Ben And Jerry's Social Justice Values And Grassroots Business Practices

240 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Ben and Jerry's social responsibility

When British-Dutch conglomerate, Unilever, bought Ben & Jerry’s (an American based ice cream manufacturer) in 2001, fear struck the business community and the Unilever acquisition became the Ben and Jerry’s sellout – the situation called the future for the ice cream company’s social justice values and grassroots business practices into question. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield built their ice cream company, which started out as a simple ice cream shop in an old gas station, upon being “…fair to its employees, easy on the environment, and kind to its cows. The company pioneers the pursuit of business with a double bottom line—profits and people—that Cohen and Greenfield called the ‘double dip’ ” (Page and Katz 39). Essentially, the business did

Show More
Related

  • Dutch Brers Vs Starbucks Case Study

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    Starbucks selection for CSR parallels that of its menu, extensive yet counterproductive. They brandish programs such as sustainable farming, career opportunities as well as other local community programs; essentially investing money in programs for other people to operate. Even companywide programs such as career advancement and achievement, ultimately only goes as far hiring a diverse group of individuals and offering tuition assistance. Adversely, Dutch Bros. is committed to positively impacting every community they infiltrate; whether it be through community service or simply by being that silver lining in someone’s day. In order to ensure this culture continues, Dutch Bros. only franchises within the company, “Dutch Bros., based in Grant Pass, Ore., only hires and promotes only outgoing optimists committed to customer service. No bad tempers allowed” (Adams). With this model, a college dropout can potentially own their own business as long as they are genuinely, salt of the earth, model citizens. In a world, where big corporations throw money at a problem and call it social responsibility, Dutch Bros. and their ability to impact a community in such a positive manner, is truly a breath of fresh

    Read More

  • Ethical and Socially Responsive Business: Chick-Fil-A

    1287 Words  | 3 Pages

    I believe that every company should encourage a relationship of trust, loyalty, honesty, and responsibility among staff members at all levels. It’s important that each staff member works together to achieve excellence in a business, so the code of conduct is put in place. The purpose of the code is to provide guidance and set common ethical standards for employees from the top of the food chain to the bottom of the food chain. Some of the areas that I find to be significant of importance in a business are sexual harassment, discrimination and simply being professional in a work environment.

    Read More

  • Case Study Of Ben And Jerry's

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holding Inc., commonly known just as Ben & Jerry’s, produces ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet. Founded in Burlington, Vermont in 1978, the company is a subunit of the Unilever mega-company. Founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield created the company after completing an ice cream making course at Pennsylvania State University’s Creamery. In May of 1978, with a small investment totaling a little over ten grand, the two business partners opened an ice cream store in Virginia. Two years later, the two took their talents and started packing their ice cream into pints. In 1981, the company became a franchise, opening their second store in Shelburne, Virginia. Today, Ben and Jerry’s locations have expanded across the globe.

    Read More

  • Wal-Mart and Corporate Social Responsibility

    1340 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Wal-Mart Corporation is a multi-billion dollar low-cost retail organization, consisting of 6400 stores and 1.8 million sales associates worldwide. Wal-Mart’s influence on the retail world and the enormity of their corporate size is unparalleled. Wal-Mart can easily report sales of $312.4 billion dollars per fiscal quarter and net profits of $3.8 billion dollars. Wal-Mart promises her customers "Always low prices. Always!" and upholds this motto by providing low prices to her customers and high return on investment to her stockholders. One way that Wal-Mart has managed to maintain a competitive edge over other low cost retail giants and provide low prices is by cutting wages and by not offering too many company benefits to their employees. Full-time employee working at Wal-Mart only make $8 an hour, while only 45% of the workers can afford to be covered by health insurance. Wal-Mart also increase part time employees from 20 percent to 40 percent so that they do not have to cover all of their employees for health insurance . Although Wal-Mart may not provide excellent benefits to her employees, it successfully performs as a legitimate business operating in a capitalistic society. Wal-Mart upholds the primary fiduciary duty to satisfy her stockholder and follows free the market libertarianism model, which states that a business should not interfering with the free market. In a free market Wal-Mart has a direct responsibility to her primary stockholders rather than the employees of a company.

    Read More

  • Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. Case Study

    1753 Words  | 4 Pages

    The case requires a discussion of fundamental firm objectives and the implications of a non-traditional corporate orientation; one needs to review the development of Ben & Jerry's strong social consciousness and the takeover defence mechanisms that maintain management's control on company assets.

    Read More

  • The Gap Inc.: Corporate Social Responsibility

    1439 Words  | 3 Pages

    The business world has always been a very risky business. There is a lot to worry about no matter what position a person fulfills; everyone has some level of responsibility. The Gap Incorporated is a multinational specialty retail company (Gap Inc. 2014). The company was created by a Doris and Don Fisher (Joslin et. al. 2010). Don Fisher and his wife was a very wealthy couple, Don was a real estate developer (Joslin et. al. 2010). They decided to open up a clothing store when Don realized how popular jeans were becoming in the fashion industry. Another reason that Don Fisher wanted to open a clothing store is because he has an extremely difficult time finding jeans that fit him properly in department stores (Joslin et. al. 2010). So in the year of 1969 the Fishers opened the very first Gap store in San Francisco, California (Gap Inc. 2014). In this paper I will explore The Gap Incorporated and discuss the company’s ethical culture and behavior past and present. Based on preliminary information, I hypothesize that The Gap Incorporated is an ethical company.

    Read More

  • Whole Foods Moral Principles

    276 Words  | 1 Pages

    Whole Foods has a few moral principles from The Magnificent Seven chart that they seem to abide by. Starting with the most relevant, I believe Whole Foods follows the principle of the common good. It seems they try to keep all players in the company, from the bottom to the top of the totem pole, happy. Fairness I believe also plays a large role in their values due to the fact they believe if employees are happy which makes customers happy and will in return cause stakeholders to be happy. They believe in a fair system where it is a win-win situation for all involved. The last one that I believe fits into their moral compass is autonomy with their employees which goes in hand with McGregor’s Theory Y principle of having self-worth and

    Read More

  • Walmart Social Responsibility Case Study

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    The corporate social responsibility is a commitment by a business to contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life for employees and their families’ as-well as contributing to the society. Walmart is a well-known company that offers customers the items they want and need at a low cost, with nearly 4,000 stores in the United States. According to the Fortune 500, Walmart was ranked number 1 in 2015. Just like any other superstore Walmart needs to continue the use of social responsibility by recreating a relationship between business and the community especially if they want to dominate the competition in 2016. The use of sustainability, strategic philanthropy, causing market, shared values, stakeholders and global perspective will help readers understand the purpose of social responsibilities in the corporate world.

    Read More

  • A Worldview Perspective

    614 Words  | 2 Pages

    This first section the authors bring up that continued “corporate ethics violations” have created a need for discussion of “moral issues” in the business world, including that of “corporate social responsibly” and indoctrination in managerial programs of ethical practices (Kim et al., 2009, p. 115). The authors point to the growing trend of business leaders following Christian practices, such as the founder of Chick-fil-A, Truett Cathey (Kim et al., 2009, p. 115). The authors then question how modernism affects the mainstream culture and marginalized the usefulness of worldview ethics that could provide “insight and guidance” to researchers and businesses alike (Kim et al., 2009, p. 116).

    Read More

  • Should Companies Embrace Social Business

    1447 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are slow adoption rates for internal corporate social networks for many reasons. Although management and organization plays a role, the technology factor is the main reasons why employees are refusing to use these internal networks. With the rate at which technology is becoming more and more advanced, social networking systems are constantly updating their software and user interface (Laudon & Laudon, 2013). This mean that employees who are used to traditional forms of networking such as email, have to take the time to learn new systems and keep up with more social networking than they would like. In the eyes of the employee, using traditional forms of networking is simply more efficient. In order to make these internal social networking programs work, companies need to make more user friendly and easily manageable sites (Altman, 2015). Management also plays a part in the slow adoption rates. Managers need to provide more incentive for employees to use these networks aside from basic social interaction. For example, instead of sending memo’s via email, or other traditional forms of communication, slowly veer employees to seek memos on the company’s social networking site. Making strides like this will give employees more incentive to at least use the sites more often and participate in discussions and posts related to the business. This will allow employees to explore the sites and discover other useful features that might help improve productivity within the office. Organization of the sites could also be greatly approved. Many companies try to mimic other popular social networking sites, this however, may not be a viable solution. Instead, IT personnel should format th...

    Read More

  • Yoga Pants Memo

    1037 Words  | 3 Pages

    YOUGO is an ethical company, and our employees strive to make a difference in our communities. Our employees donate one workday per month of their time, at YOUGO’s expense, to a charity that means something to them. Our employees have a long record of participating in women’s charities and they are responsible for raising significant amounts of donations. But, more important than the donations, our employees have been directly responsible for helping thousands of people who need assistance. While YOUGO does make a profit, and it continues to pay the salaries that allow hundreds of families to thrive, we continue to give back to our

    Read More

  • Film Analysis Of The Film 'The Corporation'

    1112 Words  | 3 Pages

    This film has opened up a new perspective to me about the mindset of many of the people that have and are running many of the most noticeable household name brands that we have all come to know since childhood. The film does a very good job of explaining how businesses and corporations have not only grown but evolved over the last 40 plus years. We all know that at the end of the day, a company’s goal is to make money. “The Corporation” gave me a very in-depth look at the extent that major corporations will go to in order to keep their company successful and profitable. With many of the companies that were mentioned in the film, the average person such as myself, would never know that the companies that we support and patronize have taken part in modern day slavery to give use the products that we have come to love. The part of this that was most troubling was the fact that these business practices no matter how unethical we find them are in fact legal and do not

    Read More

  • Business and Social Responsibility

    1512 Words  | 4 Pages

    The problem that was investigated consisted of a question that Milton Friedman posed in one of his articles, which was featured in The New York Times Magazine in 1970. The question was, “What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities” (Friedman, 2007, p. 173)? Friedman (1970) elaborated on how businesses cannot have assigned responsibilities. Furthermore, he described how groups or individuals should be the only ones that can hold responsibilities, not businesses. He stated that associating responsibilities with the word business is too ambiguous. I will examine three discussion questions and three compare and contrast questions which Jennings (2009) posed in a case study that is related to Friedman’s (1970) article “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”.

    Read More

  • Analysis of the Movie, The Insider

    1442 Words  | 3 Pages

    It seems obvious that large corporations have a tendency to ignore the negative effects of their actions in favor of profit. This example, although sensationalized, still says to me that with power comes responsibility. It affirmed my belief that a corporation’s goal cannot be just to provide profit to shareholders, but there must also be an element of social responsibility.

    Read More

  • Ben And Jerry's Case Analysis

    1673 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of Ben and Jerry's, gave the firm a very specific spirit. While the majority of corporate managers were under constant pressure to meet their shareholders' demands, Ben and Jerry were quite the opposite, frowning upon traditional business biases based on short-term interests and large profits. Initially, their quick business growth frightened them, as they both thought about severing ties with the fast growing company. However, what was supposed to be a threat to their ideals turned out to be a way to strengthen their campaign for social change. It was through their social ideals that they introduced "caring capitalism", a philosophy which spread throughout a host of educational, environmental and social events. The founders did not place emphasis on cash, equipment and inventories; the "tangible assets" of the firm. Instead, the...

    Read More

More about Ben And Jerry's Social Justice Values And Grassroots Business Practices

Open Document