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Chapter 7: Global Corporate Citizenship
Whole foods issues corporate social responsibility
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Recommended: Chapter 7: Global Corporate Citizenship
First and foremost, Whole Foods obtains a strong corporate responsibility and is extremely profitable which would place Whole Foods in the philanthropic stage and the economic responsibility stage in Carroll’s global corporate social responsibility pyramid. Furthermore, global corporate citizenship is defined as a business which holds a strong relationship between its community and shareholders (von Weltzien Hoivik & Melé, 2009). Whole Foods demonstrates their global corporate citizenship by providing their communities with healthy foods and focusing on the well-being of their employees and shareholders. The focus of Whole Foods is to try to change and improve the global insight of our world (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). In addition, Whole
Whole Foods Market allows each market to supply products that are standardized, and also supply products based on local buyer needs, as well as the culture of the area; therefore their business strategy is transnational (Thompson, 2016, p. 192). Whole Foods Market varies their products based on location, focusing on local products and any unique products to promote a neighborhood market feel for their customers. The company strategically chooses its locations, placing them in educated areas, and then focuses on products to sustain a competitive advantage.
For 85 years, Publix Super Markets, Inc. (Publix), a nationwide chain, has set the precedent for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. With an added emphasis on the past 15 years due to the implementation of their Green Routine program, Publix has become the gold-standard of sustainability, with comprehensive philanthropic initiatives that support and intertwine housing, education, food security, technology, and more. Publix is taking strides to become more sustainable, environmentally friendly, and beneficial to the local community. By breaking down sustainability into 3 core concepts: social justice, environmental integrity, and economic prosperity, an analysis can be made about the current Publix sustainability
Ethical decision-making is the responsibility of everyone, regardless of position or level within an organization. Interestingly, the importance of stressing employee awareness, improving decisions, and coming to an ethical resolution are the greatest benefits to most companies in today’s world (Weber, 2015).
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.
Whole Foods has several FaceBook pages depending on the store however they do have a corporate page where they clearly state their cores values. These mainly encompass a well being for the community while spreading the knowledge of healthy living as well as their commitment to high quality and organic foods. They have over 1 million likes and share content from their Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram on FaceBook. The FaceBook content mostly has recipes and pictures that buying a certain product will help fund a good cause. Whole Foods has several CSR initiatives to fight poverty inside and outside the US while also giving micro loans to farmers in need. I viewed several other local FaceBook pages of theirs to get a feel for the overall message. The local pages include specials, cooking classes, pictures, and of course they continue to be very engaging of the audience; overall the message remains consistent throughout the different pages.
..., John E., Strickland, A.J. Thompson, Arthur “Whole Foods Market In 2006: Mission, Core Values, and Strategy”, Crafting & Executing Strategy 15th Ed., McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2007
To most consumers Whole Foods is known as a chain grocery store specializing in organic and natural foods. Some may go as far as say the name is synonymous with quality. This comparison is the result of Whole Foods’ marketing their brand successfully to consumers demanding their specialized foods. As with any organization, Whole Foods may consider evaluating their strategic objectives and decide if necessary course corrections are needed to reach their objectives and goals. Through a fundamental and technical analysis, I will discuss Whole Foods’ mission, vision, and goals, their competitive environment, and some factors within their strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat analysis. With such data and information I will recommend, if needed, and strategic changes in order to sustain a competitive advantage.
The way that our society has been able to produce food has changed in the last fifty years that the several thousand years beforehand. Robert Kenner addresses problems of our society’s food system and how there is only a handful of large corporations that have basically taken over the food system in the United States in the film Food, Inc. Large businesses have been able to significantly produce vast amounts of food and set low prices for consumers, usually because of government subsidies, which results in enormous profit and greater control of the food supply sources. This leads to negative health, safety, and economic consequences. This documentary examines the exercises of the few large food corporations from the start of production
The company’s strongest impact and contribution to sustainability lies in the critical parts of their business which leads to the success and diversity of our associates (customers), food safety, health and nutrition, strong supply chain, environmental factors, and community/stakeholder engagement and impact of the people along with the CSR initiatives.
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.
Small business owners of fortune 500 companies, democrats, republicans, men and women all have ethical responsibilities that should always be considered. Mc Donald’s is a well-known restaurant around the world. Some people enjoy this fast food restaurant and also have made Mc Donald’s one of the leading fast food companies. Although, Mc Donald may have some tasty food, there are still many critics that think Mc Donald’s may have a lot of ethical issues and company violations. Some consider being ethical is simply defined as knowing the difference between what is considered good and evil. However, ethics is defined as moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s behavior, and the practices that violate them. The practices of unethical behaviors, by various fast food corporations, like McDonalds have become of great concern to our society.
Crunch (2015) highlighted that General Mills is aware that the consumers are expecting them to be vigilant in ensuring that their supply chain is transparent and conforming to the objectives. The efforts that are being made include advancing sustainable agriculture, respecting human rights and establishing a “zero loss approach” which incorporate the assistance of their staff to identify any waste so that it can be eliminated. The primary focus, he said, was to reduce the negative impact on the environment (Crunch, 2015). Finally, General Mills, in the Global Responsibility Report (2016) acknowledges that protecting human rights is critical to their business.
...f it is willing to recognize their duty to society. With its tremendous size, the organization is faced with being an example to other corporations. It is trying to make efforts such as supporting the environment, but they have just begun to scrap the surface. It will require balance between profit and social responsibility (“The NEW Age of Walmart”).
Walmart, a conglomerate with global sites, has influenced its subsidiaries and co-operate in managing, addressing, enforcing and formalizing its foundation because of organizational structure and culture. For example, “Approximately 500,000 Wal-Mart associates throughout United States have participated in the Personal sustainability Project (PSP), a voluntary program encouraged by CEO Lee Scott (Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2011).” “Scott called also called for Congress to increase minimum wage and noted that Wal-Mart had increased spending on health insurance (Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2011).” They share values, disciplinary actions, standards of learning are the same with all their stores. They are leaders in their business and they lead by example. This category share corporate social responsibility which rate from zero to five is in richness according to the content analysis theory (Jizi et al2014) that is used to measure corporate social responsibility, will prove that Wal-Mart’s chains-stores: Sam’s Club, and other owners in the Wal-Mart company, value key stakeholders including the minority individuals. These are people who are interested in an “everyday low price.” It is used to measure the content of CSR disclosure of community involvement, environment, human resources, and social products and service quality according to (Jizi et al2014).Wal-Mart is quite aware that being socially responsible is very expensive. However, with the annual disclosure giving greater transparency in daily operations, I believe that more investors will become interested in its evolution and be able to benefit from its profit. For example, China is the largest supplier for Wal-Mart according to (Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell,
“Corporate Citizenship” can be defined as the ways in which all companies interact with the interest of shareholders and other stakeholders of the organisation. It mentions in (Ganguly, 2017) that corporate citizenship is about how companies behave ethically in the business through a variety of different methods such as in monitoring the accounting information or being sustainable taking