Coffee and ethical globalisation - Essay Example

Coffee and Ethical Globalisation What this Paper is about This paper is about how the coffee bean is changing the way organisations are doing business all over the world. We use as our basis an article (Roosevelt, 2004) about how a number of companies are working with Fair Trade, a U.S.-based socially-orientated group that lobbies companies to pay fair prices for agricultural products imported from third world countries. As a result, these companies are mobilising their customers, shareholders, and their competitors to behave differently. This transformation of organisational behaviour towards increased social consciousness somewhat goes against the traditional context of running capitalist-based businesses. Several thinkers - economists Karl Marx and Adam Smith, gurus Peter Drucker and Michael Porter, philosophers Friedrich Hayek and Alasdair MacIntyre, and Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman and Amartya Sen - have opined that the business purpose of organisations drive their behaviour. Traditionally motivated by profit and wealth creation, they observed how businesses have evolved from being tools of social destruction into becoming ethical and moral instruments of the people who own and manage them. What drives this behaviour at the centre of which lies the humble coffee bean How is this phenomenon exactly changing the way organisations do business globally This seemingly innocuous set of questions drives us to investigate: First, how do these changes in the purpose of running a business enterprise affect its profitability and, ultimately, its sustainability Second, how should we understand these organisations and the behaviour of the people who manage them so that we learn for our personal advantage After all, whether these changes are right or wrong - thus falling within the realm of ethical studies - we can certainly learn for our own benefit, acquiring a deeper understanding of organisations that would help us comprehend the purpose and logic not only behind the workings of corporations but also of the global, political, and historical consequences of everyday events. Understanding how business organisations adapt to reality can teach us how to survive and thrive in any working environment and, should we so decide, discover ways of making a personal difference in the world. This paper will use three of five paradigms to analyse the behaviour of organisations and discuss four issues arising from the emergence of the coffee bean as a catalyst of change. The author has selected the classical, critical management studies, and evolutionary paradigms explained in the next section to discuss corporate governance and business ethics, globalisation and internationalisation, organisational change and leadership, and environmentalism and its national policy consequences. Our understanding of these three paradigms, based on the works of Crowther and Green (2004) and Whittington (2001), provide us with models to understand the culture of organisations and how they act and interact. Organisations transform and are transformed, evolve and grow and, depending on how they manage this process, either bloom and continue their existence or otherwise stagnate and die. The manner by which organisations face complex issues depends on the men and women who own and manage them, which includes their shareholders, managers, employees, customers, and what Freeman (1984) refers to as stakeholders. Organisations, after all, begin and sustain their existence through humans, so understanding how organisations behave in the face of issues is a window to the minds of the humans within them. Using three paradigms, we investigate organisational behaviour and find out how coffee is changing the way we live, and how it may continue to transform our future. Paradigms as Analytical Tools There are five paradigms we can use to analyse organisations. This is by no means an exhaustive list, as there are many ways of introducing and discussing the theory of organisations, as Crowther and Green pointed out (2004, p. 5). We begin by looking at a traditional manner of explaining what a business organisation is and how the method of using paradigms facilitates our analysis. What is an organisation Tagliere (1984, p. 640) defined it as "two or more persons interacting within some mutually recognised power relationship for some common purpose". This is an intentionally broad definition to include all sizes and types of formal or informal organisations, of either a temporary or more permanent structure. The power relationship may be hierarchical or that of equals. Organising is one of the oldest human activities and will continue to be important to people because of the role it plays in human history. There are two ways organisations can be classified and analysed: first, in terms of how they relate to interest groups, and second, how its members make and implement decisions. The five paradigms we identify fall under these two main classifications. Whittington, for example, looked at how business organisations formulate strategy (present decisions that influence future actions), while Crowther and Green discussed (2004, p. 119-126) critical management studies as a radical tool to understand organisations. Since an organisation provides a locus for human interaction, social scientists study it intensively and extensively, each one armed with a set of perspectives and theories. This diversity in ways of knowing is something we cannot escape; in fact, we welcome it, because this enriches our knowledge and understanding not only of organisations and their roles but also more importantly of the people who work in them. Paradigms guide us through this diversity. As an example, Handy (1993, p. 350) argued that models are useful in enabling us to better understand the organisations we belong to or may wish to join, in learning to communicate more effectively within our organisation, or in making recommendations about ways to improve our organisation's effectiveness. By acting as frameworks for understanding reality, paradigms are useful in understanding another tool of human action, which is what an organisation is ('organisation' comes from , the Greek word that means 'tool') (Niemark and Tinker, 1986). Analysing the Bean We can discuss the paradigms in the context of the main issues driving our study: how much must a business firm in a developed country pay for a pound of coffee grown in a developing country (which Mexico is an example) What is the right price and why And how does the business firm go about deciding what is right (price) and why paying the right price is worth doing Answering these questions leads us to discuss the ethical (right or wrong) and moral (good or bad) dimensions of organisational behaviour, because these provide the observer with a perfunctory knowledge of the ethical (and moral) principles of the people who make such decisions. Of course, it is possible that some (like Enron) may survive a few years through financial legerdemain, but an organisation of fools (who don't have to be the majority; it would be sufficient for a few to be in key positions) cannot fool everyone all the time, so they eventually collapse. This makes learning the skills of organisational analysis and understanding important. One can cut across the fog thrown about by public relations spin and reach into the hearts and minds that throb within, and to know with greater certainty whether the behaviour perceived by our senses is real and sincere or oozing with the most sinister form of disguised organisational hypocrisy. Let us begin by indulging in a bit of "literal" bean counting. In terms of monetary value, coffee is second only to oil in terms of dollars traded worldwide. Over 500 billion cups of coffee are made each year; almost 60 percent are consumed in Europe, the U.S., and Japan; and $60 billion worth of coffee beans are bought and sold annually to fuel our acquired taste for this delectable and stimulating brew. Less than 10 percent of this dollar amount is paid to the farmers who grow them. Given the way companies like GMCR or Starbucks manage their supply chains from buying to processing and selling to consumers, a big chunk of coffee's traded value goes to middlemen and not to farmers (Howard, 2005). In the 1980s, the growing popularity of coffee and the crop-damaging frosts in Latin America created demand and supply imbalances that raised the base price for coffee trading to $1.20 a pound. This encouraged farmers to plant the crop, putting into motion the unintended effect of creating a coffee glut and bringing down prices to $0.50 per pound, almost equal to what the farmers spent to grow and harvest the beans. This collapse in bean prices led to farm bankruptcies and closures, a shift from coffee to more high value-added crops like cocaine, and the diaspora of millions of Mexicans across the border (Vernon, 2003). Problems escalated locally and globally. This is interesting because it serves as an introduction to understanding the change in behaviour of the business firms whose purpose is to provide a unique coffee experience, what Starbucks founder Howard Schultz (1997, p. 243-266) described as "romancing the bean (serving great coffee), romancing the customer (being served by baristas passionate about great coffee), and romancing the store experience (an enriching, comfortable, accessible, stylish, and elegant environment)". Analysing Organisations: The Five Paradigms Five theoretical paradigms help us understand organisations: classical, processual, systemic, evolutionary, and critical. Each describes how an organisation is structured, fulfils its purpose, makes strategic and tactical decisions, and is guided by a specific set of ethical and moral principles that influence its behaviour. Each paradigm can help explain the organisation's corporate governance and business ethics frameworks, how it pursues globalisation and internationalisation, copes with change and exercises principles of leadership, and its attitudes to radical social issues like environmentalism and its relationship with the communities where it operates and the state or nation to which it belongs (and to which it pays taxes). Whittington (2001) points out the link between an organisation's purpose, mission, and vision and the way it plans and makes decisions. Organisational behaviour, after all, reflects the principles of its people. What is different is the degree to which these principles affect the actions of the organisation. Classical theory looks at organisations as an extension of the rational nature of the people that own, manage, and work in them. Decisions are made through an orderly analysis towards the goal of profitably attaining the business purpose, or why the business exists. A classical organisation plans for profitability by adopting a number of analytical tools (with acronyms like SWOT and PESTEL) and using these as starting points for making decisions. Like a scientist that moves at a steady pace, each step planned with machine-like precision, a classical organisation looks for internal order, predictability, and rationality in attaining its objectives while exercising high levels of control. Processual theory looks at an organisation's practices as created and instilled by those who work in them. These practices reflect the belief and behavioural systems of organisation members, therefore making the organisation adaptive, whole, capable of learning from experience, and dynamic. While asserting that it is not possible to deliver optimal performance through rational and controlled thinking alone as the classical theorists believe, processualists describe an organisation not as a machine but as a living organism that can grow and adjust to the environment in which it operates. Thus, the processual paradigm looks at an organisation from the perspective of how it adapts, develops, and creates its own alternative futures based on the characteristics of the capabilities and strengths of its people. Evolutionary theory, as the term suggests, looks at an organisation as a highly complex reality characterised by a set of multifaceted behaviours. It suggests that organisations can only learn from actual experience, that it can grow and develop by applying successful past strategies and discarding those that have not worked, not wasting too much time and resources on planning for the future because survival results from keeping all options open and adapting to what is "best" in every given situation. It differs from processualists in the extent to which future planning is valued. The evolutionary paradigm suggests that winning strategies are the result of random experimentation and filtering out of the unsuccessful (Van der Heijden, 2000, p. 34) and can only be articulated in retrospect (Mintzberg, 1990). Evolutionary theorists see employees of organisations as characters of chance, influenced by random circumstances (Van der Heijden, 1997, 24). The evolutionary school suggests that organisations are similar to a natural ecology where bad parts starve, good ones survive, and where natural boundaries prevent cannibalisation of markets and activities by granting operational autonomy. The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline described itself as functioning in this way (Tomlinson, 2004). The systemic or social constructionism paradigm sees an organisation as a social construct, an artificial system that is a result of a social contract among owners, managers, employees, customers, suppliers, and all other systems that influence or are influenced by it. This is very similar to Freeman's concept of stakeholders, with a philosophical difference: the systemic theory sees organisations as owing its legitimate existence to a tacit agreement among its constituents. Organisations therefore need to feed this legitimacy by meeting the needs of each constituent in varying degrees (Gray, Kouhy, and Lavers, 1995, p. 82), performing socially desired actions in return for approval of its objectives, other rewards, and ultimate survival (Guthrie and Parker, 1989, p. 344). The fifth paradigm arises from critical theory applied to management and the study of organisations, influenced by the analysis of the so-called Frankfurt School (Habermas, Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Fromm of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, in Germany), by the social scientists Alvesson and Willmott (Crowther and Green, 2004, p. 119-120). Critical perspectives of social science theories, commonly known as critical management studies, are used to evaluate the bases for an organisation's existence, nature, and behaviour that allow the observer to situate the practice of management in a wider social and political context. Critical management studies include the analysis of organisational issues related to the practice of power, labour systems, gender, and the issues of leadership, change, globalisation, and ethics that we shall discuss in detail in the next section. Of these five paradigms, we have chosen to compare and contrast the following three - classical, evolutionary, and critical - in analysing and gaining a deeper understanding of organisations and their behaviour as regards the matter of paying the right price for a pound of coffee. Analysing Organisational Issues Businesses have been traditionally judged on the basis of how well they serve their owners, the stockholders who invest funds in the business and who expect a decent return on their investment. Otherwise, these investors would move their funds to another business that promises a higher return. Business firms are therefore pressured to get the highest return on their investments, often at the expense of other considerations. This is raw capitalism at its purest form. Much has changed since the end of the 19th century in the various aspects of the behaviour of organisations: its structure, goal setting, labour systems, and its interactions with society. A thorough discussion of these changes is not the purpose of this paper. Rather, we limit ourselves to certain behavioural characteristics focused by our case: how the pricing of coffee beans reveals to us different types of organisations and the way they operate. Guided by a discussion of important issues, we compare and contrast organisational behaviour using our three paradigms. Governance and Ethics Corporate governance can be summed up as follows: who in the business organisation decides what to do, how, and why, and is this decision-making process clear to everyone A classical organisation is characterised by a hierarchical structure where key decision-making is concentrated at the top. Governance is therefore achieved via a command-and-control process. Transparency, or the clarity of information sharing, is determined by the degree of control exercised by the managers who govern, and in such a workplace marked by individual specialisation where employees work separately and specialise in one task, this decision-making control and ability becomes a source of power. Job titles are important because they signal one's position in the hierarchy, and the closer one is to the top, the better are the perks and compensations enjoyed. Classical modes of governance are paternalistic, with the top management in control being responsible for dispensing all manners of good things to workers. The organisation is a network of positions, each one corresponding to one's task, and what top management deems to be the right mode of behaviour. They are also dictatorial and tend to be self-righteous: they think they are right and instead of changing with the world, they want the world to change with them. This is why their ethics are rigid, callous, and marked with indifference. Companies in the classical mode (like Nestle and Wal-Mart in our case example) would not be the types to think of giving farmers a higher price for coffee. A classical organisation supports the following words of Friedman (1962): "There is one social responsibility of businessto use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase profits so long as it stays within the rules and engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." According to Friedman, the primary obligation of a business is to increase profits and maximise the return for shareholders and to do so without breaking the law, and that it is the political authority whose job it is to take care of society. This mode of thinking inspired businesses to shift production to low labour cost countries where it was not illegal to damage the environment, deplete natural resources, provide poor working conditions, condone employment abuses, and pay low wages. Managers of these organisations according to the classical theory were acting in a very good way: they are maximising profits for their shareholders while faithfully following the law in the countries where they have factories. Evolutionary theory proponents would agree that organisations that follow Friedman to the letter are doing what they need to do in order to survive. They would rate the organisation positively in its practice of good governance and upright ethical behaviour. In a world of tough competition, these tactics are part of the process to adjust to a harsh business environment where only the strong will survive. Any action that leads to growth and survival is good. Shifts in public sentiment against these primitive forms of behaviour created a change in the business environment, eventually affecting organisational behaviour. If the business is to survive, it needs to learn to adapt. This is what coffee-consuming companies like GMCR, Dunkin, and Starbucks are doing, and the evolutionary theory can explain their actions. Not so, according to the critical theory. Freeman (1984) pioneered the now-famous stakeholder theory, where he defined (p. 48) stakeholders as "groups and individuals who can affect the organisation" and that "managerial behaviour must respond to those groups and individuals." Freeman proposed that a business must go beyond the profit motive and consider the effects the business will have on others outside of it. Elkington (1998) radically promoted this line of thinking and formulated the so-called Triple Bottom Line (TBL or 3BL) accounting that called for businesses to report not only its financial performance, but also its environmental and social performance, starting the corporate governance reporting and accounting revolution. Looking at the more radical critical thinkers, they would disagree with the classical and evolutionary viewpoints to emphasise, for example, that business organisations have to use their power and wealth to contribute to the emancipation of the oppressed classes (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992) and to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it (Benjamin, 1999). In this sense, companies like GMCR and Starbucks are practicing ethical behaviour and good governance, paying higher prices for coffee not only because of adaptation and survival, but also out of duty. To do otherwise is a dereliction. Globalisation and Internationalisation These two terms are synonymous, though the first is used in a wider sense. Internationalisation (Porter, 1990, 64-65), as contrasted to localisation, is the process of adapting products for use outside the home nation of the organisation (think steering wheel locations in cars). Globalisation is the integration of the world economy, reshaping business, reordering lives, creating social classes, different jobs, unimaginable wealth, and wretched poverty (Micklethwait and Wooldridge, 2000, xvi). Classical theory sees these two as part of an organisation's profitable path to growth by increasing market size. Selling its products in foreign markets while making use of its capital of knowledge and expertise would increase revenues and profits, increasing business value to stockholders. In moving abroad, organisations need to make changes in structure, leadership, people, and systems, which include supply chains. They can make these changes without greatly affecting their profitability, which is primary (Stiglitz, 2000, p. 225). Although globalisation is a business option, internationalisation is a must for those that want to sell to mass markets outside the home country. Aside from automobiles, making adjustments in the product is indispensable for vendors of software (Windows in Chinese), shoes (smaller sizes), or soap (small packages for developing countries). In the context of social evolutionary theory, globalisation and internationalism form an integral part of a philosophical framework. Although guided by the profit motive, organisations need to consider the characteristics of foreign markets to be competitive, seeing foreign markets as diverse ecosystems where it must adapt to survive. Drafting a global expansion plan would require studying predators (competitors, both local and foreign), parasites and hosts (local partners with whom to forge strategic alliances and that can be a good supply for local knowledge, aside from becoming a source of future managers and workers), and other conditions based on ecological metaphors (an ecosystem characterised by government corruption or poor implementation of the rule of law). Critical theory would see globalisation and internationalisation not only as a means of profit maximisation but a part of capitalist power domination, a phase in the continuum of the colonisation effort waged by wealth and growing influence. Note the negative reaction in France some years ago on the influx of American or English movies that are corrupting the French language. Globalisation is seen from this viewpoint as part of a grand Western political scheme to export ideologies (democracy in the Middle East and China, for example) as a disguise for the profit motive (Knights and Willmott, 1989). It is interesting to see how China, with its communist government, is justifying capitalist ambitions with a political ideology steeped in the Marxist philosophy that inspired critical organisational theory. This is along the lines of Adorno (a critical theory thinker) questioning seemingly pragmatic systems, whether it is Nazism, capitalism, neo-liberalism, or other 'isms' (Adorno, 1973). Change and Leadership The adage about change being a constant in reality applies to organisations due to its position in the midst of the world. Exposed to factors beyond its control, an organisation has to learn how to deal with change. While the evolutionary and critical theories accept change as given - the first because change is both a factor and consequence of evolution; the second because of the necessity of dialectics in the march of social history - the classical theory approaches change management with disciplined methodology to exercise control over the negative effects of change. Classical theory sees change as unavoidable but with negative effects that can be controlled. Planning looks at various scenarios, and an objective and intelligent choice or set of choices is made. This accommodates the existing scheme and sees the organisation as a machine to implement human plans. Evolutionary theory welcomes change, discerning it as a given in the "organisation as ecology" perspective, following immutable laws. Change represents innovation and departure from standard operating procedures that result in growth or diffusion of innovation. This requires a long perspective and the readiness to accept chaos, rather than order, as the natural outcome of evolutionary processes. Organisations have to adapt to the new realities or die (Modelski, 1996). The constant presence of dialectics in critical theory is applied to the analysis of change in organisations as a means of emancipation from forms of domination through self-reflection (JOCM, 2000). This locates the issue of coffee bean pricing as consistent with the changing modes of organisational behaviour resulting from the synthesis of critical ideas, and as the public's reaction has shown, represents a higher state than existed in the past. In each of these paradigms, managerial leadership plays a key role in driving the whole organisation towards its purpose of coping with change. The case mentions that while some organisations like Starbucks have been reluctant to increase the proportion of fair trade coffee because supply chain changes would hit profits, others like Dunkin and GMCR (a mixture of the evolutionary and critical paradigms) are willing to take lower profits provided this is explained to stakeholders as a form of wealth transfer to developing countries. In every case, the leaders of the business play a lead role in communicating the decision to its constituents, gain their acceptance, and to drive the whole organisation to walk the talk. Summing Up: Does it Pay to be Good Given the experience of coffee companies in mixing business profits with social responsibility, does it pay to be good Apparently, the answer is affirmative. GMCR (no. 1) and Starbucks (no. 17) are in Business Ethics Magazine's Top 100 Best Corporate Citizens list (Raths, 2006). Ranked on performance in eight stakeholder categories, these two have been recognised for their ability to be profitable while committed to do good by helping the farmers who plant and harvest the coffee sold by these two companies. These two managed to rank higher than other better-known companies like iPod innovator Apple Computers (no. 25) or cancer drug maker Genentech (no. 76), both of which are more profitable but were outscored by the coffee companies in the criteria of corporate governance and service to the community. Environmentalism is only one among many issues that paradigms like critical management studies have revealed. In view of the publicity generated by the recent multibillion dollar gift from American businessman Warren Buffett to the Gates Foundation (Economist, 2006) and initiatives like the Copenhagen Consensus some years ago (Lomborg, 2006), private business organisations are more conscious about finding ways to address social problems like universal health care, global poverty, disease eradication, and hunger, and providing more lasting solutions. Recent pronouncements by Tony Blair on the value of the 'third sector' are more than just romantic paeans to charitable activism, a hint for businesses to get more involved in dispensing social justice (Bagehot, 2006). Awareness of organisational theory paradigms educates the stakeholding public on the extent to which we can hold businesses accountable for providing these solutions. We have this power to spur competition that will benefit many, not only in our communities but also in other parts of the world. 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