Pros
Through the recent recession, employees were still given raises and cost of living wage increases. The company has recently refocused attention on core highly profitable long term businesses - making boxes for example and has become a world leader in this market and others. The company has been around for a long time (over 100 years) and is likely to be around for a lot longer. If you are interested in a large multinational with slow and steady growth, this is it. Mr. Faraci is in touch with his Memphis employees and is leading the company in the right direction. He took a very bold step in raising cash and taking on substantial debt to purchase a division from Weyerhaeuser but I believe that it was the right decision for the company.
Cons
This is low profit margin manufacturing large multinational company. Therefore there are many layers of management, too many useless and duplicate reports to do and other seemingless foolish administrative tasks that are not apparently useful to those working in the trenches. For similar reasons the company wants to justify every project and watches it's money very closely. Changes have to regarded Mid level managers may be under utilized and therefore have time to micromanage. Some employees, due to the size of the company, and a somewhat lax management attitude in some areas, feel that they can get away with not working. They may in the short term but International Paper will terminate them eventually (may take years) . Corporate at time's seems to kowtow to businesses units and manufacturing facilities, taking the attitude that if they say they have to have then they must be . Too many "diverse" employee's in positions that they are unqualified and unsuited for. In some areas I have witness'ed a cliques led by managers lead to incometence being ignored. Many employees know "the system " is broken and dont try to attempt to fix it any more and instead just allow it continue by lying about others performance or by finding another way to accomplish a task. Thus failures are glossed over and allowed to continue. The company continues to pay lip service to environmental causes and in some cases is hypocritical. For example the company will say one thing, and do another : it has an impressive media campaign that printing on paper is better than emailing yet internally has diverted all paper notices to email versions. Large office buildings within Memphis, could and should have been made green decades ago (solar panels) , an investment that would have paid for itself already. Company does not internally recycle cans, glass or plastic . Nor does it lead such recycling programs within the community. The company has reduced it's north american land holdings, avoiding the responsibility of land stewardship while at the same time promoting such stewardship. The company continues to off shore as much work as possible. The US staff continue to drive the work but understand less and less as they have a hands off attitude and become more and more project managers. This results in systems which no one understands 2 years after building, and which often do not work. Corporate divisions such as Human Resources and IT are understaffed and have insufficient resources, leading to long lag times or no response.