VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL -------o0o- -------- FINAL ASSIGNMENT Subject:
Cross Culture Management Course Code: INS 4018.01 Lecture: Phạm Thị Mỹ Dung
Student Name: Lê Tuyết Anh Student ID: 19071285 Hanoi, December 3rd, 2022 Table of Contents
I. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
1. Overview of Starbucks Corporation ...................................................................... 1
a) History of Starbucks ............................................................................................... 1
b) Starbucks’ current situation .................................................................................... 2
2. Mission, Vision, and Core Value of Starbucks ..................................................... 3
a) Mission ................................................................................................................... 3
b) Vision ...................................................................................................................... 3
c) Core Value .............................................................................................................. 3
3. Reason to choose Starbucks Corporation ............................................................. 3
II. Analyze and Evaluate Starbucks Cross-Cultural Management ......................... 4
1. Diversity Strategy ................................................................................................... 4
2. Partner Training and Support ............................................................................... 5
3. Set up Rules for all Employees .............................................................................. 6
4. Corporate Culture .................................................................................................. 6
III. Successes and Failure of Starbucks in Cross-Cultural Management ............... 7
1. Successes of Starbucks .......................................................................................... 7
2. Failures of Starbucks in cross-cultural management .......................................... 8
IV. Preparations to work at Starbucks ....................................................................... 8
V. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 9
Reference ....................................................................................................................... 9 I. Introduction
1. Overview of Starbucks Corporation a) History of Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is a multinational American chain of coffee shops and roasting
facilities with its corporate headquarters in Seattle, Washington. On March 30, 1971,
Starbucks made its debut in Seattle, Washington. It was founded by business partners
Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker. During the early 1980s, they sold the
company to Howard Schultz who decided to convert the coffee bean store into a coffee 1
shop serving espresso-based drinks. Currently, Howard Schultz is the chairman and
chief executive officer of Starbucks.
Starbucks is one of the world’s leading global coffee brands and has been changing the
way the world drinks coffee outside of home and workplace.
b) Starbucks’ current situation
Until now, Starbucks is the world's largest coffeehouse chain in the world.
• The company operated 33,833 stores as of November 2021, with 15,444 of those being in the United States.
• The total number of Starbucks employees in 2021 is 138,000, a decrease of
60.46% compared to 2020 due to the impact of the Covid epidemic.
Starbucks Corporation's goal is to be a leading global economy that makes a difference
in the lives of people around the world, and that goal has been achieved to date through several achievements.
• Starbucks' net revenue reached 24.61 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. Starbucks had
1.18 billion fully diluted shares outstanding as of FY2021 and a market value of $137.85 billion as of Nov.
• Starbucks is currently the world's largest coffee corporation with a stock market value of $51.6 billion
Starbucks is a special company because it refuses franchising in order to maintain
tighter control and stable future growth. In the modern era, Starbucks coffee shops can
fall into one of three categories:
• Starbucks created and runs this (the majority).
• Starbucks established and ran a joint venture with a local business.
• Starbucks owns and controls the license (very few). 2
2. Mission, Vision, and Core Value of Starbucks a) Mission
“To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” b) Vision
“Treat people like family, and they will be loyal and give their all.” c) Core Value
o Creating a culture of warmth and belonging, where everyone is welcome. o
Delivering our very best in all we do, holding ourselves accountable for results.
o Acting with courage, challenging the status quo, and finding new ways to
grow our company and each other.
o Being present, connecting with transparency, dignity, and respect.
3. Reason to choose Starbucks Corporation
Starbucks tries to motivate employees in many ways.
• The first is to build a friendly corporate culture, each member is willing to help
and share. Second, Starbucks has staff training programs, helping them have
enough knowledge to perform well at work, generating intrinsic work motivation.
Moreover, Starbucks also offers performance-related payments so the more
employees contribute to the business, the more they get paid, which motivates employees to work harder.
• In addition, Starbucks values its employees and gives them a lot of benefits such as:
o Vacations, paid time off, sick leave, and personal days o Discounted stock
purchase plans o Full healthcare coverage including vision, dental, and
medical insurance o Tuition assistance for student workers o Limited life 3
insurance and disability coverage o Parental leave o Commuter benefits o
Free food and drinks; a premium Spotify account.
Therefore, Starbucks is a highly appreciated working environment with criteria that are
especially attractive to employees. II.
Analyze and Evaluate Starbucks Cross-Cultural Management 1. Diversity Strategy
Starbucks-wide diversity strategy focuses on four areas: partners, customers, suppliers, and communities.
• Partners (Starbucks workers) – Starbucks looks for and engages partners who
reflect the diversity of the communities it serves. by teaching and involving our
partners, we are concentrating on partner development.
• Customers – Starbucks offers the Starbucks Experience to all clients, taking into
account their particular interests and requirements. by establishing a culturally
appropriate connection with Starbucks consumers, ensuring a superior customer experience.
• Communities - Starbucks support and invest in local neighborhoods and global
communities through strategic partnerships and economic development
opportunities that deepen our ties with the communities Starbucks serves.
• Suppliers: Thanks to its supplier diversity program, which works to expand its
pool of minority- and women-owned suppliers, Starbucks has earned a
reputation as a reliable and welcoming business.
Starbucks is committed to establishing a work environment that recognizes and respects
individuals from various backgrounds and encourages workers to perform at their
highest level. Starbucks values the distinctive blend of abilities, life experiences, and
viewpoints that each partner brings to the business. such Starbucks expects its partners
to act with a spirit of kinship, tolerance, and humanity towards all customers, making
its brand welcoming to everyone. 4
2. Partner Training and Support
Starbucks will fund the full tuition of Arizona State University (ASU) online
undergraduate programs for its employees. Most of the employees of the world's largest
coffee chain will have the opportunity to become bachelors after 4 years of study at no
cost. Starbucks said this tuition reimbursement program helps employees, especially
less fortunate young workers, equip them with the knowledge to have more
opportunities to succeed at work.
Additionally, Starbucks has a centralized retail accommodation budget and provides
resources like real-time captioning services and American Sign Language interpreting
services for all of its partners in the United States and Canada. Best Practices in
Diversity Management. Through its Starbucks Inclusion Academy, Starbucks also
provides on-the-job training courses for individuals with cognitive and physical
disabilities. People with disabilities are trained in barista skills at the Work Force
Technology Center in Baltimore as part of the Starbucks Retail Inclusion Academy in
Maryland, which prepares them for retail jobs.
Starbucks has always been dedicated to supporting the mental health of its partners,
specifically, Starbucks created the Mental Health Basics Training Program and added a
free Headspace subscription to its comprehensive suite of benefits, to support the mental health support of partners. 5
3. Set up Rules for all Employees
At Starbucks, employees set up principles to form a common order, to help them have
the right behavior and control their behavior, ensuring consistency among the entire staff, specifically:
• Turn customer experience into employee experience: Starbucks requires
employees to know how to handle flexibly, and "improvise" in all customer
experiences, based on the life skills and experience of employees. members for different cases.
• Everything is important: Employees need to be focused when working,
monitoring guest experiences and requests to minimize possible errors.
• Always persevere: Employees need to stand firm, not be discouraged, more
importantly, learn lessons from mistakes encountered.
• Create joy from surprises: Starbucks values each customer's experience and
wants employees to create surprises to bring unforgettable shopping memories to customers.
They always actively bring about an open environment, through which employees can
completely freely express their opinions, express their opinions most openly, etc.
Starbucks believes in building a culture. Internally, care and respect for employees will
create a feeling of closeness and make their associates consider this a second home and themselves a part of it. 4. Corporate Culture
Starbucks Coffee has a welcoming, inclusive, and diverse workplace culture. Because
of the nature of its coffeehouse chain business, the company has a distinctive fusion of
fundamental cultural characteristics. through client and barista interactions as well as
company-sponsored programs for the development of human resources. • Servant leadership 6
Team leaders and corporate executives at Starbucks Corporation demonstrate servant
leadership principles as part of the company's organizational culture. Leaders, managers,
and supervisors ensure that every person rises within the company by placing a strong
emphasis on support for subordinates. The focus Starbucks places on putting its people
first is a reflection of this facet of its corporate culture. The company places a strong
emphasis on the need of taking employee welfare into account as a way to boost
employee morale and boost customer satisfaction.
• Relationship-driven Approach
The business culture at Starbucks promotes friendly and polite relationships. For
instance, at the company's cafés, baristas interact amicably with one another. As part of
the corporate culture, customers are also treated warmly. • Inclusion and diversity
Starbucks' organizational culture is defined by its anti-discrimination and anti-bias
policies. Any kind of discrimination, including that based on gender, race, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, religion, age, cultural background, life experiences, views, and ideas,
is prohibited under this policy. Starbucks may promote innovation based on a variety of
ideas and the exchange of knowledge among employees through this corporate culture
goal. This concept encourages employee enthusiasm and aids in staff retention.
Customers at Starbucks are made to feel comfortable and at home by this component of
the company's organizational culture even when they are not there.
III. Successes and Failure of Starbucks in Cross-Cultural Management
1. Successes of Starbucks
Starbucks is very different from other companies in that Starbucks knows how to use
culture to create a business strategy. The company builds operating locations that are
not only coffee places but also fun chat and chat environments with open spaces. Not
only in addition to specialty coffee, Starbucks also creates a business by human 7
connection, the participation of the community is precisely this configuration that
creates a distinctive feature of this corporate culture.
It can be seen that Starbucks is bringing a strong and unique culture. This has made
Starbucks one of the world's leading corporations in the retail sector. The culture of
Starbucks is tied to the company's mission of nurturing and inspiring the community,
Starbucks is both a friend, a coffee, and a colleague of customers. Starbucks wants to
deliver that message. No matter how old a customer is, live at the top, or do what they
do, they all have the same experience at Starbucks. It is this destiny that directs all
employees of the company to have the right behavior, by the common goals of the
company. Starbucks always considers human resources as the core element and valuable
asset of the company. Therefore, the cultural policy is communicated to turn human
resources into a leading competitive advantage for Starbucks. The cultural policy has
been in harmony with the company's human resource development policy, reflected in
taking great care of employees, seeing employees as "partners", as "gods", and attaching
importance to customer satisfaction. Satisfied with the work and benefits of the
company's employees, a culture that values fairness and diversity, or creates a
comfortable, dynamic, and very professional working environment.
2. Failures of Starbucks in cross-cultural management
The main corporate strategic management problem is to effectively integrate this culture
in the human resources of franchisees and licensees because these business partners
undoubtedly have different ways of managing human resources and the creation of
organizational cultures related to those approaches. IV.
Preparations to work at Starbucks
Because Starbucks is a multinational company, especially prominent in corporate
culture. I think it is necessary to prepare good English communication skills, and at the
same time learn about the culture at Starbucks so that it can be easily integrated and
developed. And there are some other skills that I think are required to be employed in a multicultural environment. 8
• Cross-cultural communication skills
Any role or function in international business means working in a diverse workplace
with people from different countries or backgrounds. So, how to communicating
between cultures is an indispensable skill.
It requires tact, respect and diplomacy is not small. It also requires an open mind and
often a bit of research. Make an effort to learn, understand and appreciate cultural
differences and nuances when communicating.
• Excellent networking abilities
Excellent face-to-face networking remains one of the key skills for success in
international business. Mastering the “elevator pitch” and attending industry
networking events is a helpful way to meet like-minded professionals and grow relationships.
This is the basic element to be promoted and become a manager or director of the
business. Especially at Starbucks, where employees are shared openly and are respected by each other. V. Conclusion
All of the factors mentioned have shaped the "style" of Starbucks partners. Starbucks
claims that its most valuable resource is its employees, and they think that building close
relationships with them would be extremely beneficial for the future success of the
business. The organizational culture of the business today is a distinctive quality that
creates a competitive advantage and cultivates a consumer base of devoted Starbucks
fans from which the company receives reliable financial success. Reference
1. elliottwave-forecast.com. (n.d.). Starbucks (SBUX) Is Looking For Support
And Buyers Will Appear. [online] Available at:
https://elliottwaveforecast.com/stock-market/starbucks-sbux-close-find- support/. 9
2. Lock, S. (2018). Starbucks: revenue 2018 | Statista. [online] Statista. Available
at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266466/net-revenue-of-the-
starbuckscorporation-worldwide/.
3. Wikipedia. (2022). Starbucks. [online] Available at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbucks#21st_century [Accessed 2 Dec. 2022].
4. Starbucks (2022). Culture and Values: Starbucks Coffee Company. [online]
Starbucks. Available at: https://www.starbucks.com/careers/working-
atstarbucks/culture-and-values/.
5. Reynolds, K. (2016). The Top 7 Skills Needed for Success in International
Business Hult Blog. [online] Hult Blog. Available at:
https://www.hult.edu/blog/skills-needed-in-international-business/.
6. Starbucks (2021). Benefits and Perks: Starbucks Coffee Company. [online]
www.starbucks.com. Available at:
https://www.starbucks.com/careers/workingat-starbucks/benefits-and-perks/.
7. Starbucks Vietnam. (n.d.). Diversity at Starbucks | Starbucks Coffee Company.
[online] Available at: https://en.starbucks.vn/about-
us/companyinformation/diversity-at-starbucks/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2022].
8. Starbucks Coffee Company. (n.d.). Career Center. [online] Available at:
https://en.starbucks.vn/about-us/career-center/. 10