Starbucks Corporation: Fighting Unionization in Coffee Houses
Image
Region
North America
Topic
Human Resources & Organizational Behavior
Strategy & General Management
Operations
Length
10 pages
Keywords
unionization
corporate communication
labor relations
Starbucks
crisis management
Copyright Holder
Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication
Student Price
$4.00
Target Audience
Faculty/Researchers
Graduate Students
Undergraduate Students
Executive Education
Other Audience
Starbucks Corporation is facing a dilemma with a group of employees in Buffalo, New York attempting to form a union in response to compensation and working conditions. Starbucks faces this labor organization effort in the context of a global pandemic and distinctive challenges facing the entire service industry.
Learning Outcomes
- To highlight the conflict that can arise given a misalignment between a company's stated mission and its practices in action.
- To provide an example of the importance of employee treatment and the quality of management throughout a company.
- To demonstrate how a few individual employees, even in a large corporation, can hold company executives and managers accountable for their actions.
- To prompt discussion on various ways companies can handle an internal challenge.
- To encourage discussion and analysis on how companies have been successful in crisis management and how to replicate that success.