Cadbury's Altruistic Spirit And The Shareholder Value

These expectations relate with Hungry Jack’s main stakeholders. Theory indicates that businesses affect stakeholder groups that also influence business performance in return. As such, it is essential for Hungry Jack’s to maintain and improve its corporate social responsibility strategies for the purpose of optimizing its relations with major stakeholders. By integrating the interests of these stakeholder groups in strategic formulation, Hungry Jacks can expect optimised business opportunities for long-term growth and

The evolving practices around corporate social responsibility (CSR) provide dynamic, and complex opportunities for business. Overall, businesses are modifying their core purpose from creating shareholder profit toward creating shared value across their stakeholders, with shareholders being only one of the many stakeholders. This paper analyzes the 74th ranked 2014 Fortune Global 500 Company Kroger. Kroger started in 1883 as a local Cincinnati, Ohio grocery store, and has expended to be the second largest retail grocery store in the United States, and fifth largest in the world, owning retail food and drug stores, jewelry stores, and convenience stores in the United States (Kroger, 2015). Kroger remains headquartered in Ohio. An overview of Kroger, and specifically Kroger’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy and implementation will be discussed, followed by a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) CSR analysis informing a concluding plan to enhance Kroger’s CSR maturity.

Because corporations are established to profit and shareholders invest money with expectations of a greater return, managers cannot be given a directive to be “socially responsible” without providing specific criteria of checks and balances to which needs to adhere. Therefore, it is imperative to the success of a corporation for managers to not act solely but rather to act within the policies of the shareholders.

Company Q’s attitude towards social responsibility appears to be nonexistent, possibly through ignorance or disconcert. Either way the lack of social responsibility affects their business and community’s perception of their business. It appears that the company management has never developed and ethics program that clearly defines the corporate culture including provisions for social responsibility. Profits, or at least a lack of losses appears to be a primary motivating factor for company Q's management’s decisions. Company Q has been attempting to cut losses by closing stores that were losing money instead of finding innovative ways to

The following is an analysis of information gathered from an interview with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market and coauthor of “Conscious Capitalism”. The objective of this analysis is to discuss the higher purpose of business. During the interview, Mackey offers his ideas on creating value for all stakeholders of an organization, not just the investors. Next, he explains how being more conscious in business will ultimately create a “win, win, win” scenario. Additionally, the differences between corporate social responsibility and conscious capitalism are clarified. This analysis will also describe the benefit of a balance between government regulations and the ideals of laissez faire business. Lastly, the following analysis will elaborate on the author’s suggestion that conscious businesses will outperform others in the 21st century.

Categorized by the natures, shareholders are recognized as the banks, trusts, insurance companies, private equity fund, public pension funds, religious groups, worker unions or a unique individual who is a natural person. They can be divided into the majority or minority shareholders, institutional or individual shareholder based on the group sizes and functions. The majority or institutional shareholders are continually believed to play an unprecedented role in corporate governance. King (2009) believes one of the major reasons for market failures connecting with governance is due to the absence of institutional shareholders. From the view of the sponsor’s motivations, the shareholders are financial activists who focus on the firm’s performance and social activists who pay more attention to corporate social responsibilities. Within the limit of this research, we differentiate the sponsors population into two distinct groups: the gadfly group that represent for all hyperactive individual shareholders and the other shareholder groups which include all other remain shareholder

The proposed sale of Hershey Foods Corporation (HFC) during the summer of 2002 captured headlines and imaginations. After all, Hershey was an American icon, and when the company’s largest shareholder, the Hershey Trust Company (HSY), asked HFC management to explore a sale, the story drew national and international attention. The company’s unusual governance structure put the Hershey Trust’s board in the difficult position of making both an economic and a governance decision. On the one hand, the board faced a challenging economic decision that centered on determining whether the solicited bids provided a fair premium for HFC

This paper will have a detailed discussion on the shareholder theory of Milton Friedman and the stakeholder theory of Edward Freeman. Friedman argued that “neo-classical economic theory suggests that the purpose of the organisations is to make profits in their accountability to themselves and their shareholders and that only by doing so can business contribute to wealth for itself and society at large”. On the other hand, the theory of stakeholder suggests that the managers of an organisation do not only have the duty towards the firm’s shareholders; rather towards the individuals and constituencies who contribute to the company’s wealth, capacity and activities. These individuals or constituencies can be the shareholders, employees,

Ben Cohen,one of the builders of Ben & Jerry’s , proposes that it is unsubstantial for Ben & Jerry’s to merely do a business just like other companies, and it should make philanthropic contribution to society as well. This mind comes to be practical and when it comes to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Ben & Jerry’s become prominent example (Dennis et al, 1998).

Analysis of the Cadbury Business The person, who created the Cadbury business, is John Cadbury in 1824. The business started as a shop in a fashionable place in Birmingham. It sold things such as tea and coffee, mustard and a new sideline - cocoa and drinking chocolate, which John Cadbury prepared himself using a mortar and pestle. In 1847 the Cadbury business became a partnership. This is because John Cadbury took his brother, which also made it a family business.

Ben and Jerry’s, founded in 1978, is a market leading distributor of super-premium ice creams, frozen yogurts, and sorbets, and has built a reputation on being a socially minded company. They were pioneers in the policy of “caring capitalism” and place heavy importance on the concept of social responsibility, a practice which many companies have since adopted. They have enjoyed long-term success as a result of their progressive methods of doing business and novel ideology regarding how a company should be ran. However, due to increased competitive pressure and declining financial performance, they have now been confronted by the threat of a takeover. Recently four

The proposed sale of Hershey Foods Corporation (HFC) during the summer of 2002 captured headlines and imaginations. After all, Hershey was an American icon, and when the company’s largest shareholder, the Hershey Trust Company (HSY), asked HFC management to explore a sale, the story drew national and international attention. The company’s unusual governance structure put the Hershey Trust’s board in the difficult position of making both an economic and a governance decision. On the one hand, the board faced a challenging economic decision that centered on determining whether the solicited bids provided a fair premium for HFC shareholders. On the other hand, the governance decision required the

Blowfield, M. and Murray, A. (2011) ‘Introducing corporate responsibility’, (2nd edition) corporate responsibility. Oxford: Oxford university press, pp.3-25

Starbucks is an American multinational corporation that is arguably considered as the best coffee house in the globe in terms of global performance. The company has for a long time considered CSR as an important part of its operations and currently, it adopts an Anglo-American model of corporate social responsibility. This is an approach to CSR that maintains close links between shareholder interests with the operations of the organization. The company ensures that its CSR initiatives are appropriately audited so that it is able to learn of its CSR performance and not as an effort of complying with legal regulations and this is what makes the strategies adopted by the company very relevant. The corporate social responsibility codes that are derived from Starbucks’ Anglo American model have contributed to great product development by the company, efficient production and quality customer service. All these have been made possible through the company’s Corporate Governance Codes . At starbucks, the codes have provisions for the code of conduct which acts as guidelines as to how the employees at the organization behave. The code of conduct guides the entire organization including the board of

Whilst the definition of corporate governance most widely used is "the system by which companies are directed and controlled" presented by Cadbury Committee, (1992). More specifically it is the framework by which the various stakeholder interests are balanced, or, as the IFC (International Finance Corporation) states, "the relationships among the management, Board of Directors, controlling shareholders, minority shareholders and other stakeholders".