Colborn’s Corner – Do you like your chocolate sweet or bitter?

Is Kraft and Cadbury simply another iconic British brand being sold overseas like Jaguar and Bentley? More importantly, what about the internal culture of the business and the impact on the employees? This month’s Colborn’s Corner addresses the issues that flow from the takeover and considers the implications both inside and outside the organisation.
 

The business pages this week have been giving plenty of coverage to the takeover of Cadburys by Kraft. So is this simply the case of another iconic British brand being sold overseas like Jaguar and Bentley? But leaving aside the brand issues, what about the internal culture of the business and the impact on the employees?

The UK has an interesting tradition of paternalism and involvement in work. Within some organisations participation is seen to be the key to success such as in John Lewis, other forms of involvement include the Co-Operative movement where customers are included. However for the purposes of this column I’m interested in looking at the paternalism of some businesses and question if it has now had its day.