Case Study: Ethical Issues and Starbucks Business Practices, SCO101

This essay presents a case study on Starbucks, focusing on its ethical considerations and business practices. The essay addresses the question, "Why do good?" by analyzing Starbucks' operations, including ethical sourcing of coffee, stakeholder relationships, and environmental sustainability. It identifies relevant ethical considerations and distinguishes them from cultural concerns. The student applies ethical theories such as utilitarianism, morality, distributive justice, and rights theory to support the claim. The essay explores the practical application of these theories within the context of Starbucks, discussing potential constraints and limitations. The analysis covers the company's vision, ethical environment, and the impact of its practices on employees, customers, and suppliers. The essay aims to demonstrate ethical reasoning and provide a comprehensive understanding of the ethical challenges and opportunities faced by Starbucks.

Running Head: Ethical Issues Case Study
Ethical Issues
Starbucks
SystemJP

Ethical Issues Case Study
Question 1 (A) Case study
Starbucks is a famous coffee brand established in the year 1971 and it is continuously leading
to lead the market in selling of the quality coffee. It is one of the most ethical companies
counted as most suitable organisation providing the workplace ethics and environment for the
employees, stakeholders, supplier, and to the customers as well. It focuses to deliver the
products with the effective sustainability and performing the activities to meet the valuable
outcomes from the operations (Koçyiğit & Karadağ, urkish Journal of Business Ethics).
Produces of Starbucks consist of espresso-based hot drinks, drip-brewed coffee, snacks and
items such as mugs and coffee beans and other cold and hot drinks. Some products are very
particularly and specifically available for location of the stores. Starbucks espresso
beverages, teas and confectionaries Italian styles coffee, had made it one of the world’s
biggest specialty coffee chain (Sisson & Bowen, 2017). Their vision statements represent the
ethical aspects of the Starbucks that can easily divide in to these categories, Ethical sourcing
of coffee, effective and sustainable partnership, ethical environment. Implementing these
ethics face many issues related to the production of the coffee beans, implementation of the
ethical environment tin the organising and output from the customers’ and partners affect the
ethical code of conduct the Starbucks (Jones, 2017).
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Ethical Issues Case Study
Question 1 (B) “why doing good?”
Ethical representation of the operation in the society and to benefit the customers with quality
product for the value of money they paid and to utilise the paid money to plan more effective
changes in the production is main aim of Starbucks. Its operations are fully based on
sustainable operations performed under a conducive organisational working environment and
it put great emphasis over the integrity and fairness in all the deals and effective management
of the available opportunities focusing the theories of the Morality and Utilitarianism
(Schoja, 2016). It always plans to deliver the better services to the customers and it is seen to
be possible while making effective difference between the utility of the resources available in
the organisation to attain the aim of delivering good return to each aspect of the organisation.
It aims to utilise the supplied coffee beans from suppliers to transform them in a quality
coffee power or other products with the help of resources available for the production. In the
end it aims to deliver the finished quality, products to its customer because these are the most
valuable aspect defining the further step of the organisation because their monetary return
helps it to proceed further in the operations (Crane, Matten, Glozer, & Spence, 2019).
Question 1 (C) Theories of Ethics
Theories identified by studying the case study of Starbucks are Utilitarianism and other one is
Morality to deliver the effective and cost satisfying quality products to the customers
investing in the products and services. Other useful theories for Starbucks form the course or
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Ethical Issues Case Study
outside of the courses can be distributive justice and rights, these theories are helpful in many
ways (Sisson & Bowen, 2017).
Distributive justice theory of the ethical issues and doing good includes the profitable ad non-
profitable sharing in the organisations among the people engaged and related to the working.
This sharing includes the profits and burdens or duties both in equal manner by giving
opportunities to the partners to share the ups and downs of the organisation.
Right theory of the ethical manner allow employees to take an action against unlawful
behaviour of others against them, this can be designed in the code of conduct on the base of
concept ones’ right are other’s obligations for all the time and any act affecting the rights of
the employees falls under the act of dishonesty and misrepresentation.
These ethical theories are important to include in the code of the conduct and it is essential to
discuss the code of ethics to the employees at the time of interviewing to avoid the ethical
issues in future.
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Ethical Issues Case Study
References
Crane, A., Matten, D., Glozer, S., & Spence, L. (2019). usiness ethics: Managing corporate
citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. London: Oxford University
Press.
Jones, T. M. (2017). Stakeholder theory: The state of the art. The Blackwell guide to business
ethics, 17-37.
Koçyiğit, M., & Karadağ, E. (urkish Journal of Business Ethics). Developing an ethical
tendencies scale based on the theories of ethics. 2016: 297-307.
Schoja, V. (2016). Determining Consumer Behaviour in the Catering Industry: A Case Study
Of Starbucks UK. UK: Anchor Academic Publishing.
Sisson, D. C., & Bowen, S. A. (2017). Reputation management and authenticity: A case study
of Starbucks’ UK tax crisis and “# SpreadTheCheer” campaign. Journal of
Communication Management, 287-302.
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