Whole Foods Market

In 1978, John Mackey and Rene Lawson Hardy borrowed $45,000 to open a natural foods store in Austin, Texas.  In 1980, they renamed it Whole Foods Market and it was an immediate success due to the extremely low supply of natural foods stores at that time.  Since then, Whole Foods Market employs over 65,000 workers and has opened 310 stores across North America and in the United Kingdom.  The executives at Whole Foods Market have established a mission that focuses on Whole Foods-Whole People-Whole Planet.  Each of these is believed to play a major role in their success as a company.  In addition, the executives have embedded in the company culture the idea that “companies, like individuals, must assume their share of the responsibility as tenants of Planet Earth”.  As a profitable, public company, Whole Foods Market is proving that a company can generate returns to its stockholders and act responsibly toward other stakeholders such as customers, suppliers and the community.  (Wholefoodsmarket.com)

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Beyond the Game

Sheth and Babiak talk mention an NBA social responsibilty initaitive in their study of CSR and sports.

Milton Freidman’s article regarding the corporation’s social responsibility has been the most intriguing article I’ve read in this class all semester.  I agree with it on many levels, but also keep finding good arguments against it, as we have discussed in class.  I decided to dig a little deeper on Google Scholar, seeing which articles, specifically about sports, had cited Friedman.  367 articles had popped up as articles about or including sports that had also cited Freidman, but many past the first page only mentioned sports in passing and was not going to be useful.  The second article that was listed was unavailable to view, so I clicked on a link that gave me related articles.  After browsing for a few minutes,  I came upon an article from the Journal of Business Ethics published by Hela Sheth and Kathy Babiak, called “Beyond the Game: Perceptions and Practices of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Professional Sport Industry.”  This was perfect, and it even cited both Friedman and Freeman.   Continue reading →

Best of Stuff Week! The Stuffiest of the Stuff!, or, um, Something Like That

Hear ye, Hear ye, o writers and bloggers!  We (Derek, Jordi, Chris) proclaimeth!

The Best Post:

“How Sweet are Those Kisses?” by Caitlin

Famous Old Ad of Chocolate

More Sweetness!

Upton Sinclair Prize for Muck-Raking:

“Target: Proudly Supporting bigotry Since 2010” by Joey Continue reading →