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Starbucks: The Struggle to Social Responsibility

The Starbucks company delivers a unique experience to both its consumers and its employees. It brought a unique and personalized European bistro style of coffee to its American customers.

Equally important is that Starbucks holds its employees in very high standard; in fact, a Hewitt Associates Starbucks Partner View Survey found that Starbucks employees have an 82% job satisfaction rate as compared to the industry average of 50% (Dobkowski, 2005). Employee benefits include healthcare, access to stock options, tuition reimbursement and retirement savings accounts.

The company is committed to offering its full-time and part-time employees with healthcare. Starbucks is one of the only companies in the industry to offer its employees availability to healthcare. Starbucks now pays more for its employees' healthcare than it does for all raw materials needed for coffee each year (Dobkowski, 2005). Despite this obvious competitive disadvantage, the company remains true to its social-conscious roots by providing the service.

Starbucks did a very good job early on to create a good corporate image. In fact, they were recognized as a member of the top 100 ethically run companies in America. Indicators used to provide this award included environmental, social, governance, and controversial. Starbucks has always made social responsibility as a part of their corporate goals.

However, Starbucks has also been criticized for situations involving questionable ethics. Common criticisms include "cultural imperialism," "fair-trade in the coffee bean market," and "anti-competitive tactics." For instance, one Starbucks location in Beijing, China, was closed because of public response. The location was at the site of the former Imperial Palace and its presence caused great controversy within Chinese culture (LeFort, 2008). Although this problem was a setback, Starbucks learned from this situation and implemented a corporate vision to adapt to and preserve the culture and mentality of the society which it serves.

In 2006, the company was involved in a trademark dispute with the country of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a very poor country in which 25% of its population survives on less than a dollar per day. The country produces about 6% of the world's coffee, and the coffee trade directly supports about 15 million Ethiopians. Each year coffee accounts for about 50% of Ethiopia's total exports (Fellner, 2008).

In order to boost its economy and growth,

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