Category Archives: Ethics

These posts will be added to our Student Work menu item. This category should be used for submitting posts for our Unit #7 Assignment.

Ethics

McDonald’s is the company I interact with daily. McDonald’s is a restaurant that deals with fast food. It is one of the most popular restaurants in America, and it is an established company (Zhang et al., 2020). McDonald’s Corporation was established in the year 1940. The company is controlled by Maurice and Richard in the United States. McDonald’s mainly serves its customers hamburgers, French fries, and chicken products. McDonald’s is ranked as the biggest restaurant firm in the world. However, McDonald’s has social responsibilities and ethical principles like other companies. When considering the moral duties of McDonald’s, you have to consider the following the following factors such as philanthropy, energy conservation, sustainable supply chains, reducing carbon footprints, fair trade, and community services.

            McDonald’s Corporation takes part in community activities. Apart from serving the community with its services, it also gives hands back to the community. McDonald’s helps in fundraising and volunteers that help the society. They have formed an organization known as Ronald McDonald House Charities; this program and McDonald’s National scholarships give funds to society through programs that support ethical principles (Nee et al.,2018). McDonald’s supports these events financially through sports and community events with global inspiration

            The concern of energy conservation is a priority in the company of McDonald since the fast-food uses energy to be prepared. Energy conservation affects the profit of a product sold to the consumer. Therefore, McDonald’s acknowledges that kitchen equipment’s responsible for saving energy. However, to cut half the power used to cook each meal on the menu requires an upgrade in the kitchen equipment (Raj et al., 2021). McDonald’s has been making plans with its kitchen equipment suppliers to work on the energy efficiency of its products. McDonald’s finds a solution of using low energy by using small oil volume fryers. Also, McDonald’s restaurants are well ventilated to reduce heating. McDonald’s is one of the most channeled corporation businesses globally (Heymann, 2020). The company has extended its restaurants in many countries. All McDonald’s restaurants work greatly, meaning the management does a very good job. McDonald’s products’ top priorities include chicken, chips, beef, coffee, and palm oil. McDonald’s always gets challenged by its customers since their expectations keep evolving. To be ready to cope with the consumers, McDonald’s works with global reliable suppliers and farmers worldwide that provide them with quality products.

            Many industries today have resulted in global warming. Companies that deal with the production of goods through energy are expected to observe their carbon footprint to take care of the environment. McDonald as a corporation, respect nature and take action to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide let into the atmosphere. McDonald’s believes that climate change can impact and affect communities globally. However, McDonald’s has laid a carbon footprint reduction strategy (Schramade, 2019). McDonald’s was the first restaurant in 2018 to open a science base purposely to help reduce greenhouse gas. McDonald’s achieved to ensure all their products come from sustainable, verified sources. McDonald’s also greatly supports other traders who sell them products. McDonald’s buys whitefish in large amounts. Therefore, they boost the trade between them and the fishermen (Heymann, 2020). McDonald’s is a world supporter of coffee and the company campaigns for the sustainability of coffee sources.

            During a crisis, you will find McDonald delivering food to communities to help. McDonald’s has launched various programs to keep families together close to care facilities. McDonald’s and the Franchisees, major owners of McDonald’s restaurants, offer sponsorship and resources to local communities globally (Zhang et al., 2020). Worldwide, McDonald’s staff members have a culture of volunteering their time to focus on supporting the community. McDonald’s is a source of employment for society, and therefore, I would like McDonald’s to teach life skills to its labor force. McDonald’s is an established cooperation channel of restaurants. In the past years, it has gained more customers and managed to penetrate the world of consumers. McDonald’s has gained the trust of consumers globally. Every day they earn customers by serving them safe food and respecting both customers and staff members.

Reference

Heymann, L. A. (2020). The Meaning of McDonald’s. Jotwell: J. Things We Like, 1.

http://library.wou.edu.my/vertical/vf2018-17.pdf

https://francis-press.com/uploads/papers/9V0GPeS7XUGX4DSZ6SR4oJ2UdPD3Yvusj6qjOzYW.pdf

https://kkgpublications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ijhss6.20004-6.pdf

https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1531&context=popular_media

https://sif.overcastcdn.com/documents/McDonalds.pdf

Nee, L. G., & Arumugam, P. V (2018). Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility Management, ECSRM, and Strategy to Reshaping Consumer Behaviour.

Raj, S. K., & Singh, N. K. (2021). Strategizing fast food industries using a balanced scorecard approach: A case study of Mcdonald’s Corporation. Raj, SK & Singh, NK (2020). Strategizing fast food industries using a balanced scorecard approach: A case study of McDonald’s Corporation. International Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 6(6), 258-273.

Schramade, W. (2019). McDonald’s: a sustainable finance case study. Erasmus Platform for Sustainable Value Creation.

Zhang, R., Wu, C., Yin, J., Liu, L., Cheng, L., & Xin, X. (2020). Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Survey—KFC, McDonald’s. Academic Journal of Business & Management, 2(8).

Ethics

For this weekly assignment, I choose to use my coffee import and roasting business called Moonraker Coffee Roasters (moonrakercoffee.co)— I make most of the daily business decisions, and from the start, my partners and I were very concerned about our social responsibility—this purpose was two-fold: so  we could feel like we were staying true to our personal values, and because this is good business this day and age among Gen Z and millennial customer base!  Consumers are truly paying attention and directing their hard-earned money to brands they feel embody upright values and who examine their social impact.

From the very start, when we were brainstorming and fleshing out our strategy and differentiating factors and features in the coffee, we began forming up our business plan which encompassed our corporate vision and mission statement.  In this process, we realized that by partnering with coffee farmers directly we could not only obtain access to some very high-grade coffee that customers would probably enjoy more over other beans, but furthermore, we could actually ensure more money went to the farmers instead of big corporate coffee brokers who act as middle-men in the supply chain.  This is pretty rad!  Basically, it means thousands of dollars more per hectarea of coffee planted for the farmers, all of whom are what are known as “small holder” farmers meaning they own about 10 acres of land or less.  So this is a major improvement for the farmer and family, and several farmers have now circled back to us showing us some of the new drying and de-pulping machinery they have been able to purchase thanks for receiving a small premium in the coffee price!  

We are working on trademarking the term “Beyond Fair Trade” right now as we work to partner with farmers, as we are now working to determine how each farm partner is actually paying the coffee harvesting staff.  Typically the coffee harvesters are seasonal workers who come from economically marginalized communities.  For instance, in Panama, the coffee is almost exclusively harvested by an indigenous group known as the Ngobe-Bugle, and what our farm partners there told us was that instead of paying the workers more per pound of coffee harvested, what the workers actually really needed was some adequate housing with child care so that men and women could work during the day and have a safe and dry place to sleep during the “cosecha” or harvest season.  This was very interesting to hear and we are now working with one farm to create a fund to create child care options for the workers!  

All in all, there is so much need in the world, both at home and aboard, and I think businesses are waking up to the impact they can have for good—and as consumers, if we demand and reward those who examine social impact, we can create better outcomes for communities.  In Pennsylvania, where we incorporated Moonraker, there is even a default option with the PA Secretary of State to form a “B Corp,” which states that in addition to making a profit, the purpose of the business to is to create a positive benefit to the community!  We are actually working on our first annual social impact report for Pennsylvania’s legal requirement, but it was so wonderful to see the state making it one of several default choices to incorporate as a B Corp.  Our next goal is to work towards B Corp certification from B Lab (https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/), but this is an expensive and time-consuming process and a goal we have set for the next year and a half.  Overall, going forward, in addition to paying fair wages here in the US for our employees, Moonraker has set a goal to partner with farmers who “get it” in terms of long term social impact and using business as a force for good.  This “conscious capitalism” approach is entirely mutually beneficial, as it helps differentiate our coffee brand from other cut-rate, commodity grade coffee roasters out there, and I am going to recommend that we double down on really interrogating our farm partners on how we can ensure the marginalized workers can receive education, training, or increased wages so that the premiums paid for coffee do in fact have positive social impact.