Coffee and ethical globalisation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Coffee and ethical globalisation - Essay Example This paper is about how the coffee bean is changing the way organizations are doing business all over the world.We use as our basis an article 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.What drives this behaviour at the centre of which lies the humble coffee be an 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