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Ben and Jerry's: ethical or not
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Extended Essay Ben and Jerry’s: ethical or not? Word count: 3756 Extended essay Abstract In my extended essay I am tackling the question whether Ben and Jerry’s is an Ethical company. For that it was needed to outline what Ethics in Business in the first place means. I stated what a company can do to be possibly viewed as ethical. To compare the behaviour of Ben and Jerry’s with ethical norms I listed down various actions of Ben and Jerry’s which can be viewed as good (ethical) or bad (unethical) actions towards society. My conclusion then states that the company Ben and Jerry’s can be viewed as ethical since they do act in many areas and ways very responsible but on the other side they can be viewed as an unethical company since they failed in certain parts and didn’t stick to their mission statement which should not have happened and might happened accidentally. But in the end it is due to every individual how they want to view Ben and Jerry’s which is made up by their believes how an ethical company should act like. Extended essay Context page Page 4. Ethics in Business Page 5. Ben and Jerrys history and goals Page 6. Corporate Social Responsibility Page 8. Ben and Jerrys Ethical side Page 11. Ben and Jerrys Unethical side Page 12. Conclusion Page 13. Bibliography Extended essay Ethics in Business Ethics in general are beliefs how to act which makes people behave in a positive way, where ethics in businesses is how a company applies these ethical believes in their actions and is used to see whether a decision might be right or wrong. To define ethics the different viewpoints of individuals or groups have to be taken into account, because that influences what they identify as ethical or unethical. In many countries the government tries to ensure that companies behave in an ethical manner by putting up laws. But these laws do not ensure fully that a company will behave ethically. Unethical behaviour might be described the following actions; when a company trades with a country where a inhuman regime has the power, or when a big difference between the wages of the head of a company and a normal employee, or the trade in arms. Today more and more companies have set up own codes of behaviour which they try to fulfil with the best intentions. Extended essay 1. Ben and Jerry’s history and goals The successful ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. was founded by two childhood friends called Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1977 on December the 17. They opened their first shop in a gas station in Burlington, Vermont, after completing an ice cream correspondence course at the University of Pennsylvania for 5 dollars. After being extremely successful and very popular Ben and Jerry’s became a leading company, with nearly an 40 percent share of the ice cream market and passing the 200 million dollar mark in 1998, with sales in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan. They own around 200 franchises. Although the company made high profits it is acting now as a non-profit making firm, which was the first case in history. Ben and Jerry’s was also a founding member of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), with more or less 1400 other businesses whose aim it is to help member businesses to sell their products and/or services so that they can be commercially successful and show respect for ethical values, people, communities and the environment. Today Ben and Jerry’s is trying to be responsible for the welfare of society as a whole but it has not always been like this, fact is that when Ben and Jerry’s began their business they didn’t have the intentions to run a social responsible business, they just saw themselves as ice cream dealer as long as they wouldn’t have any other opportunities. In 1982 they were about to sell their company, but Ben Cohen knew that business exploits the community, its employees and the environment, so he thought about it and came to the result that by keeping the firm to do it differently and better. So Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield decided to gain enough money to break even and use their business to make a change in society. In 1984 they started to sell shares of Ben & Jerry’s but only to the people from Vermont because they felt responsible to give back the people who supported them at the beginning when they opened their first small shop in Vermont. In 1988 Ben & Jerry’s created a Mission Statement, which aims to produce, sell and distribute top quality products, than make profits but also giving career opportunities and financial rewards for their employees and to play a major role in society as a business to improve life quality local, national and international. By achieving this mission they take care of people inside and outside the business and improve the communities of which they are part. Ben & Jerry’s try’s to use its Mission Statement in daily decision making so that the company stays profitable and so that the communities profit of them. Ben & Jerry’s often dose what they say, even if it reduces the profits, for example, in 1988Ben & Jerry’s stopped producing a very popular ice cream made with Oreo because the Oreo supplier is a business called RJR Nabisco, which is big tobacco producer. Another example is when the Japanese offered to introduce their products in Japan, where Haagen-Dazs, a main competition for Ben & Jerry’s, was the leading ice cream supplier, Ben & jerry’s refused to sell their products there because the Japanese corporation had never in its history done anything to improve anything in their community. The company was awarded a couple of times, for example the Working Mother magazine named the business as one of the best in a hundred for working mothers and in 1988 the Business Ethics magazine awarded the company with the third rank out of a hundred.
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