Starbucks: Organisational Culture of the Company

Starbucks is an American coffee brand, chain and company that began its journey in 1971 to provide people with the best coffee and coffee experience. It opened its first location near Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle, Washington and now operates over thirty thousand companies worldwide. From the beginning, the company has been set up to ethically source and roast the best quality coffee in the world. Throughout the years, the coffee company has managed to build a strong brand for themselves, by putting in an enormous amount of efforts in establishing a strong organizational culture. Organizational culture is known as an organization’s beliefs, rituals, language, assumptions, values, and ways of interactions that are used to make their organization more unique. This essay will analyze the Starbucks Company organizational culture and will discuss how it has been established in the company, leaders, workers and communities. This essay will also discuss how their organizational culture reflects in their industry and this essay will advise those who are seeking to become a member of this company on how one should behave in it.

Starbucks organizational culture starts with its values, the company has four values that help make their coffee experience different from other competitive companies. The first value focuses on creating a cultural environment in which everyone feels that they belong, and everyone feels that they are welcomed. The second one is to deliver the best in what they do and be holding themselves accountable for the results. The next one is to act with courage, being willing to challenge obstacles and look for new ways for the company to grow as well as others. The last value is to always be present and connect with others both with dignity and respect. The company created rituals to reinforce and communicate their values to employees and created them for those who already work for the company to remind themselves of those values. One of their rituals was designed by one of the company’s founder Howard Schultz, the ritual was made to plant the love for coffee to the new hires entering the company. One of the first things that the new hires do when starting the job is a tasting of the manager’s favorite coffee. This tactic is done to shows the store managers passion for the coffee and it is done to reflect that passion onto the new hire. Over the next few days the new hires are required to taste all the coffee blends that Starbucks offer and then document their reactions to them. Employees that have been there for a long time like executives sometimes do tastings again to remind themselves of their passion for the coffee. The companies cultural is so well established that they even have their own well-known cultural language in all their coffee shops. Starbucks cultural language is well implanted in all their loyal customers, for example when a customer enters to purchase a drink, they automatically know the names of the drink’s sizes. The customers know that a small is called a tall, a medium is called a grandee and a larger is called as a venti and so one. Its cultural language is so well implanted in every customer that even outside of the coffee shops when asked what size they purchased; the customer will always respond with Starbucks given names to the drinks sizes.

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Starbucks culture continues in the company’s leadership, the company uses the same values to reflect into their managers, human resource, development programs, baristas and baristas interactions with customers. The companies corporate culture follows the servant leadership, which is a philosophy that focuses on leaders serving the employees and helping them use all their talents and potential, so that the organization is built to benefit society. Starbucks corporate culture uses this philosophy and translates it as employees first in their workforce, meaning that leaders, managers and supervisors are to support employees to ensure that they grow within the company. The company uses this type of leadership to emphasizes on the care of the employees moral and emphasize on customer satisfaction. This feature was established in the company’s culture by former president Howard Behar, because it fit his belief that employees who are cared for are the ones that will care for the customers. The company’s culture also follows another tactic called openness which was also established by Behar designed to make employees less fearful to voice their opinions to leaders or managers. This tactic also helps leaders, managers, and supervisors to have an open mind and become better listeners to their employees.

Starbucks conducts business worldwide and even then, their culture follows them within those environments and within their business buildings as well. Starbucks culture dose not only stop when it comes to strengthening their team, they also strengthen communities they conduct business in. All Starbucks stores are part of a community and are committed to strengthening those communities. One hundred percent of all Starbucks stores worldwide participate in community services annually, they recently launched a new service program. The new service program was designed to engage retail partners by allowing them to work part time at their stores and part time at a Local Points of Light Program Location. Starbucks will also start donating one hundred percent of their food in stores that did not sell for the throughout the day, to help rescue food and not waist. For those who are interested in joining this company’s workforce, The best advice to follow in order to make it far in the company, is to enter the company with an open mind. People who enter with open minds will be better off in the job because they will learn to be a better communicate not only to their team, but to customer. They will learn that they are cared for but with that care they must have the open mindset to not just think of themselves, they must learn to think about others.

Starbucks is one of the many companies that created their own cultural organization for the purpose of showing inhabitants what the company strives for both internally and environmentally. Each company has developed their own unique cultural organization that affects their environmental and internal surroundings differently. Their own unique cultural development is what helps build loyal customers, because those who believe in what the company stands for will continue to buy their products.