The Danone Case: can a firm combine profits and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?

Résumé du document

First, to hit the high degree of competitiveness, it becomes necessary for the firm to keep the competitive advantage by dealing with new concepts such as the environment, respect of human rights and social activities. Indeed, the traditional factors such as product, price, place, promotion seem to be outdated. To create competitive advantage the firm needs to deal with its image and its values due to the fact that the consumer buying decision is mostly related to the firm's commitment. When a consumer buys a product, he is not only buying the good (or service), but also the brand and its principles.

In the modern days, the company is confronted by a consumer who realizes the negative globalization impacts. The consumers are informed thanks to non-government organizations which denounce the misuse of big companies. For example, thanks to UNICEF, which is fighting for children rights, consumers can be informed about the issue. Moreover, globalization allowed the big firms to develop themselves more by flooding the smaller firms in less developed countries incessantly. The main issue, for the firm, seems to be fusing its profitable and its corporate social responsibility.

Extraits

[...] The first reason can be that stakeholders have some kind of resource (expertise, political or financial, etc.) to contribute to the system. And this kind of stakeholders we can call actively involved stakeholder. The second reason is that stakeholder is actually or potentially affected by the outcome of the system and they can be passively involved stakeholders. Although it is used this distinction within the method, the labels of these two primary categories are different: actively involved and passively involved, both of them are explained in the Figure 11: Two types of stakeholder involvement. [...]

[...] The DANONE Group therefore is continuing to progress on the cookies, mineral waters and dairy products markets in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. A series of promotions marked 1997 and 1998: the takeover of Brazilian cookie manufacturers Campineira, a partnership with Sabanci, the leading Turkish manufacturer of mineral waters and dairy products, an agreement with Clover, which heads the dairy products market in South Africa, an agreement with Tunisian dairy manufacturer Meddeb. In 1998, DANONE was appointed Official Supplier to the World Cup, the world's most televised sporting event. [...]

[...] Like DANONE CEO has said: long as the shareholders receive their part we can continue our social activity”[38]. If we saw how DANONE can satisfy its stakeholders, we have not to forget that the firm is a world leader in the food industry with a turnover about 15 millions of Euros, and a global earning per share about 2.71 millions of Euros[39]. So DANONE know pay attention to its shareholders. Now we are going to analyze the implication of People, Planet and Profit by DANONE in its new program in Bangladesh with its firm Grameen DANONE Food” - People: The “Grameen DANONE food” employs nowadays about 50 workers. [...]

[...] - Involve the firm image and reputation. Nevertheless the firms have to take in consideration the existence of some risks such as: the really necessity of create a strategy, to take into consideration all the issues by applying social responsibility, be realistic and control the costs Theory of corporate social responsibility. CSR has emerged due to the fact that organization takes more and more consideration of the social consequences of their activities. Companies have already started to involve their social and environmental consequences but it is not working as it was expected because of two reasons : they separate business and society instead of take them together, also they think of social responsibility in a general way instead of appropriate it to each firm's strategy. [...]

[...] In one other hand a society needs successful and efficient companies. When a business sector is able to offer jobs, wealth and innovation any social program can rival. We also pointed out the current mistake of a large number of leaders in business and society which are focused, more, on their distinction than their intersection. That is why the CSR concept seems to be a good way for the firm to take in consideration and thus apply the interrelationship between the corporation and the society. [...]