Ben and Jerry´s: Balancing Financial Responsibility with Social Responsibility

Ben & Jerry’s was established by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield which met on seventh grade (1966) which led them to open the first ice-cream shop (1978) with a $12.000 investment in an old gas station situated in Burlington, Vermont (Ben & Jerry’s, 2013). Initially, they considered making bagels but apparently, they could not afford the necessary equipment (Cohen and Greenfield et al., 1997). The success that came from this shop lead them to pack ice-cream in pints (1980) for distribution across the region.
In 1985 the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation was established which provides community focused projects with 7.5% of the organisations’ annual pre-tax profits (Ben & Jerry’s, 1997). Later on, in 2000 Ben & Jerry’s was acquired by Unilever for $326 million (Ben & Jerry’s, 2013) which consequently, as stated in Hays (2000), the company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Unilever with a detached board of directors that involved Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. Additionally, the company had been offered a role in the contribution of Unilever’s social practices internationally. Furthermore, in 2011 the organisation met their 2006 goal for Fair Trade certification in the UK and Ireland (Ben & Jerry’s, 2013). Fair Trade refers to fair prices, reasonable working circumstances, local sustainability and rational terms of trade for farmers and workers in emerging countries (Fairtrade, 2013).
The company based its principles on what Elkington and Hailes (1998) first defined as the “triple bottom line” also known as the “triple balance”:
• Socio-political
• Ethical
• Economic
Ben & Jerry’s mission and its ethical values were social from the start; the corporate culture was infused later on with a sense of social engagement based on a straightforward id...

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