In September 2003 The Sunday Times interviewed Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, the multinational chain of coffee stores. From its small beginnings in Seattle in 1971 Starbucks (by 2003) had 7,000 stores and 70,000 employees worldwide. The following are extracts in which Schultz explains the 'ethical stance' of Starbucks:
Schultz .. . has a commitment to worker-friendly employment practices. His motivation to create an employee-centric company were based on his experience growing up poor in New York [he says]: 'One of the things I remember as a young boy was how my father's self-esteem was linked to how he was treated as an uneducated blue collar worker, who was disrespected in the workplace . . . That's why I wanted to build the kind of company that did not leave its people behind, that would value people whether they were well educated or not and that would give everyone an opportunity and a clean slate'. Schultz has also promoted an interest in fair-trade issues [and]... he is immensely proud of his firm's environmental and social awareness policies, its drive to integrate its stores into local communities and, especially, its innovative share-option scheme for employees. 'When we created that it was the first time in the history of America that a programme like that was created for part-time workers and we've brought it to the UK'. Schultz claimed that it paid off with low rates of people leaving for other jobs. Despite these claims for its progressive social policies some still see Starbucks as an evil empire - alongside the more aggressive American multinationals such as MacDonalds or Wal-Mart. It is regularly attacked by anti-globalisation protestors and has
drawn criticism from a range of opponents. Schultz himself has been targeted by fair-trade activists and Starbucks reception in Europe has been chillier than elsewhere. Schultz countered these accusations: 'I'm not concerned with Starbucks becoming the most profitable company in the world. That's a very shallow goal, to achieve profitability at all costs. That isn't a zero-sum game for me or anyone else at Starbucks. It's very important that we do something that hasn't been done before, to build a different kind of company that does achieve the fiscal issues . . . but demonstrates its heart and its conscience in giving back to our employees, to the communities we serve, to the coffee-growing regions, and then to reward our shareholders.'
Source: The text has been amended and extracted from an article that was originally published in The Sunday Times, 14 September 2003, p. 3.7.
Questions
1. Looking “Four possible ethical stances” how would you characterise Schultz's view of Starbucks' ethical stance?
2. Do other stakeholders see Starbucks in the same way?
3. If there are differences between these views does it matter to the success or failure of Starbucks' strategies?
Пример 2. Ethical dilemmas
Managers face a range of different ethical dilemmas that need to be resolved.
