Introduction
Starbucks sells high-quality coffee, including roasted specialty coffee, around the world. Via its retail shops, the firm sells a variety of coffee mixes, artisanal beverages, merchandise, and other items. The business upholds ethical standards and engages in moral behavior. For example, Starbucks utilizes a method known as C.A.F.E. and is committed to getting all its coffee ethically (Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices).
Discussion
The four guiding principles of Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. sourcing strategy are value, economic intelligibility, ecological management, and social accountability. The company ensures that all coffee is responsibly grown, harvested, processed, and purchased at fair prices. The vast coffee corporation uses third parties and themselves to confirm that their source is moral. The ethical sourcing guidelines set by Starbucks are currently accepted throughout the industry.
Several principles guide ethical decision-making, including the right lens, which begins from the idea that people possess a poise founded on their human character or their capability of independently selecting what they want to do with their lives. The justice lens provides that every individual needs to be granted their due, and what persons are due is usually deemed fair. The virtue lens supports that ethical decisions must be consistent with some perfect virtues that support the complete growth of humanity. The consequences of actions characterize utilitarianism. It also considers everyone and deems them equally valuable.
The guiding principle that determines the ethical principles of Starbucks is utilitarianism. Companies using utilitarianism cannot put themselves above others. Starbucks uses utilitarianism as one ethical guideline when making corporate-level ethical decisions. Starbucks must deal with the issue of the global coffee industry’s explosive growth, which has caused a global decline in the price of coffee beans (Pratap, 2018). Because the market price of coffee is equal to or less than the costs to operate a coffee-growing business, this issue impacts coffee bean growers. The firm appears to have tackled the challenge by considering how it can simultaneously assist coffee farmers and uphold its business.
Conclusion
As a result, the firm has thought about several options to benefit the broadest audience. The company specializes in coffee and can assist coffee growers by paying them higher market prices for their beans (Pratap, 2018). Starbucks’ executives had the option of maximizing profits. However, they opted to acknowledge the moral significance of coffee growers by paying them more than the market value for their coffee beans.
Reference
Pratap, A. (2018). Starbucks Business Ethics Case Study. Notesmatic. Web.