STARBUCK Case: PART 1

P1-1. What management skills do you think would be most important for Howard Schultz to
have? Why? What skills do you think would be most important for a Starbucks store manager to
have? Why?

P1-2. How might the following management theories/approaches be useful to Starbucks:

P1-3. Choose three of the current trends and issues facing managers and explain how
Starbucks might be impacted. What might be the implications for first-line managers? Middle
managers? Top managers?

P1-4. Give examples of how Howard Schultz might perform the interpersonal roles, the
informational roles, and the decisional roles.
Interpersonal roles: he held a leadership conference with all store
managers as a chance for all of them to increase their bonding.
Informational roles: he informed to the employees about the changing in
management of the company.
Decisional roles: he decided to restructure all to work more lasting and
more efficient.
P1-5. Look at Howard Schultz’s philosophy of Starbucks. How will this affect the way the
company is managed?
 I think Schultz’s philosophy revived the entire company as he dare to
venturing to innovate.
P1-6.Go to the company’s Web site (www.starbucks.com) and find the list of executives and
their biographies. Pick one of those positions and describe what you think that job might
involve. Try to envision what types of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling this person
would have to do.

P1-7. Look up the company’s mission statement and guiding principles at the company’s Web
site. What do you think of the mission and guiding values? Describe how the company's
guiding principles would influence how a barista (a coffee-house employee who prepares and
serves specialty coffee and other drinks) at a local Starbucks store does his or her job. Describe
how these principles would influence how one of the company's top executives does his or her
job.
 Mission and guiding values are the most important goal for the company to
follow and develop. For instance, the Starbucks’ barista might has to
 compliance the company value as to showing the Starbucks experience to
the customers.
P1-8. Starbucks has some pretty specific goals it wants to achieve (look ahead to Part 3 on
page 343 for these company goals). Given this, do you think managers would be more likely to
make rational decisions, bounded rationality decisions, or intuitive decisions? Explain.

P1-9. Give examples of decisions that Starbucks managers might make under conditions of
certainty. Under conditions of risk. Under conditions of uncertainty.
Certainty: open a coffee shop on the a busy street in the US because Americans
love Starbucks coffee and the demand for American coffee is also very high.
Risk: open another coffee shop near the available one however the need of
people in that area is still very high
Uncertainty: open a coffee shop in a developing nation that living standard is not
high and income is low
P1-10. What kind of decision-maker does Howard Schultz appear to be? Explain your answer.

P1-11. How might biases and errors affect the decision-making done by Starbucks’ executives?
By Starbucks’ store managers? By Starbucks’ partners?
Have students divide into three groups, each representing the three different employee groups:
executives, managers, and partners. Have each group go through the list below and give
several potential biases that could occur for their employee group.
 Executives: he might be blindfold with some details that it does not
benefit the company
Managers: making decisions that can cause discord among
employees
Partners: cause misunderstanding and financial losses

P1-12. How might design thinking be important to a company like Starbucks? Do you see any
indication that Starbucks uses design thinking?

STARBUCK Case: PART 2

P2-1. Do you think Howard Schultz views his role more from the omnipotent or from the
symbolic perspective? Explain.
 I think Schultz views his role more from omnipotent perspective
because he was the one who recognized the flaws and figured out
how to fix it, also the one who ran the entire change process.
P2-2. What has made Starbucks’ culture what it is? How is that culture maintained?

P2-3. Does Starbucks encourage a customer responsive culture? An ethical culture? Explain.

P2-4. Describe some of the specific and general environmental components that are likely to
impact Starbucks.

P2-5. How would you classify the uncertainty of the environment in which Starbucks operates?
Explain.

P2-6. What stakeholders do you think Starbucks might be most concerned with? Why? What
issue(s) might each of these stakeholders want Starbucks to address?

P2-7. Why do you think Howard Schultz is uncomfortable with the idea of legislative lobbying?
Do you think his discomfort is appropriate? Why or why not?

P2-8. What types of global economic and legal-political issues might Starbucks face as it does
business globally?

P2-9. You’re responsible for developing a global cultural awareness program for Starbucks’
executives who are leading the company’s international expansion efforts. Describe what you
think will be important for these executives to know.

P2-10. Using information from the case and information you pull from Starbucks’ Web site, what
global attitude do you think Starbucks exhibits? Defend your choice.
 The global attitude that Starbucks exhibit is the diversity including all the
aspect such as gender, ethnic, religion…

P2-11. Pick one of the countries mentioned as an important target for Starbucks. Make a
bulleted list of economic, political-legal, and cultural characteristics of this country.
 The US still be the most important target of Starbucks with more than
8,500 stores. And here are some of its characteristics:
 Economic: it is highly developed and the world’s largest economy.
 Cultural characteristic: is primarily of Western origin, but is
influenced by a multicultural ethos such as African, Native
American, Asian, Pacific Island, and Latin American.
P2-12. What workforce challenges might Starbucks face in global markets in regard to its
partners?
P2-13. How does Starbucks manage diversity? What is Starbucks doing to manage diversity in
each of the four areas: customers, suppliers, partners, and communities?

P2-14. With more than 235,000 partners worldwide, what challenges would Starbucks face in
making sure its diversity values are practiced and adhered to?
 There are some of the challenges that Starbucks might face in managing
with all of the partners worldwide that include the cultural differences.
Each community and nation share the different conception, therefore it is
hard for Starbucks to balance between its own value and its partners’
value.
P2-15. Starbucks defines diversity on its Web site in the form of an equation:

Diversity = Inclusion + Equity + Accessibility.

Explain what you think this means. What do you think of this definition of diversity?
 In my opinion, diversity is like an opportunity to a community or company
because when cultures come together in collaboration and understanding,
we can be able to share different culture and knowledge in each
community for the better consequences in making decision.
P2-16. What other workplace diversity initiatives discussed in Chapter 3 (besides employee
resource groups) might be appropriate for an organization like Starbucks?

P2-17. Go to the company’s Website [www.starbucks.com] and find the latest corporate social
responsibility report. Choose one of the key areas in the report (or your professor may assign
one of these areas). Describe and evaluate what the company has done in this key area.

P2-18. What do you think of Starbucks’ goal to recycle all four billion cups sold annually by
2015? What challenges did it face in meeting that goal?

P2-19. Why is the concept of “empowering” employees important in doing business ethically?

P2-20. Again, go to the company’s Web site. Find the Standards of Business Conduct
document. First, what’s your impression of this document? Then, choose one topic from one of
the main areas covered. Describe what advice is provided to partners.

P2-21. What do you think the company’s use of the term partners instead of employees
implies? What’s your reaction to this? Do you think it matters what companies call their
employees? (For instance, Walmart calls its employees associates.) Why or why not?
 I think it is important for how companies call their employees. Because it
reflects part of the responsibilities and duties of them.
P2-22. Howard Schultz is adamant about providing the best “Starbucks experience” to each and
every customer. As a store manager, how would you keep your employees from experiencing
high levels of stress when lines are out the door and customers want their Starbucks now?
 As a store manager, I would always remind my employees about the
company’s culture. Every success requires trade-offs, they are working in a
professional working environment so you have to be professional too.

P2-23. Would you classify Starbucks’ environment as more calm waters or white-water rapids?
Explain. How does the company manage change in this type of environment?
 I would classify Starbucks’ environment as more white-water rapids rather
than calm waters. Because whenever the company expand its branch in a
new environment, it has to deal with bunch of challenges and the possible
situations to access to the new market. However, this type of environment
might be useful for the company, when the employees used to a turbulent
working environment, they will have no difficulties facing with all of the
changes.
P2-24. Using Exhibit 7-9, describe Starbucks’ innovation environment.

P2-25. Review the company’s mission and guiding principles (at www.starbucks.com). Explain
how these might affect the following: managing its external environment and its organizational
culture, global efforts, diversity efforts, social responsibility and ethics issues, and change and
innovation issues.