Analysis Of Yum's Social Responsibility Program

Whole Foods has the Philanthropic Responsibility on Carroll’s global social responsibility pyramid, mainly for their involvement in educating employees, and customers on the importance of lifestyle changes in eating more organic, healthy foods. Moreover, Whole Foods involvement in volunteer work through the communities they serve; however,

Social responsibility is an ethical framework which suggests that an organization or individual has an obligation to act for the benefit of society at large. Social responsibility is a duty every organization has to perform so as to maintain a balance between the economy and the environment

We will begin this paper discussing whether or not Company Q’s actions have been socially responsible. In the scenario Company Q has chosen to throw out day old food instead of allowing it to be donated. The reason for their decision was to deter theft from the employees who may take the food instead of actually donating it. This in my opinion is socially irresponsible of Company Q. Company Q’s store has indeed faced some challenges, seeing as it is in a high crime area. More often than not high crime areas are also low income areas, a combination that surely both directly and indirectly effects the profits of the store. Profits are important as any business needs to be profitable obviously, but it should never be at the expense of people. People are one of the most vital parts of any business as you need them as consumers, and of course aid in running the business as employees.

Social Responsibility; An organization's obligation to maximize its positive impact on stakeholders and minimize its negative impact.

There are four levels of social responsibility – economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic. Let us evaluate one by one for the given scenario.

Yum! Brands started out as Tricon Global Restaurants in 1997 as the result of a separation from PepsiCo, and became owners of the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell brand names worldwide. Yum! Brands is now a Fortune 500 company based out of Louisville, Kentucky and the world’s largest restaurant company in the world in terms of system restaurants. With over 37,000 restaurants in over 110 countries, Yum! Brands dominates four sectors of the quick-service food industry: Mexican with the Taco Bell name, chicken with the world famous Kentucky Fried Chicken brand, pizza with the Pizza Hut chain, and seafood with their Long John Silver’s restaurants. Yum! Brands also owns A&W Restaurants, the longest running franchise chain in the

Companies today are heavily influenced by the demands of customers and stakeholders. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the social and environmental responsibility policies and practices developed by an organization to increase its positive influence and reduce its negative activity towards society (Parks, 2008). The business approach and corporate philosophy of an organization is easily altered due to economic pressures, technological improvement and stakeholder needs and demands. "Going green" or being eco-friendly is one such demand. Environmental and sustainability concerns originate most often from governments, consumer activists, and the general public (Schlosser, 2008). Thus, organizations must implement sustainability into daily practices. In addition, sustainability alters the nature of competition and drives companies to think differently about products, processes, and technologies (Parks, 2008).

More than 30% of the population in the Yuma County doesn’t know that the Yuma Community Food Bank exist, so it makes sense that those people don’t have an idea of how many children needs from our help to be able to get a meal. Clearly, the food bank needs marketing strategies to attract more donors to support the Yuma Community Food Bank. Here are two great ideas that will help the marketing of this amazing cause;

The attitude that Company Q represents by their current actions do not display social responsibility to

YUM decided to socialize with its customers and among the internet world. NetBase-at-Work assist YUM! Brands with its brands and appearance in social media (www.NetBase.com, 2013). The company also created the Social Hive where employees monitor conversations around the brand (www.NetBase.com, 2013). However, YUM has to show one of its social responsibility is focusing on nutrition (www.QSRWEB.com, 2013). YUM strives to have nutritional enhancements in its ingredients (www.QSRWEB.com, 2013). The organization is also promoting physical activity programs and named Jonathan Blum, chief global nutrition officer (www.QSRWEB.com, 2013).

Whole Foods would be located at the top of the pyramid using Carroll’s Global Corporate Social Responsibility Pyramid (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013 P21). Whole Foods goes above and beyond the requirements of society and stakeholders by investing in coaching and teaching their workforce to maintain a positive influential spirit that is contagious. Tenured employees have a more sharing and caring attitude resulting in having many subject matter experts due to their years of experience with the company. Therefore, any new employee is trained by an SME (subject matter expert) producing knowledgeable and well-rounded employees that are superior to those of other grocery stores.

Company Q is a grocery store located in a high traffic area. As a company they are socially responsible when it makes them money. Company Q was socially responsible when it came to giving the customers what they wanted, in this instance it was organic food. As a company they knew that they could make money off the customers buying higher end food. However Company Q wasn't socially responsible when they were asked to donate the day old food to the food bank. They wouldn't be gaining any money from this, they would be loosing money. The money that they spent to either buy this or make the product would be gone. Overall I would say that Company Q is not a socially responsible company. You can't be socially responsible only when it is a convenient

YUM's published position on corporate social responsibility is that they are all for it and very good at it. Corporate Responsibility Officer Magazine has Yum rated in the top 100 Best Corporate Citizens in America in 2017 (WORLD WITH MORE, n.d., p. 1). Corporate Responsibility Officer Magazine has Yum as a leader in environment; climate change; human rights; philanthropy; employee relations; finance; and governance, with environment and employee relations weighted the highest. The magazine also quotes the Senior Vice President of saying that they are proud of their corporate social responsibility progress in the past 11 years (Business Wire, 2009, p. 2). In the philanthropy department, Yum has a Harvest Food donation program where they donate

Food donations in Michigan communities can go a long way and get communities to work together to fight hunger. Organizations like Food for All have customers donate $1-5 when checking out which raised $60 million to fight world hunger, if Michigan could find a company that would do this hunger would not be such a big problem. In Michigan 1 in 6 people struggle with hunger and compared to the the world’s average of every 1 in 7 people struggle, it is a huge deal.

Referring to Carroll’s global corporate social responsibility pyramid Whole Food should be located at the top (Kreitner, & Kinicki, 2013). The top represents Philanthropic Responsibility. Because it is the top, this also represents being a good global corporate citizen, being ethical, obeying the law, and lastly being profitable (Kreitner, & Kinicki, 2013).