Csr at Mcdonalds Essays

Csr at Mcdonalds Essays Csr at Mcdonalds Essay Csr at Mcdonalds Essay The most essential characteristic of an organisation is the focus on ethical behavior. By ‘doing the right thing’ internally and externally the business can create a good working environment, whereas at the same time the surroundings and the society takes advantage. Difficult is that ethical matters are based on individual principles and ideals. Resultantly, ethical matters are not easy to put into effect and easy to overlook. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is rapidly becoming one of the principles on which modern business is built (Hancock, 2004). Areas can be identified were improvements should be made, and use it for strategies in future business plans. CSR refers to the economic, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities (Carroll Buchholtz, 2000; Swanson, 1995). The organisations are furthermore faced up to social demands for which they are likely to show responsibility for. Following the organisation can respond in different ways. The different types of responding to the social demand are obstructive, defensive, accommodative or proactive (Carroll Gatewood, 1981). Within this essay it will be examined how these CSR principles were / are utilized in the service business McDonald’s. For evaluating the social performance of McDonald’s there will be a closer look at the ethical discretionary responsibilities and the responses proactive accommodative. Finally it will be examined how to improve the social responsibility of McDonald’s by using the tools code of ethics and ethical structures. McDonald’s opened its first Bar-B-Que restaurant in 1940 by the two brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernadino, California. It has grown quickly and opened the 100th restaurant in 1959. Later in 1967 it opened the first international restaurants in Canada and Puerto Rico and is today selling its products in 118 countries around the globe. Nowadays social responsibility is the main concern for McDonald’s (McDonalds, 2009). Companies have different objectives to realize CSR. Some organisations using CSR to reduce costs and others are willing to develop a strengthen the image (Honds, de Bakker Neergaard, 2007). To assess McDonald’s social performance the discretionary responsibility can be evaluated. Discretionary responsibility connotes an unpaid organisations’ ambition to administer to society’s benefits without getting something in return (Spencer and Butler, 2004). Additionally the responsibilities go over public expectations (Zain, 2008). The community support of McDonald’s is a basic value and the corporation takes it very seriously. The company’s objective shows that McDonald’s is not simply a profit making organisation, to create additional value to their consumers and the society. The variety of discretionary responsibilities is taking action in various dimensions. These responsibilities are namely Partnerships Sponsorships, Owner/Operator Involvement, Disaster Relief and Children’s programs Ronald McDonald House Charities (McDonald’s Corporate Responsibility, 2007). After Fritzsche and Becker (1984) ethical responsibility covers behavior which is not implemented in laws. Moreover the ethical responsibility is not the straight trade and industry importance. Ethical stands for to act with equity, fairness and impartiality (Fritzsche et al. , 1984). Examples to evaluate ethical performance can also be shown at the ethical performance of the McDonald’s corporation. Every year a worldwide Anti-McDonald’s Day is arranged which demonstrates against McDonald’s unethical behavior; promotion of Junk Food, unethical targeting of children, exploitation of workers, animal cruelty, damage to the environment and the global domination of corporations over our lives (Infoshop News, 2005). By targeting of children with the unhealthy fast food, McDonald’s uses incentives to attract the children with playgrounds, clubs and free toys. Young children between 2 and 5 cannot differentiate between TV programs and advertisings, so that the society interprets McDonalds as unethical (Media Awareness Network, 2009). The first type of response to specific social pressures the essay focuses on is the proactive response. The proactive respond react to wrongdoing of the business and ensure initiatives that take a more proactive stance promoting ethical values and encouraging employees to seek to high ethical ideals (Treviano Weaver, 2003). The companies have willingness to comunicate, have a long term focus and came not through pressure of the stakeholders. Furthermore a centre of attention is on building lasting relationships based on trust and mutual understanding of the company (Hancock, 2004). An example how an organisation can respond proactively to specific social pressures can be seen at the responses of the Mc Donald’s corporation. â€Å"Take us from reactive and proactive. † the Vice President of communications of McDonald’s Mike Donahue said in 2002 (Frank, 2004). Donahue altered that the customer service, which before used to be an operations function, recently informs him, so that Public Relations (PR) can be directly in touch with the customer feedback and questions (Frank, 2004). Another proactive respond was shown when the U. S. Evironmental Protection Agency has named McDonald’s USA as the 2007 Energy Star Partner of the Year because McDonald’s USA proactively controls their energy consumption (McDonald’s Corporate Responsibility, 2007). Coming to the second response, this paragraph will focus on the accommodative response, which covers the social demands which the company allows (Samson Draft, 2009). It is an engagement for the organisation which implies to achieve legal, economic and ethical responsibilities inside their operating environment. The public claim that McDonald’s doesn’t respond sufficient enough with accommodative actions to respond to external pressures. The organisation knew that their unhealthy food over several years had damaging impacts, but McDonald’s did only make a few changes to answer to the social requests. Only the healthy trend has led to modifications within the McDonald’s menu by selling wraps, salads, fruit bags and mentioning the nutrition facts on the packages (BBC News, 2007). Ethics Structure is often referred to as a set of elements, which highlight the theory in the public service as well as assist in a shifting environment (Baqueiro, 2005). According to the OECD (1996) the set of elements are: Legal framework, Accountability and Control systems, Public involvement and Scrutiny, Political leadership, Codes of conduct, Professional socialization, Coordinating body and Service conditions, and which are all contributing to three functions; control, management and guidance. In essence, the set of elements can on the one hand control unwanted behavior of a company or on the other hand motivate towards a good behavior. Taking a look at the company McDonald’s now, there can be identified further improvements in respect to its ethics structure. When the company published its Corporate Responsibility Report in 2002, there were hardly seen any concerns about ethics (Hawken, 2002). McDonald’s became aware of that problem and made some changes according to it. The results were seen in their second Corporate Responsibility Report published in 2004 (McDonald’s Corporation, 2004). McDonald’s understood to react to previously raised criticism from society in a clever way, but in essence it was not enough. An improvement to McDonald’s social responsibility could therefore be achieved through implementing an ethics department, or even just some experts on ethical structures. The company would then be seen as more reliable and ethical, as experts would be more subjective. Moreover the company would increase its transparency and benefit from the positive image. The Code of ethics is a technique to develop an improved social responsibility and is an important part of the company’s identity (Samson Draft, 2009; Senske, 2009). Furthermore it is a strict document which describes values in ethics and social matters of an organisation (Samson Daft, 2009). After Parsons (2004) guidelines are given which are based on the values and matters to ensure equivalent decisions in similar situations. The members of the organisation have to follow and live by the code of ethics in order to avoid unethical behaviour and engender an ethical sensitivity (Menzel, 2006). Resultantly it creates a kind of trust for the stakeholders (Senske, 2009). Earlier McDonald’s made statements about its code of conduct to encourage their stakeholders, but nothing was issued about the efforts which were being made. As an example Mc Donald’s paid most of their employees less than the usual adult minimum wage (Transport and General Workers Union, 2004). Furthermore poor working conditions with discrimination, illegal working hours, and bad safety conditions were shown at McDonald’s. In 2002 the first McDonald’s Social Responsibility Report was released. This report was supported by a code of business conduct, which is the main structure for employee ethics. It is utilized to make sure that the internal ethical requirements are met, such as a secure working environment and employee rights (McDonald’s Corporation, 2004). But the latest Corporate Responsibility Report from 2004 doesn’t say much about how situations have been improved concerning the payment for example. Furthermore it shows that McDonald’s did not change its in-house methods or impact on the society and the environment (Hawken, 2002). Lots of its efforts are explanatory and based around achieving future goals. This has a lot of perspective, but nothing is said about what has been achieved at present. First of all this could be improved by setting up detailed, measureable, achievable and time-framed goals. And finally the progress of these defined goals should be published in the Corporate Responsibility Report in order to encourage the stakeholders, to strengthen McDonald’s social image and to make the company more reliable. As a final conclusion this essay has shown that the CSR principles are essential to improve and to have relationships and a good social image within the modern society. By taking the example of one of the worldwide leading organisations, that is McDonald’s, it has shown that CSR is still of great importance today. The first paragraph, which deals with the discretionary responsibility, it has shown that McDonald’s is not simply a profit making organisation but also has responsibilities such as Partnerships Sponsorships, Owner/Operator Involvement, Disaster Relief and Children’s programs Ronald McDonald House Charities. The next principle the essay focused on was ethical responsibility. McDonald’s is criticized in public of its unethical behavior when targeting with advertisement campaigns on children. By having a closer look at the proactive response which an organisation could make, it showed that McDonalds is already used to respond proactively. By altering the customer service, which used to be an operations function, it is now able to get in touch with customer feedback and questions much quicker. In the next paragraph which deals with the accommodative respond, it has demonstrated that McDonald’s doesn’t respond adequate with accommodative actions to respond to external pressures. At the end of the essay two tools were examined to observe how the social responsibility can be improved. The first tool which could help McDonald’s is ethics structure and it could be used by implementing an ethics department. The second improvement tool to help McDonald’s is the code of ethics which already exists at the company. But it could be improved by setting up detailed, measureable, achievable time-framed goals. The progress of these defined goals should be published in their annual Corporate Responsibility Reports in order to satisfy the stakeholders, to strengthen the social image and to make the company more reliable. As a summary of the essay it has revealed that the two chosen tools can necessarily improve the social responsiveness of McDonalds. By not overwhelming the still existing bad social image and not including these far-reaching changes, McDonald’s will not be able to upgrade its corporate social responsibility.