Hershey Company
Hershey's is a listed company. Its products are sold in Hershey's own retail stores, but also in most store chains. In addition to this, the company develops several partnerships with suppliers.
Some of the most important issues in the company's code of ethical conduct that ensure its success are represented by promoting diversity, producing products consumers can trust, and dealing fairly within the marketplace. In order to benefit from productive employees it is important to develop a cultural environment that sustains their productivity (Hershey's, 2012). One of the most efficient ways to reach this objective is to promote workplace diversity. This ensures that all issues are viewed from different points-of-view, and that different solutions can be determined. It also ensures that employees can improve their skills of anticipating situations that can affect the company's activity.
Producing products consumers can trust is one of the most important issues that ensure the company's success on the market. Hershey's name has become synonymous with high quality products, and this situation can be attributed to its interest in offering products that customers trust. In order to ensure customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, Hershey focuses on building the trust of its customers with high quality products. Although competition is one of the most important factors that can significantly affect the company's activity, it must be managed fairly within the marketplace. Hershey must establish the standard it wants its competitors to address it. This also refers to other business partners, like suppliers.
Some of Hershey's most important competitors are represented by Nestle and Mondelez International. The ethical conduct code of Nestle seems slightly different in comparison with Hershey's. Most of Nestle's code of conduct refers to the company's relationship with investors. Another strong focus of Nestle's code of conduct relies on following rules and regulations. It also mentions the company's interest in ensuring diversity and positioning against discrimination and harassment, but this issue is not mentioned in the beginning, as in the case of Hershey's. Diversity does not seem as important of investor relationships to Nestle (Nestle, 2008). In addition to this, Nestle's code of conduct does not mention anything about providing products customers can trust. However, this can be derived from the fact Nestle is strongly focused on respecting laws, but it is not an issue targeting customers.
The objective of Mondelez's code of ethical conduct is represented by earning and maintaining trust. Business loyalty seems to be one of the most important success factors to Mondelez, which is common to Hershey's (Mondelez, 2013). Confidentiality and respecting laws, rules, and regulations represent other important factors to Modelez. Cultural diversity is not included by the company in its code of ethical conduct.
The two companies have failed to address most of the issues selected from Hershey's code of ethical conduct. However, if they had addressed the issue on producing products customers can trust they would have been better positioned on the market. It is important that customers feel they can trust a company. This is why Hershey is the market leader in most chocolate segments. If Nestle and Mondelez want to challenge the leadership position in their industry, they should also ensure that their customers understand their importance to these companies.
Promoting cultural diversity within the workplace by these companies could have significant impact on several stakeholder categories: employees, customers, and society. Companies that promote diversity are higher valued by their customers, because their targeted customer segments are also characterized by diversity. Therefore, Nestle and Mondelez should focus more on ensuring a culturally diverse environment for their employees.
One of the techniques that can be used by Hershey in order to ensure its code of ethical conduct maintains its relevancy is to develop a more abstract code. In other words, the code of conduct should reflect the company's values and principles, and not necessarily the actions required by them. Another techniques Hershey's can use in order to reach this objective is to develop a flexible code of conduct. The flexibility of the...
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