Starbucks' mission, values, and ethical business practices

Starbucks

Today, the name "Starbucks" is associated with the highest quality of coffee. The company has a history that started during the 1970s and culminates in what the company is known as today. Throughout the years, the company has survived by not only providing its customers with the highest quality of product, but also by doing so in an ethical and responsible way. The company's commitment to ethics and values is evident in the various statements they make in terms of vision, mission, goals, objectives, corporate governance, and all other areas of their business theory and application.

Starbucks opened its first shop during the 1970s in Seattle. Its name was derived from one of the characters in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, a classic American novel about the whaling industry. In 1982, Howard Schultz joined the company after his visit to Milan and its espresso bars. He was impressed with the popularity and culture within these bars and believed that he could create something similar with Starbucks in Seattle. The mochas and lattes offered in Seattle soon became very popular. This popularity soon expanded beyond Seattle to the rest of the United States and then to the world during the 1990s. Starbucks was one of the first companies to offer stock options to its part-time employees and became a publicly traded company during this decade. In the new Millennium, Starbucks continued to grow to reach more than 15,000 locations in more than 40 countries, with a wide range of coffees and teas on offer (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2012).

Vision and Mission

The vision and mission statements for Starbucks work in close proximity to move the company towards its goals and objectives while keeping it firmly grounded in the values and principles it developed as foundation throughout the years. As stated on its official website, Starbucks' (2012) mission statement is "to inspire and nurture the human spirit -- one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. To accomplish this, the company has developed principles according to the most important components of the business, its coffee, its partners, its customers, and its neighborhood. The coffee the company provides, for example, is created according to the highest standards of both quality and ethics. In this way, the company sources and roasts the highest quality of coffee beans, while doing this in a way that improves the lives of those involved in growing the beans.

Employees at Starbucks are treated with the same kind of respect and care. Known as "partners," employees work in an environment set up in a way that offers the principles of respect and dignity, while also promoting accountability to each other and themselves. These employees are then expected to also interact with customers in a way that is uplifting and promotes the image of the company as friendly and caring. The main aim is to give customers a sense of belonging when entering a Starbucks store. The stores are to be a haven providing customers with a break from the worries of day-to-day life.

In this way, Starbucks creates a sense of community, which also translates to each neighborhood in which the company operates. By bringing together partners, customers, and the community, the company furthers its mission and vision to be a good community partner and corporate citizen.

Finally, by offering customers and communities the best of quality, the company is able to also provide its shareholders with value in terms of investment.

Goals and Objectives

In terms of its goals and objectives, these are deeply integrated with Starbucks ideal of corporate citizenship and stewardship of the environment. One way to accomplish this is to pay attention to the employment crisis in the country. Starbucks is highly focused on job creation in the United States (Starbucks, 2012), particularly during the current economic climate. Specifically, the company has created a partnership with the Opportunity Finance Network to help it create and sustain jobs. The partnership is known as Create Jobs for USA.

With this and other community and environmental projects, the company is focused on being a "catalyst for positive change" (Starbucks, 2012). In addition to the employment program, the company is also focused, as mentioned above, on ethical sourcing for its coffee beans. The program created with this purpose is known as C.A.F.E. Practices and is in its eighth year. Specifically, what this means is that nearly 86% of the company's coffee beans are sourced in a way that promotes the improvement of quality, productive, environmental impact, and transparency.

This also relates to the company's commitment to environmental stewardship. As such, the company has been a leader in efforts such as green building. Starbucks joined the USGBC in 2000. Today, 75% of Starbucks stores are built according to the LEED standard. In 2011, the company worked actively with community members, leaders, and organizations to improve opportunities and education for citizens. Two community stores in New York and Los Angeles will pioneer a new approach to these components, with the goal to create many more like this.

As such, the overall goal of the company is to keep a realistic eye on the complexity of problems businesses face today, but also to commit its time and energy to resolving these by integrating the company's core values into its strategy, practices, and operations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Starbucks is a company that has positioned itself as a pioneer in terms of not only social, financial, and corporate responsibility, but also as environmental student. As such, it can be seen as representative of what it should mean to be a responsible business today. Today, no business can exist in isolation or pretend that any and all forms of exploitation are acceptable in service of the bottom line. Instead, business like Starbucks are increasingly realizing that a responsible business model is no less complex than the problems businesses face in the world today, which includes sustainability. Sustainability in terms of not only the environment, but also employee turnover and suppliers, has created the need to take into account a wide divergence of needs. Starbucks continues to do so in an energetic and targeted way, creating opportunities to help others while keeping an eye on environmental sustainability.