Starbucks CultureStarbucks has emerged as one of the most prominent and talked-about countries in the United States and perhaps even the world. One of the primary drivers of their achievement and performance is there very strong and heavily enforced company culture. Some people are wont to malign company cultures like Starbucks but there is no denying where it has gotten the company. This brief report shall explore key elements of the corporate culture of Starbucks, the effectiveness of Starbucks when it comes to their offerings, a key management competency that a manager at Starbucks will or should have and an evaluation of Starbucks and the ability to achieve long-term sustainability. While some of Starbucks' methods are controversial, their results cannot be argued with.

Analysis

While looking at Starbucks and what they say directly about their company culture might be useful, it is indeed better to look at an authoritative third party and how they view the same. In the end, it is clear that Starbucks has at least five major elements to their company culture that should be assessed and taken into account. These include servant leadership (employees first), the relationship-driven approach, collaboration and communication, openness and inclusion and diversity. When answering the question as to how the management and leadership could and should be enforcing those five ideals, pretty much all of them have directly to do with management. For example, servant leadership cannot be effected unless the leadership is clearly acting with the employees in mind first. Obviously, the employees cannot do this on their own even if they wanted to. Thus, the ladders must be involved in the creation of that paradigm to put it lightly. Much the same is true of inclusion and diversity. The managers and leaders of Starbucks are going to be the ones doing the hiring and firing and thus they are on the front line of whether the company is inclusive and diverse. That being said, the front-line employees have to be part of welcoming those diverse...

However, even that is part of what the leaders and managers do given that the company will rise, fall, evolve and change based on what the manager puts into place and keeps there. If management is not mindful of what they are doing and saying (regardless of what policy says), then what happens in actuality will be different than what is stated (Ferguson, 2015).
The other facets espoused in the company culture of Starbucks requires direct and consistent managerial intervention and that presence has to go all the way to the top of Starbucks. Indeed, collaboration and communication is something that sort of happens naturally in some environments. However, some companies are prone to use a "top-down" communication style that precludes people down the ranks from coming up with their own innovations and solutions. This bottom-up innovation can be squelched or even suppressed if the company leadership is not open to hearing about solutions from people down the chain. Based on previous history with Starbucks and what they assert to be the case, it would seem that Starbucks welcomes solutions and innovations irrespective of what level of the company that the solution comes from. Much the same thing can and should be said about the openness of a company. If a company has firm command and control on what is done or not done with a company, then people will probably tend to be less open or they will at least be constrained by what is going on with the company and its operations. The point is that if the company keeps a very tight hold on what is going on in the company, then openness and collaboration/communication will tend to be restricted along those lines. Even the relationships in a relationship-driven approach will be constrained or limited based on what the company line or policy happens to be and who has the rank to offer their views and who does not (Ferguson, 2015).

As far as Starbucks management and their effectiveness in bringing forth a strong flow of products and innovations that…