Making Sustainability Work At Starbucks

Profit for an organization is like oxygen for a person. If you don’t have enough of it, you’re out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you’re really missing something (Drucker). 


The past shows us that organizations are mainly focused on creating value for the short term, with often only the financial results of real importance. Organizations are designed and managed for this short-term purpose, which lead to massive wasting, exhaustion, scarcity and even destruction of resources. If this logic continuous, the future of our society on this planet is at stake. 


Leaders and managers with a strong focus on sustainability are starting to adopt the idea that they can only manage a sustainable business when they support and serve a society that strives to restore ecological health, reinvent outmoded institutions and rejuvenate our environmental, social and economic systems. For this, a fundamental change in thinking and alternative approaches to organizing and managing the multiple value creation processes are necessary.


This eBook emphasis on linking sustainability with competence-based management, so that leaders and manager have a systemic approach at their disposal to build and leverage competences for continuous multiple value creation, but does not seek this value creation at the expense of the environment or society’s needs. 


A case of Starbucks sustainability performance is presented to describe how Starbucks effectively manage their social, economic and environmental impacts to achieve organizational coherence and competitive success in the use of the organization’s competences. 


Those who act now and do hard work, are likely to continuously create and distribute multiple value for its stakeholders.