Target IV. Decision Making

A. Decisions. One of the most important parts of ethical decision making is to ensure of two things. The first is that the relevant decision makers understand their role in verifying the ethics of the decisions that the senior management team makes, and the second is that they are given the opportunity to do so.

Starting with the latter, once the organization has defined its ethical character, it can use this as guidance for decision-making. The vast majority of decisions that any business will make are not going to require any ethical analysis, but every now and again somebody in the organization will be faced with a decision that is not 100% clear in terms of its ethics. These are the types of situations where an organization needs to provide some sort of guidance or process for evaluating the decisions. Arguably, this starts with the mission statement, vision statement and a statement of ethics. When an organization defines what it stands for, and what its priorities are, these statements can provide guidance for individual executives, managers and employees to help them make decisions that are consistent with what the organization stands for.

There are a couple of ways to ensure that decision-making in the organization is optimized. First, the right people need to be in the room, or at the very least advising the people who are in the room. Essentially, the decision-making process should be rooted in rational analysis of evidence, and ensuring that subject matter experts are participating in the critical discussions that lead to decision-making. The second element of effective decision-making processes is to actively solicit feedback from the right people. If the people making the decision are doing so without soliciting advice from the people who can provide the best insight, the quality of decision-making will be lower.

B. Culture. Sustainability is always going to be a challenge for any business that wants to enjoy continual growth, and does so by encouraging consumers to buy more things, and buy them from overseas. For Target, the best that it can realistically do is to be more sustainable. In that sense, one of the best ways for the company to achieve that is to define what sustainability means to the company, develop specific metrics that managers can work towards, and then after that to publicly hold itself accountable. One of the unique aspects of social responsibility and sustainability is that companies are free to define these terms any way that they way. Target has its own definitions and quantitative targets, and regularly publishes a social responsibility report where it publicly measures itself against previously published targets. Doing this helps the company to hold itself accountable, because it engages public stakeholder groups in that process.

In order to Target to ensure that different viewpoints and stakeholders are engaged in critical decisions, it needs to have specific individuals...

Where there is someone at a high level who is able to filter corporate-level decisions through different perspectives, provide feedback and genuinely influence processes, that is a critical gatekeeping role. That said, the ideal scenario is that sustainability and social responsibility are so ingrained in the organizational culture that the leaders in the organization are also the cultural leaders on these elements. Where that is the case, an organization will be in an excellent position to make the best possible decisions on these different criteria, because the executives themselves will question each decision, and serve as their own filters. When that happens, not only is the culture stronger, but it becomes reinforced through each major decision that the company makes.
C. Stakeholders. The first part of engaging stakeholders in decision making is to understand which stakeholders are relevant for each decision. Once that is understood, Target can ensure that their voices...…from certain parts of society for taking a very public stand – and to be fair the company could have implemented its policy without taking a strong public stand. So when Target faced this backlash, it had already anticipated the backlash and was ready to stand by its policy. In that, Target ended up being a leader, and that approach without a doubt influenced many other companies to take a similar stand. If a massive company like Target is prepared to face negative publicity and take a hit on sales in conservative areas, that helps a lot of other businesses to feel that they can do the same.

Thus, there are certain instances and issues where Target has taken a leadership role, and used its massive size and excellent reputation to become an influencer of change in the global business environment. Other retailers take their lead on a lot of things from the industry’s leaders, and Target is one of the most-admired and largest companies in the space. That Target has built social responsibility into its organizational culture so strongly that it can have an influence on the behaviors of firms throughout the industry is indicative not just of the power that Target has, but in the respect that is has earned throughout the industry for its policies.

All told, Target’s influence on the global environment aligns with its position in that market, and in its desire to be an influencer and leader among its peers. Target has a strong set of policies regarding corporate social responsibility. It is willing to sacrifice revenue for its ideals, and uses its position of influence to promote the ideals that are part of the culture. In this, Target has exerted fairly strong influence, and actively wants its value system to become part of everyday American values – it sells to everybody, and therefore has both the means and desire to influence American culture in a positive way.…