College of Business Administration

Social and Ethical Issues in Business

Supercuts Food Drive

GROUP MEMBERS:

Tony Valentin
Genoveva Ramos
Sirisak Boonchua

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

During the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, members of society seem to become more aware and involved in helping out people who are have insufficient amount of food to feed themselves and their families. As charitable as society members are during the holidays, their need for assistance is year round, not just during the holidays.

Our goal for the social change project was to remind the Mira Mesa community that there are other members within the area who could use a continuous helping hand. With the help of a local business, the Mira Mesa community will be prompted and therefore become more inclined to contribute more than just during the holiday seasons. A more important goal although, was to instill a sense of social responsibility within the business of choice that would result in a continuous effort to bring about not only a support for the community, but hopefully some kind of business ethical change.

On April 26, 1997, our group in conjunction with the Mira Mesa Supercuts conducted an all day food drive. Food items collected were delivered to Good Shepherd Catholic Church, who then distributed the food to the more needy low income families in Mira Mesa. Prior to the food drive, our group took several steps to organize our project. With the approval of the manager of Supercuts, Rene Hernandez, we were able to offer an incentive. A coupon good for $1 off a haircut or 10% off any hair care products would be given to those individuals who donated a food item. Our next step was to distribute flyers around local Mira Mesa businesses to help spread the word of our food drive. We were very successful with the smaller, privately owned stores, but struggled in the larger, franchise businesses. We sent out letters to schools around the Mira Mesa proximities such as, Scripps Ranch High, Mira Mesa Christian School, and Good Shepherd Catholic School, informing them of our worthy event..

We never questions ourself of why we donate. Finding an ethical reasons for conducting a food drive with a local business made us intensively ponder of our motivation. One of the ethical reasonings that we encountered was ethical subjectivism. An example of this was people who donated were able to walk away with a sense of satisfaction. Another ethical reason was ethical egoism. For example, at the beginning of our project the Supercuts manager was very willing to participate for it would bring more business to the shop. Lastly, libertarianism would also fit into our ethical reasoning. For instance we informed people of our food drive, and it was their prerogative to donate or not. The result of our social change program was very encouraging. Mira Mesa Supercuts is already looking into future projects and inviting other Supercuts franchises, local business, and schools to join along to help promote future programs that will assist the those in need. A 'Cut-a-thon' is on the drawing board at the moment that will help local schools.

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