Starbucks Coffee Company will realign its corporate social responsibility department to be more effective in its ethical sourcing, environmental leadership and community investment efforts.

“Global responsibility department, formerly known as corporate social responsibility, has been restructured to reallocate its resources to the field in order to be closer to the customer; create more capacity for its already robust responsibility efforts; and enable Starbucks to link its business priorities to the needs and values of the global community and environment”, said Starbucks chief operating officer Martin Coles.

“We are proud of our strong record of being responsible to our partners (employees), the communities, coffee farmers and environment,” said Coles. “This team will be focused on ensuring that our customers’ values are expressed in every aspect of our work.”

The global responsibility team will primarily focus on ethical sourcing, environmental impact and community investment efforts. In addition to this team, a network of global responsibility partners will be integrated within each business unit and department to help set strategy and goals within each area to ensure customers’ values are represented in every aspect of the company’s work. Regional responsibility partners will also be located within each market to help implementation.

This key move was announced right after the company was named in Ethisphere’s second-annual World’s Most Ethical Companies list revealed at the Ethisphere and Forbes joint-conference, “Driving Profit through Ethical Leadership,” held on June 3.

Ethisphere is a think-tank dedicated to the research and promotion of profitable best practices in global governance, business ethics, compliance and corporate responsibility. – TradeArabia News service