corporate culture
I will explain
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Organizational Culture at Starbucks
Sin Yan Goh1, Daisy Mui Hung Kee2, Qing Er Ooi3, Jia Jie Boo4, Pei Ying Chen5,
Asla Alosaimi6, Megha Ghansal7
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia1,2,3,4,5
Kuwait University, Kuwait6
ABES Engineering College7
Correspondence Email: daisy@usm.my
ABSTRACT
The importance of organizational culture has always been the subject of organizational
success. Organizational culture has captured the attention of academic scholars.
Organizational culture plays an important role for an organization to build its branding.
Organizational culture can be used as a powerful engine of competitive advantage and
thus allow an organization to integrate its culture and branding to produce phenomenal
results. A good organizational culture will result in a strong brand. The paper presents
the organizational culture in Starbucks, an American coffee company. As a brand of 48
years, Starbucks has successfully instilled their cultures especially their shared values
to employees. This move enables Starbucks to be one of the most successful brands in
the century. This paper also investigates the reasons behind its success as well as the
relationship between them.
Keywords: Organizational culture, Starbucks, Organizational success, Branding.
INTRODUCTION
Starbucks Corporation is an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain which has
been established in 1971 in Seattle’s Pike place market. At that time, it was a merchant
of whole bean and ground coffee, tea, and spices. Today, Starbucks is the world largest
coffee company, with 16,120 stores in 49 countries. Starbucks has approximately 11,000
stores in the United States, nearly 1,000 stores in Canada and more than 800 stores in
Japan.
Starbucks serve cold and hot drinks, whole-bean coffee, micro-ground instant coffee,
which is known as VIA, espresso, cafe latte, full-and-loose-leaf teas including Teavana
tea product. Snacks offered include items such as chips and crackers; some offerings
are seasonal or specific to the locality of the store. Moreover, many stores sell pre-
packaged food items, hot and cold sandwiches and drinkware including mugs and
tumblers; select “Starbucks Evenings” locations offer beer, wine, and appetizers.
Starbucks-brand coffee, ice cream, and bottled cold drinks are also sold at grocery
stores.
From the founding of Starbucks in Seattle as a local coffee bean roaster and retailer, it
was experienced a rapid growth in its business. It is first become profitable in Seattle in
the early 1980s but lost money on its late 1980s expansion into the Midwest and British
Columbia. The first Starbucks is located outside of the North America in which it opened
at Tokyo in 1996. In the years between 1987 to 2007, it opened an average of two new
locations daily and in 2010, the company began its Starbucks Reserve program for
mailto:daisy@usm.my
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single-origin coffees and high-end coffee shops. Starbucks operates five roasteries with
tasting rooms and 43 coffee bars as part of the program.
Starbucks’ mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit which is one person, one
cup, and one neighborhood at a time. Starbucks will make sure everything they do is
through the lens of humanity – from their commitment to the highest quality coffee in the
world to the way they engage with their customers and communities to do business
responsibly.
Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is one of the organizational mechanisms to help keep the
organization going. It is the shared knowledge within an organization regarding the rules,
norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs and habits (Needle, 2004).
Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with
clients and stakeholders. Also, organizational culture may influence how much
employees identify with organizations (Schrodt, 2002).
Organizational culture can be shown in the way an organization conducts its business,
treats its employees, customers and the wider community. Employees should also have
freedom while decide developing new ideas and personal expression. Organizational
culture is also shown in power and information flow through its hierarchy and employees’
commitment towards the organization’s objectives.
It is important to have a positive organizational culture as it promotes healthy competition
among competitors. Employees are encouraged to perform better by engaging with the
customers by a small gesture like writing the name of customers on the cup or even
calling the customer by their name that cannot be found in other organizations in the
same industry.
Organizational culture is unique and can be used to define an organization and normally
different organizations will contribute to different organizational culture. Organizational
culture goes a long way in creating the brand image of the organization and gives an
identity to the organization
Having an organizational culture should also bring all the employees on a common
platform. Since all employees are expected to have the same view of organizational
culture in an organization, employees must be treated equally, and none should feel
neglected or left out at the workplace. Employees need to adjust well in the organization
culture for them to perform theirs during working hours.
Therefore, it is safe to say that a positive organizational culture affects the organization’s
productivity and performance while providing guidelines on customer care and service,
quality of product and safety level, employee’s punctuality and attendance and concern
towards the environment.
RESEARCH METHOD
This research uses qualitative method. The data are collected by analyzing the
organization culture they have.
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RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Justification Idea
A positive organizational culture helps to boost an organization’s productivity and to
enhance its branding. Starbucks instills a good organizational culture into every worker.
They view the workers as one of their most precious strategic assets. The founder and
CEO of Starbucks, Schultz (1994) once said: “When people ask me about the reasons
for Starbucks success, I told them not what they expect to hear but I told them that it was
the people at Starbucks and the way we managed them that was the true differentiating
factor.” He showed how importance is organizational culture.
As Starbucks realizes the importance of treating people differently, instead of just a cup
of expensive coffee, they managed to provide an experience of drinking Starbucks in a
warm and friendly ambiance. They apply the culture of servant leadership. The leaders
in the company are always caring for the employees in the company. The company tries
to optimize employee morale and indirectly make their workers serve customers better.
Everyone in the company will be treated warm and friendly as this is the culture and
shared values among them. In this way, they tend to treat the customers and the
community the same way too. Thus, customer satisfaction will automatically increase
and in the long run, Starbucks will earn customer loyalty.
With the culture of inclusion and diversity, Starbucks practices equal employment
opportunities, which is their non-discrimination policy. The policy ensures that everyone
will be treated fairly and equally. For example, Starbucks Malaysia has an outlet at
Bangsar Village II that hire hearing-impaired employees as their baristas. Starbucks
Malaysia has worked with the NGO Society of Interpreters for the Deaf (SID) to facilitate
the hiring, training, and coaching of deaf employees. The ordering process has been
tailored to ease these special workers. This outlet has shown Starbuck’s non-
discriminatory policy and the way they commit to their social responsibility. Starbucks
believes that diversity can enhance their work culture and, at the same time, creates a
culture of empowerment for innovation, economic growth, and new ideas.
More than what a normal organization that only focuses on organizational growth,
Starbucks also devotes to support and help their workers to improve self-value, to
enhance own experiences and knowledge. The company constantly provides learning
opportunities for the employees to develop their skills or even plan for their future. The
company also gives rewards to those employees that succeed. Through Opportunity for
Youth, a program that was launched by Starbucks that aims to provide careers to the
youth as they aim to create pathways for future leaders. Starbucks College Achievement
Plan also provides a great opportunity for those employees to enroll in college and finish
their bachelor’s degree. These actions show that as a company, Starbucks also help
their employees to grow and learn.
In general, Starbucks has instilled a good organizational culture that helps the company
to do their branding. The good relationship among the employees and with the customers,
the culture of diversity and inclusion and the help and support for the employees to grow
and learn are some key factors that make Starbucks so successful in this era.
Idea Application
To create a positive impact on the organization and the people working within it, it is
important to know certain areas where change is required. While talking from
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organizational culture, it is necessary to state that the idea that there must be a positive
culture in Starbucks, must be applied. It should have been implemented well within the
organizational culture and could be managed by various strategies. It is necessary to
establish those types of values within the culture of this organization to create more
values. These values must be highlighted in some way to develop the interest of
employees within the company’s setup (Starbucks, 2019).
It cannot be denied that Starbucks does have a big history of providing excellent services
to its customers. They just need to value their branding of products and services to get
more positive responses and feedback from employees. They must be trained to equip
themselves fully with these values that become a part of their organization. In this way,
they can create such an environment that is built upon the values which could play a
massive impact on the employees’ lives. It is necessary to foster these values in the
organizational setting so that various employees could learn how to perform various roles
in this organization.
For the application of the idea in the context of Starbucks, it is necessary to state here
that the organizational culture must be blended well inside the employees for a lasting
impact. It can be understood about Starbucks that the image and brand of this
organization have taken ages to build. This fact cannot be easily ignored about this
company that the strong organizational culture of this organization has led its people to
devote strongly towards it. The people attached to the organization’s culture ensure that
they could use the organizational culture in their best interest. It could only happen if they
were ready to instill in themselves the values which had been promoted in Starbucks.
It is important to mention that the culture of diversity could be found in Starbucks that is
a great idea to be implemented in this organization. The culture of diversity, as well as
inclusion values instilled in the minds of the employees, could create a positive
environment for the organization. The people, therefore, could live in the environment in
which they were devoid of prejudice. Moreover, it cannot be underscored about
Starbucks that the employees working within the company could enjoy great
independence and autonomy. They have the liberty to independently take their decisions
which could help them to reach towards organizational success. However, there are
certain challenges in the application of the idea in the organization which cannot be easily
overcome.
To deal with these aspects, it is necessary to instill these values and customs which
could enable these employees to find a good place in their firm. It could have many
benefits for them like getting increased levels of confidence (Fergusan, 2019). Moreover,
these values also enable the people working in the firm to contribute to the success of
the organization in one way or another. It is necessary to know these aspects so that this
idea can be applied effectively, and it could have its excellent benefits also. It is also
important to achieve customer satisfaction as well which is necessary for any
organization to work. If the employees working inside of the organization do not have
this thing inside of them, they cannot work. Therefore, this thing must be embedded in
them so that they can contribute in some way.
The loyal relationship between Starbucks and its customers is one of the most distinct
characteristics that differentiate Starbucks from its competitors. Unfortunately, the trend
has been lower customer satisfaction at Starbucks recently. Therefore, efforts to
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enhance customer satisfaction have been considered as a critical step that needs to be
taken by Starbucks.
It is importance for us to emphasizes employee job satisfaction at workplace since it is
closely related to customers’ perceptions of service. It means that employees who have
higher levels of job satisfaction are more able to deliver excellent service because they
are expected to share these positive emotions with customers. Hence, the behavior of
satisfied employees plays an important role in shaping customers’ perceptions of
business interactions. This is because satisfied employees are more apt to be friendly,
enthusiastic, attentive, and empathetic toward customers.
The organization must be able to make their employees realized that their work and
performance is both recognized and valued, hence Starbucks need to ensure hard work
is celebrated in their workplace. Recognition and reward always act as the best way to
make employees feel that their contribution to the organization is being appreciated. It
can be vouchers, a day’s extra holiday, a lie-in, ad-hoc gifts or simply use of the best
parking slot for the month. Employees who perceive fairness via appropriate rewards at
the workplace are more willing to deliver a high level of services in interaction with
customers and this, in turn, increases customer satisfaction.
Besides, if Starbucks provide a work environment which makes their staff enjoys
spending time in, it can help to improve their performance every day. Employees are
more likely to be disgruntled if they are regularly facing frustration caused by slow servers,
using substandard facilities, or even because of a piece of broken equipment. Therefore,
one of the actions needs to be taken by Starbucks is to deal with staff complaints swiftly
and embed reporting processes to identify issues in a very effective and efficient way.
This help the Starbucks organization to improve their employee’s job satisfaction to raise
their customers loyalty.
Employees’ perception of the degree of support and consideration an employee
recognizes from a supervisor often influences their job satisfaction. Therefore, a leader
should realize that they are affect their employee fulfillment and job satisfaction. This can
be achieved by constructing more fluid paths and help them attain their career goals.
High job satisfaction causes employees to engage in behaviors that could be critical for
organizational success if their personal goals are aligned with organizational support.
CONCLUSIONS
Organisational culture is represented as “a set of shared mental assumptions that
guide interpretation and action in organizations by describing
process acceptable behaviour for various situations” (Ravasi and Schultz,
2006). it’s usually what sets an outsized company
apart from its competitors, and ultimately attracts customers thereto. In all aspects of this
case study, it may be seen that fairly often it’s all the way down to understanding
individual psychological feature describing cognitive attitude so as for associate
degree organisation to effectively offer the correct motivation, produce the
correct groups and to instil their culture. In providing motivation it’s vitally important to
require the individual into account. Steven Reiss expressed “the distinction between
intrinsic and adventitious motivation is construct invalid as a result of universal human
motives are multi-faceted (generally diverse) and don’t divide into simply 2 kinds”.
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Teams should even be checked out significantly rigorously so as to supply a bunch of
people who will work effectively and use every other’s strengths to the
advantage of the corporate. though corporations have their own values and culture
to instill on their employees, the temperament and values of
the employees they use should be paramount to employers as ultimately, they’re in
direct purpose of contact with customers and are the visual illustration of
the complete as a full.
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