McEthics in Europe and Asia

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Ethical values offer a big opportunity to build trust and customer loyalty, to energise employees and revitalise growth. Shoppers are including ethical judgements more in their shopping decisions, but they don’t want to pay a lot more , they want value for their values.

Setting up international standards around sustainable sourcing, supporting social enterprises, cutting salt and saturated fat content, and conserving water will definitely help the McDonalds to present itself as an ethical corporation.

Q5. How sustainable is the fast food industry from the perspective of the triple bottom line?

Ans. Triple Bottom Line works on the assumption that the corporation is a member of the moral community, and this gives it social responsibilities. This theory focuses on sustainability, and requires that any company weigh its actions on three independent scales: economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability.

These three tabulations are all aimed at long-term sustainability. Economic sustainability must focus on the long term because this is the nature of a persistent company. A decision which creates an economic boon in the short-term (like the Ford Pinto), but causes long-term harm, would likely reduce this bottom line to such a degree that the action would be untenable.

Social sustainability gives precedence on the balance of economic power in the society. Competition in the business arena is common, and encouraged, behavior, but maximizing the bottom line in social terms requires that a business foster an environment in which all can succeed. This might seem counterintuitive, but in the big-picture it is better for a whole society to thrive than for one single corporation to thrive alone. This will allow the company to continue to exist, and it will foster good-will between the company and the society that it exists in. The PCB dumping alluded to in above created an environment in which that company could not exist, and it is no longer present in NC.

The requirement of environmental sustainability stems from the recognition that resources are not infinite, and leads to the reasoning that too much degradation will worsen the lives of ourselves, our children and so on. Members of the moral community ought not cause undue harm to the people around them and the people who will come later, and so this bottom line values some protection of the environment. The word "some" in the previous statement introduces vagueness in the calculation, but it might be necessary because there is some risk of environmental degradation in many necessary business activities. The question of how much environmental degradation is acceptable is one that must be answered, but it need not be answered in this module. Suffice it to say that this calculation must be made even if it is a rough calculation. Business cannot operate in a world which is poisoned or "used up." Efforts should be made to renew some of the environments that have been harmed in the past, and these environmental harms and gains belong on this bottom line.

The reasoning behind this tripartite theory is that if businesses calculate their gains and losses in this way they will be more likely to take actions which are to the benefit of both the business and the community. It is easy, when the numbers are large enough, to ignore the social and environmental dimensions of a business decision. This is because the average business decision is made by comparing the expected costs and benefits in terms of dollars and, only then, considering the other dimensions of that decision. In order to combat this order of operations, the Triple Bottom Line requires that a business decision be composed of all of these elements from the beginning. When the data shows each of these dimensions along the same line, and measured with the same metric, it will be much easier to see the impact of a decision and to judge the fittingness of that decision.

McDonald’s Founder Ray Kroc used to say, “We have an obligation to give something back to the community that gives so much to us.” Today, McDonald’s remains committed to being a good neighbor in thousands of local communities where McDonald’s restaurants operate. More than 50 years after the Company’s founding, we are still a good neighbor and leverage our size, global reach and franchise model to positively impact the communities we serve. Franchisees and suppliers also support community activities in the areas they serve.

Following are some measures taken by the MacDonalds to sustain in the global market.

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