Can Corporate Values Drive Shareholder Value? (With Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz)

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz

Aspen Ideas Festival:

Balancing profit with a social conscience.

Read the whole story at Aspen Ideas Festival

Comments

[Tim Janssen]

12:12 AM on 07/01/2012

CSR is nice pie in the sky but it's BS. SR needs to be a part of federal government legislation, rules and regulations. The vast majority of companies, esp. the huge ones, will never do SR on a voluntary basis. That is why you need to temper and constrain capitalism with socialism. John Maynard Keynes once said something along the lines of "capitalism is a beast that needs to be tamed". Bingo! Without an external force controlling capitalism it becomes pure creative destruction, IMO. A lose, lose proposition for everyone, even for those who are too greedy to realize it.

[ggbungles]

11:38 PM on 06/30/2012

Starbucks can't shine the shoes of Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

[Tperl]

11:29 PM on 06/30/2012

and thus ended his tenure at as CEO.

[elblanc0]

11:19 PM on 06/30/2012

Why does everyone complain about Starbucks $5 cup of coffee? They don't sell a $5 cup of coffee. A grande black coffee will set you back less than $2, and with better coffee than your local donut shop.

Now, if you want a vanilla soy latte with whip...well that's no longer coffee, that's dessert. Just sayin'

[88train]

11:19 PM on 06/30/2012

Schultz and 'social conscious' don't belong in the same sentence. The way he repaid the city that helped him become who he is, was to abandon our 41-yr city/regional institution - our basketball team, the Sonics. I'm glad he can't show his face in public here. Great documentary (#Sonicsgate) on it for people interested.

Full movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9Dp20ydm1E&feature=plcp
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILmtdQGxZUU

[GCurry]

11:09 PM on 06/30/2012

Nope.

You gotta choose. Empathy, or profit. God, or Mammon.

If empathy, you gotta pay attention to break even, financial viability. Otherwise, the organization evaporates. But empathy is a goal, and break even a constraint.

If profit, you gotta appear as not-sociopathic. As if "adequate empathy" was a constraint, like "adequate profit". But, the CEO of Starbuck's is not a spokesman for social responsibility. Period.

[TOCB]

09:36 PM on 06/30/2012

Well, we know conservatives don't approve of what Howard Schultz says about corporate social responsibility because they don't think corporations have a social responsibility. If this catches on, we could actually get back on the road to becoming an advanced civilization. Whoda thunk it?

[shershomenow]

12:40 PM on 07/01/2012

Costco has a social responsibility policy. They basically break even, profit wise, on the products they sell. Their profit is generated from the membership fees. Seems they are doing pretty darn good with that plan. They have an average of 15% mark up on their products, and an average $20 per hour wage for employees. google Costco Craze...

[number09]

09:36 PM on 06/30/2012

The first expenditure that went when I was laid off was my daily $5 cup of joe. I am finally (under) employed but my need for that never returned. And so will it be with all that I had to cut out during those 13 months. I realized that I don’t need most of it. My jeans are 10 years old and frayed at the bottom yet I go into a store and cannot bring myself to buy a new pair – same with my shoes and most everything else that was discretionary spending.

Sorry corporate guys. You have skewered workers with your bottom line profits. You lay people off, cause a recession and want to hire us back at a salary about a third less than what we were making. And now you are waking up to the fact that your profits are down?

[number09]

10:02 PM on 06/30/2012

What did I say?

[ggbungles]

11:41 PM on 06/30/2012

Precisely why I drive a 1998 Toyota that owes me nothing. Hunkered down twice and get better at it each time.

[ubringliten]

09:34 PM on 06/30/2012

Google has a culture director and they are the number the one company to work for.

[mcmutter]

09:32 PM on 06/30/2012

Starbucks ... where for $7 you can prove you're a member of the upper class .....

[ggbungles]

11:42 PM on 06/30/2012

It's where all the beautiful people are.

[democratsaint]

09:19 PM on 06/30/2012

most ceo have no conscious ,sending jobs over seas,poor pay raises for workers while they heap pay raises on themselves

[Janzee12000]

09:06 PM on 06/30/2012

Having worked with Howard for 13 years I can attest to his sincerity. But, the 'Starbucks Culture' that he built over the past 25+ years took a real hit in 2008. With the decision to shrink N.A. stores and cut jobs a number of 'bottom line foused' executives were brought in to the company to 'reshape' the culture. My friends that are still there have been truly affected by this change. Schultz not only has to convince peers on this CSR endeavor but convince his 'partners' that he is serious about re-inventing the culture that has disappeared w/i the company.

[GraniteSkyline]

08:55 PM on 06/30/2012

Average GOPer: "Duh, wha? What is this 'social conscience' thingy that you're talking 'bout?"

[chlai88]

08:29 PM on 06/30/2012

Whether Wall Street or Koch Bros like it or not, corporate social responsibility is gonna increasingly be a major part of corporations. Why? Because it's good business to be socially responsible especially in today's connected world of global social networks. Companies like those from the Koch Bros will find that no amount of PR money is enough to fend off the bad PR. They are going about it all wrong fixing their image by buying up govt to do the dirty work for them. When more realized that this will only lead to new kind of dictatorship. a corporate dictatorship, there will be an inevitable backlash and it's happening right now.

[corkery]

08:28 PM on 06/30/2012

Social Responsibility and Business is soooo 50's. Get with the times follow the Koch Bros they know how to do business give your vast fortune to greedy politicians so they can make the laws even worse for the employee, now that's good business!

[Arleen1]

08:29 PM on 06/30/2012

I hope you are being sarcastic.