism which would shape argumentation to its service, ending by illustrating a dramatistic approach to argument. KENNETH BURKE ON FORMAL ARGUMENT Burke began his work in rhetorical theory in the 1920s and 1930s. His approach to argumentation grew naturally from the traditional argumentation theory that dominated that era and remains influential today. Traditional argumentation theory is built on analytic and formal procedures. Analytically, traditional theory works by dividing individual arguments into parts--premises and conclusions; evidence and forms; or data, warrant, and claim(4)--and then analyzing each part through a scheme of types, More generally, traditional argumentation theory seeks ideal forms which an arguer can master. …