Corporate Social Responsibility Report: Starbucks' Business Practices

This report examines Starbucks' Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices, focusing on the key issue of fair trade coffee sourcing. It analyzes how Starbucks navigates the complexities of balancing business profits with ethical considerations for coffee farmers and their communities. The report highlights the company's efforts to create shared value, particularly in response to pressures from global exchange organizations. It explores how Starbucks' culture and mission statement inform its approach to corporate responsibility, including employee satisfaction, shareholder value, and environmental sustainability. The analysis references key academic sources to support its findings, offering a comprehensive overview of Starbucks' CSR strategies and their impact.

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Corporate Social Responsibility
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Corporate Social Responsibility
1. The key corporate responsibility issues for Starbucks revolves around on the decision of
going for the fair trade when it reaches the time to buy coffee. Starbucks seems to have
earned a competitive advantage in the coffee specialty industry. The company maintains
the huge business profits and even remained active in the industry following their buying
of coffee bean at the lowest price. The issues that arose from this is the fact that the
coffee farmers have their lives remain the same or even worse yet they work with
Starbuck. The culture of Starbucks contributes positively to the surrounding environment
and the communities at large. As much as the company is doing well in the business, they
are quite unable to change their annual business meeting into being a political meeting
which is another issue for Starbucks. They are also more concerned with the poverty
issues and the global environment as it seem to be the right thing to undertake. The other
issue is with regard to the balancing of the shareholder value whereby all the investors
have to receive a fair share in the profit obtained from the business (Tai & Chuang,
2014).
2. The Starbucks had an opportunity to create shared value since the global business
exchange presented it. When Starbucks wanted to purchase coffee beans through the
unfair trade, global exchange had it rejected. Starbucks got threatened such that they had
to conduct a fair trade of the coffee beans in order for them not to be disapproved by the
organization. The threats were presented in a form of notices and warnings which stated
clearly how there would be countrywide forbid. This obstruction was brought about by
the global exchange during an annual meeting. The fair trade registry then got to license
the companies in individual importing countries certified fair trade coffee beans.
Starbucks marketed themselves and are now identified to be initiating fair trade to the
coffee producers and the certified coffee beans. Starbucks is active and aggressive about
the whole idea of providing coffee beans since they do experience more bestow and
interests in ordering operations. They are providing their coffee directly to the farmers as
they support fair trade in the market. The farmers will then have to be given their money
fairly as this is an opportunity that enables the Starbuck Company to be able to create and
share value accordingly to everyone (Carroll, 2015).
3. The culture and mission statement of Starbucks could inform the company’s approach to
corporate responsibility by the administration of proper ethics. The Starbucks Company
have the goals of improving their employee satisfaction, finding and maintaining a
competitive advantage in coffee, enhancing the shareholder value, building up a strong
reputation as well as sticking to quality sources of supply. The mission statement
encourages every staff in Starbucks to value each other since lives are more important.
Both the culture and the mission statement reflect the ambitions of the Starbucks as well
as what they intend to achieve. This can be able to inform the corporate responsibility if
only the company remains committed to the community, employers, suppliers,
shareholders, environment, customers and even their future. They may as well inform
corporate responsibility by laying down all their future plans and ensure the whole
society gets to understand every stage they would go through in becoming a change to the

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environment that surrounds them as well as have everyone sustain the good
responsibilities adopted (Clap & Rowlands,2014).

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References
Argentine, P. (2014). Corporate social responsibility. Business
Carroll, A. B. (2015). Corporate social responsibility. Organizational dynamics, 44(2), 87-96.
Clapp, J., & Rowlands, I. H. (2014). Corporate social responsibility. The Essential Guide to
Global Environmental Governance. Routledge: London, 42-44.
Flammer, C. (2013). Corporate social responsibility and shareholder reaction: The environmental
awareness of investors. Academy of Management Journal, 56(3), 758-781.
Tai, F. M., & Chuang, S. H. (2014). Corporate social responsibility. Business, 6(03), 117.