Category Archives: Student Work

Social responsibility & Ethics

Marckenson Desgrottes

  Health & Fitness plays a significant role in my daily life. While many businesses continues to face impacts from COVID, Fitness clubs target to improve corporate social responsibility and pursuing sustainable business practices by doing their upmost part to create a clean environment for their customers, in addition to the gym equipment products they provide. Understating the importance of taking the additional steps to attract customer’s attention, product quality and listening to customer’s interest through surveys, helps businesses understand where growth can be made to gain customer satisfaction and promote their business. Health & Fitness is important to all individual’s life. I strongly feel, healthy people are more energetic than someone that doesn’t pay attention to their health.

Health and Fitness has been a passion of minds since high school. At first, being physically fit, to me, were to remain in shape in order to play sports in high school. Over the years, I understood the importance of being in shape and the positive impact it can have in your life. At the start of point with COVID-19 pandemic. Gyms closed in order to help stop the spread of COVID. I can honestly say, a lot of people were impacted because of this mandate, including myself. Unable to access gym equipment’s effected my friends, family and myself who rely on the gym as a daily part of our activities. This caused a lot of people and myself to miss daily training that significantly helps us remain in shape. The Closure did not only impact the customers. “Twenty-two percent of U.S. health clubs and studios closed permanently since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and the U.S. fitness industry has lost $29.2 billion in revenue, according to findings by the National Health & Fitness Alliance (NHFA)”. The fitness industry had experienced 10 years of revenue growth prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and the mandated closures of health clubs in many states to try to stop the spread of the virus. “The industry’s revenue dropped 52 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, equating to a loss of $29.2 billion in revenue from March 2020 through June 2021, according to the NHFA. With the temporary closures and the subsequent permanent closures of health clubs and studios, about 1.5 million people lost their jobs in the industry, according to NHFA. That equates to 47 percent of jobs in the industry”.

The pandemic impacted customers, workers and health & fitness businesses across the U.S. When the reopening phase took placed. Myself and fitness customers were happy to have a sense of normalcy again after most day-to-day activities were impacted by COVID-19. Although, Fitness clubs reopened, they faced unusual impact within their operations due to capacity restrictions and disinfectant requirements for all fitness clubs that include additional spending to their business. Customers were frustrated with the issue of having to wait on an extended line to access fitness clubs. However, customers decided to deal with the issue and were happy to just be able to access the fitness clubs for their trainings. Home fitness workout did not work for all. Working out in the comfort of your home can be difficult for most people. Some people are lackadaisical in home fitness workouts. The gym provided a sense of motivation with everyone in the same environment working on common goal towards health & fitness. Fitness clubs payed close attention to current trends and offered discounts on memberships upon reopening, cheaper rates for license trainers to train customers and created the ability for customers to schedule their training hours to help with delays with accessing gyms. I personally like the effort fitness clubs made to ensure customers are able to feel safe in their workout environments by constantly disinfecting workout areas and making disinfectant easily accessible to customers at the gym.

In conclusion, the pandemic has been a daily part of our life for the past two years. With the unknown direction on resolution of COVID-19 pandemic. Health & fitness are very important to customers that rely on fitness clubs. In addition, workers and the fitness business allows customers to have a place/and or environment where it help motivates customers to achieve their desired fitness goals.

Week E: The Founder

  1. What makes Ray Kroc and the brothers different from each other?
  2. Do you think the McDonald’s brothers did the right thing by selling out to Ray Kroc? Did Ray Kroc give the brothers a good deal?
  3. How did the local store franchisees make money?
  4. How did Kroc make money? How was that different than the franchisees, running the local stores?
  5. Does this film change your view of McDonald’s?

1.The biggest difference between Ray kroc and the brothers where one of them wanted to focus on the quality of the product being sold to the customer and gain customer experience from it. The other brother was more minded into concerdering all the money being invested able to grow and have the buisness expand exponentially.

2. Weather or not the McDonald’s brothers did a right thing selling the company out to Ray Kroc in other reasons it started into a huge argument and made Kroc increasingly frustrated and decided that he wanted full control over McDonald’s.

3. The local store franchises made money by the trust of their store’s success.

4 The way Kuroku made money was through the real estate business. When the real estate company was founded, Kroc and Sonnerbon found the land, bought it for a while on a contract basis, and showed the landowners the vision they had. He then took a bank loan and funded the store for the franchise owner to rent the building in total for a fee and the rent percentage to start with a pre-established base sales percentage. increase. This method proved to be useful for Kroc, as the original arrangement benefited the brothers and franchise owners, and Kroc paid for it, so he had to protect himself.

5. After wathcing the film my honest answer is probbaly yes. Kroc’s self help thimself to improve the texts look like unwarranted administrative texts, striking while likewise negative. In spite of his outright advantage, he expects he’s the model of vision. At the end of the video i started to think bad about McDonald’s but at the end of the day you see me ordering chiken nuggets with barbeque and fries.

The Founder

The primary difference between Kroc and the McDonald brothers is their entrepreneurial focus. The brother primarily focused on the quality of their product and consumer satisfaction. While they wanted to grow eventually, they wanted to develop at a pace they could control because they had a well-run business. In contrast, Kroc was more concerned about exponential business growth and profits. He realized that the burger joint was a gold mine and pushed the brothers to grow beyond their comfort before he freed himself from the initial contract by creating new franchises under which the brothers had no stake.

I strongly believe that selling out to Ray was wrong. Getting $2.7 million seemed good at the time, but it was counterproductive. The initial deal highlighted a $950 franchise fee with a 1.9% service fee and 0.5% to the brothers and the remaining to Ray Kroc. However, the joints were bringing in substantial revenues annually on franchising McDonald’s. While their amount wasn’t small, their 0.5% would have been giving them extensive profits if they had not sold out to Kroc. The McDonald’s brother’s royalties would have amounted to a couple hundred million by today’s standards. Conversely, I understand their hesitance to deal with a power-hungry individual who would have dragged them through the mud with legal issues and led them to abandon their principles governed by offering quality products and customer satisfaction.

The franchisees made money depending on their stores’ success. They made money from the revenue from offering services and the overall sales. Generally, they made money from the remaining amount they were left with after clearing overhead costs from the profits. The overhead costs in ‘The Founder’ included paying for equipment, supplies, staffing, and the location of the franchise. When franchisors collected the fixed and percent fees, the remaining amount was the profit they took home or further invested in McDonald’s.

Kroc made money through the real estate business. Upon inception of the Realty Corporation, Kroc and Sonnerbon would locate sites, buy them on a contractual basis for a while and show the landowner the vision they represented, after which the landowner would lower the interest to fit a building loan. He would then obtain bank loans to finance the store for franchise owners, lease the buildings to them at a fee over the total, and the percentage rent would kick in at a percentage of sales over a previously determined base. This method proved useful to Kroc since the initial agreement benefited the brothers and the franchise owners and left Kroc to fend for himself as he bore the costs. Therefore, unlike franchisees who made money from the remaining money after deductions, Kroc made money through his real estate method.

After watching the film, I do want to say that yes, it somewhat changed my perspective on McDonald’s. Kroc represents the business values depicted by most multi-national companies and monopolies where capitalism is the purest virtue, and any other factors and casualties are irrelevant. His self-help texts resemble unfounded clerical texts, bold while also cynical. Despite his blatant opportunism, he assumes he’s the model of idealism. Since Kroc built his success on the sweat of the McDonald’s brothers and stole their ideas and their name in the name of “persistence,” it creates a negative perception about the ethical principles and standards that govern the franchise, much like trying to understand the tech monopoly across the globe. Still, while the movie left a bad taste in my mouth, I will find myself ordering a quarter pounder and a shake.

References

Hancock, J. L. (2017). The Founder. Written by Robert Siegel.

Ethics & Social Responsibility – DIG

The reasturant / company I will be talking about is DIG . As some of us have tried or have heard of it through social media or advertisements. DIG is one of the biggest food industry that they have even worked together with Amercian Airlines and etc.

DIG really played a huge role into contributing to china town community housing and small food buisness which where really strucked bad finacially due to the pandemic, it helped so much towards the people not being able to have full reasturant of social responsibilty . DIG was known for there support of fresh grown food and supporting small local farmers into supplying us with great vegtebales that where fresher and able to be keeped longer.

An ethical issue in any business is the attention to work on social reaction among colleagues and buisness partners. For example in a work environment like DIG you have to learn how to become a more social and responsible colleague, know when to have your freedom of space and priviallage to speak out of any wrong between yourslef or the company them selfs.

Ethics & Social Responsibility

Kevin J. Pena

Bus 104-B050

Prof. Buckler

April 22,2022

Ethics & Social Responsibility 

Modern Companies have taken note of the power they hold to make a difference in our world today. This had brought most of them to develop ways to make their business models that aid in correcting some of these issues. This includes social justice, sustainability  and ecological, social equality and philanthropic practices implemented throughout these companies. Most companies publish these practices to show what they are doing to help. I will be looking at one specific international retail company’s practices and how they have ethically served their social responsibility.

Amongst the international retail giants, one affordable company is on the rise, that company is Uniqlo. Uniqlo is a Japanese clothing brand that started in 1949. It now has over 1000 stores worldwide.This puts the company in a position to affect many social situations in the countries that house their stores. Some of the social situations they address are refugee support efforts, economic development of Bangladesh, and supporting the special olympics and a children’s hospice in Tsurumi Japan. In Bangladesh they have opened 15 stores that produce and sell all products in Bangladesh. All profits made from those stores are reinvested in the stores and factories to boost the nation’s economy and help it grow. Along with their social responsibilities they address sustainability issues pertaining to clothing production as a retail company. They have implemented a clothing recycling program for their clothes to help reduce their carbon footprint. They also contribute to preserving the environment of coastal Japan while producing clothes with fabrics that have a longer life cycle. These are attempts to make a social impact on an international scale. Due to regulations in different countries they cannot have a singular model to implement across the countries. This is why they focus on their sustainable production practices and spreading knowledge on their clothing recycling programs as well as leading the front on new retail technology. 

Observing the positions this company focuses on, I do have some recommendations that would help further the impact they wish to make. Beginning with their recycling programs. I do believe they should include it more in their marketing. This can bring people to inquire about the programs. Such as their clothing recycling collection areas that exist in some of their stores. While the desire to sustain the environment of your home country is understandable, there is a large opportunity to do the same in other countries. Also, upon their support to the Tsurumi children’s hospice, It would be awesome if they can do that with other hospice or to build some in countries that could need them. As well as publishing the experience the children are having and the successful parts of the practices to share with other international children’s hospitals.They have done some great things in Bangladesh and it would be awesome to see other companies do the same with other countries. Even though it is difficult to do the same due to political situations in most of those nations. But if each major clothing company would follow this example there can be a greater impact made in developing nations. Though they do have great practices the main thing I would work on is sharing the information and spreading the word on how to do the same for many companies to follow. Such as their many refugee aiding programs are wonderful yet not known. Making these known, not just for the social impact points, but for the benefit of showing other companies options on how to ethically help the societies they are in. Through sharing the knowledge of how they have succeeded in some of these things, it teaches other companies the steps to follow or look into to do the same. Being a clothing company there is always room for improvement in sustainability practices. However there are several setbacks since they also cater to an international market that differs from country to country. Also though I can make these recommendations from an external perspective, I do understand that there can be setbacks due to political scenarios and not knowing how much of their profits can be allocated to these endeavors.

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.