Ethics and Social Responsibility of Starbucks
Write the Ethics, Social Responsibility and Concentration Topics section of your project paper on Starbucks.
Topics to include are:
**Operations Management and Information Systems and Technology
**Business Law, Social Responsibility, and Ethics issues
**MBA concentration related topics
Ethics and Social Responsibility of Starbucks
Starbucks is well-known of its social responsibility programs and has its stakeholders classified as corporate citizens. Social responsibility is realized when organizations and citizens have ethical behavior and act sensitively toward cultural, environmental, social and economic concerns. The ability to strive for social responsibility has positive impacts on business and society with a positive contribution to the bottom-line results.
However, corporate citizenship us the ability of business to be socially responsible for meeting ethical, legal and economic responsibilities placed on company shareholders. The company is among the largest coffee houses globally. The corporation is well known for acting in a socially responsible manner in diverse parts of its operations. The vision of the company is “to grow and expand with acting like a small company, and the mission statement focuses on the human spirit and ensures that Starbucks is part of the larger community.” This sets Starbucks and its stores as part of the neighboring communities. Although Starbucks is the largest coffee retailer globally, its stores embrace social responsibility, and it has competent and quick acts and responses to issues concerning the community and the stakeholders of the company (Schlagwein, Conboy, Feller, Leimeister & Morgan, 2017).
Operations Management and Information Systems and Technology
Starbucks Corporation has been successful and is associated with an appropriate application of ten decisions of operations management. The operations management of Starbucks allows the company to deal with definite business goals. As a worldwide business, the corporation addresses ten decisions of operations management via various policies and approaches. For example, Starbucks uses its Coffee and Farmer Equity program in managing its supply chain. The cafés demonstrate the corporation’s organizational culture as a strategy to optimize the quality of services. Therefore, the company has integrated strategies to streamline the ten decisions of operations management. The company emphasizes on premium design for its services and products through its broad differentiation generic and pricing strategy. Thus, the company ensures that its products and services mirror the corporation’s high-end brand picture (Eichar, 2017).
Quality management enables the corporation to use the premium personality to source carefully sources of its coffee beans for companies that meet its quality standards. This allows the company to ensure servant leadership and establish a warm, friendly culture. Starbucks executes high-quality services that align with the premium brand image of the corporation. Besides, the success of Starbucks is driven by its process and capacity efficiency. This allows the processes of Starbucks to be highly efficient as observed in its cafes. The location strategy will enable Starbucks to strategize on decisions areas of operations management that emphasize in sections with wealthy customers who can afford premium priced goods and services of the company. Layout design and strategy helps in maximizing workflow efficiency and supporting a friendly and warm atmosphere to align with the organizational culture of the company. This allows Starbucks to prioritize customer experience over the use of its space. The company’s job design and human resources management ensure the integration of organizational culture in all processes and fields of the business (Real & Percell, 2018). The corporate culture uses the employee-first attitudes that mind the employees of the company. Starbucks diversifies its supply chain management to ensure stability and uses CAFÉ program for selecting and prioritizing suppliers. The program applies criteria that emphasize sustainability and has ethical practices and. Starbucks’ decision area of operations management to integrate corporate social responsibility and ethics with an efficient supply chain. Therefore, the company addresses its decision area of operations management by involving its dedicated maintenance teams, cafes’ personnel, and third-party service providers (Schlagwein et al, 2017).
Well, integrated management information systems help to produce optimal results from gathered company information. Starbucks has various types of information required to make effective decisions for different departments to enhance sustainable organizational success (Real & Percell, 2018). The company has a corporate web portal to improve information availability and departmental efficiency. Starbucks uses information technology to reduce the bottlenecks to take and process payments as well as smooth demand and increase worker utilization. It also reduces customer wait times, and the management continues to prioritize technology to improve customer experience as well as employees and shareholders’ benefits. The company seeks to develop upon its status as a global corporation while preserving its grandeur (Real & Percell, 2018).
The corporation has established a sophisticated management information system to assist in its operations and growth process through the selection of locations based on the target demographic. MIS also helps in quality management process as well as anticipates growth as business-to-business e-commerce. Therefore, expecting technological will allow Starbucks to define its customer face and retail experiences of the future and plan accordingly. Information technology management helps the company to focus on the critical processes of the company to improve its ethics and corporate social responsibilities. This will advance innovations and strategize for future brand strengthening and improving company efficiency and in-store execution. Therefore, the company will ensure sustainable delivery of an elevated experience to its customers and community at large (Schlagwein et al, 2017).
Business Law, Social Responsibility, and Ethics issues
Starbucks is “commitment to creating global social impact.” The corporation vision is “to elevate its partners, suppliers, customers, and neighbors to create positive change.” Therefore, it aims to establish a healthy environment and an inclusive society. Additionally, Starbucks “ensures ethical and sustainable strategies that offer high-quality, ethically purchased and responsibly produced products.” Thus, the corporation provides social responsibility based on ethical sourcing, the environment and the community. The ethical strategy is a significant aspect of business law that ensures the corporation focuses on corporate social responsibility initiatives. The company has invested in its people and the communities they work with (Di Giuli & Kostovetsky, 2014).
Starbucks acts and conducts business responsibly through methods that give respect and trust from its customers and neighbors. Therefore, it is called “shared planet” that ensure the company emphasizes on ethical sourcing, community involvement, and environmental stewardship. Besides, in its operations management, the company supports the excellent work for all its partners and staffs as well as encourages ethical practices of business and maintains legal compliance, public policy, and corporate governance. Starbucks focuses on the quality of coffee and enhances the life of farmers who grow it. The employees are taken as partners, and they all offered stock options. The stores ensure that customers feel their places, good environment, and warm conditions which promote diversity (Real & Percell, 2018).
In summary, Starbucks ensures its operations ensure social, economic and environmental responsibilities. Besides, it focuses on the right things in its staffs (partners), business and customers that provide the creation of innovation to improve its business and mitigate mistakes. The company follows ethical sourcing for the best coffee in work and supports the life of farmers by ensuring efficient coffee development and responsible environment. Starbucks has emphasized environmental initiatives and support of shareholders (Kang & Namkung, 2017). Thus, the corporate social responsibility of the corporation has a social responsibility, ethical conduct, and good governance as care part of its overall business strategy. This has created an increased shareholders’ value and focuses on maintaining the relationships between Starbucks and its stakeholders. Starbucks carries its business in processes that yield environment, social and economic advantages for communities. This attracts and retains its partners, customer loyalty, reduced operation costs, strengthened supply chain and license to operate competitive CSR differentiator.
References
Di Giuli, A., & Kostovetsky, L. (2014). Are red or blue companies more likely to go green? Politics and corporate social responsibility. Journal of Financial Economics, 111(1), 158-180.
Eichar, D. M. (2017). The rise and fall of corporate social responsibility. Routledge.
Kang, J. W., & Namkung, Y. (2017). The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility on Brand Equity and the Moderating Role of Ethical Consumerism: The Case of Starbucks. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 1096348017727057.
Real, K., & Percell, H. (2018). Starbucks Corporate Social Responsibility Report.
Schlagwein, D., Conboy, K., Feller, J., Leimeister, J. M., & Morgan, L. (2017). “Openness” with and without Information Technology: a framework and a brief history.
