Monsanto and Kellogg S Social Responsiblity Essay

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Corporate Social Responsibility

The concept of corporate social responsibility began to arise in the 1960s as an ideal that corporations can have a number of different impacts on society and the environment through their actions. Corporations are not simply answerable to shareholders, but to a wide variety of other stakeholders as well. The responsibility that corporations have, therefore, is social, not just economic. Dahlrud (2006) studied a number of different definitions for corporate social responsibility and determined that it is not something that can be defined. Rather, CSR is a social construct, meaning that there are multiple definitions and which definition is most suitable depends on the way the term is used. For corporations, the implication is that they can set their own definitions based on what is relevant to their interests, and the interests of their different stakeholders. The classic view that the only social responsibility corporations have is to their stakeholders (Friedman, 1970) is no longer valid, because it is understood that there are many stakeholders for a given business, and they are all important to different degrees.

The construct of CSR typically reflects a few different dimensions of stakeholder responsibility. These include internal people (staff), external people, and the environment at the very least. Subjects frequent in the field are worker equity, environmental harm, supply chain, sustainability and the business aspects of social responsibility. The framing of these tends to be whatever is most appropriate for the company, or what it perceives its stakeholders to be most interested in. There are no set measures for CSR performance, and at this point there is no common format for a corporate social responsibility report -- the exercise is entirely voluntary. This paper will look at two related companies at different ends of the reputation scale for their corporate social responsibility -- Kellogg's and Monsanto.

Kellogg's

Kellogg's main business is producing foods, in particular breakfast cereal and other grain-based foods. Their 2014 Corporate Responsibility Report is divided into several sections to cover different topics: responsible sourcing, marketplace, workplace, environment and community. The report is produced in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which is the closest thing there is to a global standard for CSR reporting. The GRI sets out guidelines for the production of CSR reports, and verifies that the reports are produced in accordance with those guidelines. The Kellogg's report is based on the company's core principles that social responsibility reflects its "activities and developments in four pillar areas of marketplace, workplace, environment and community." Kellogg's also believes in corporate social responsibility across the value chain, which dovetails nicely with the examination of Monsanto.

Kellogg's outlines in the 2014 report its 2020 sustainability commitments. These include "responsibly sourced" agricultural products, in particular with relation to sustainable agriculture. The company highlights among the different elements of this sourcing from smallholder farms, and female-owned farms. Kellogg's has a strategy with respect to watershed quality, and water reuse at its plants (target of 25% reused water). There are energy objectives, such as expanding the use of low carbon energy at its plants by 50% by 2020. Overall, most of the company's objectives have a set definition for the terms, a set numerical target and a set time frame for achieving that target.

This is also the case with several other elements of the Kellogg's social responsibility strategy. It has targets, for example, for workplace accidents, seeking to reduce the number of such incidents and the amount of worker down time that is required as a result of those incidents. The company measures its charitable contributions as well.

One of the areas where Kellogg's and Monsanto have a lot of similarities is on the nutrition side. Food companies seek to strike a balance in producing nourishing food. Kellogg's, as a producer of prepared foods like breakfast cereals, measures the sugar and calorie counts of its products. Sourcing is a key food-related issue. Kellogg's instituted a Supplier Code of Conduct in 2009, works with small farmers in a number of developing world countries, and has recently instituted new sourcing commitments, including a commitment to work directly with more farmers as this will help the livelihoods of many smaller farmers in the supply chain. Included in the new commitments is a stated goal of sourcing all of the ten key ingredients from responsible sources by 2020. The report breaks out sections for controversial products like palm oil specifically. The supplier code of conduct exists to ensure that the supply chain is held to ethical standards, an important element since many large corporations orient their supply chains to low cost production only, which ultimately brings about negative supply chain situations with respect to labor and the environment.

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Monsanto

Monsanto has become one of the more controversial companies. Some of this is related to its GMO activities, but there are other aspects of its business practices as well that are deemed problematic for many. The four areas in its social responsibility report are producing, conserving, improving and corporate governance. The latter is not a matter of corporate social responsibility at all. Of the other three, the content of the Monsanto report is only loosely-tied to CSR concepts and issues. The Producing section is primarily focused on how the company is working to increase food production, the theory being that this is beneficial for people, to have more food, cheaper. This is the company's main argument, but does not directly address the issues raised in CSR theory. First, it does not address some of the business practices it has received negative publicity for, such as abuse of monopoly power to force farmers to buy their seeds every year (ICTSD, 2010). The company has traditionally focused on its objectives to increase harvests as a counter to claims of its thuggery (Arndt, 2010). There are similarities between Monsanto and Kellogg's with this -- both companies note that small female farmers in developing countries are beneficiaries of their policies, Monsanto for helping to increase their yields.

In the Conserving section of the report, Monsanto addresses issues like water, adapting to climate change, and protecting the natural environment. As with Kellogg's however the company's business is reliant to a certain extent on the use of petroleum-based fertilizers, which are unsustainable. In fact, Monsanto's desire to double agricultural productivity clashes directly with the realities of unsustainable fertilizer and water use. Where the company is helping to some extent is seeking to engineer seeds that can deliver yields in water-stressed environments. . As there are going to be more of those environments in the future, this is also a practical business matter, but doubtless it will help a lot of small farmers who are being challenged by increasingly difficult water conditions. AquaTEK is a public-private partnership that Monsanto has to share some best practices with respect to water usage, to reduce the water intensity of agriculture, and of seed production.

Energy use is one area where Monsanto states its objectives, puts numbers to them, and posts in its report on its progress. This is an element of GRI reporting that is largely lacking in the Monsanto report, but the company does have a handle on how much energy it uses, and has targets to reduce its energy intensity, as well as its carbon footprint, including fertilizer use.

On the social side, Monsanto discusses issues such as the livelihoods of farmers. While it does not discuss the monopoly abuse allegations that it faces in the U.S., it does focus on how its operations affect small farmers in the developing world, an element of its report that is in common with that of Kellogg's. Empowering women and girls is part of this, and there is a short section on volunteerism at Monsanto as well.

Comparisons

The two different reports highlight the different approaches taken by Kellogg's and Monsanto. . Both reports are similar in a few ways. First, they both serve to tell the story of their respective companies. There is a certain element of spin to these reports, and the reports seek to portray the companies in the best-possible light. Issues where the companies are not performing well tend to be left out of the two reports. There are also similarities with respect to the issues faced, because both firms are in food -- Monsanto on the farm side and Kellogg's on the food production side. In that sense, there is some overlap where the companies can be compared directly in terms of their performance.

But there are differences between these two reports as well. For one, Monsanto only covers a few areas of CSR, and some of the coverage is fairly thin. Its report is 168 pages long, and there are only a handful dedicated to the human side of its contributions. The environment is given more space, but there is little consideration of the long-term consequences of Monsanto's actions. On the environmental side, Monsanto accepts the proposition that more people on earth should equal much more food production, and that this….....

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