New Belgium Brewery Case Study

There are many things that need to be considered before New Belgium brewery decides whether or not to go through with this accreditation. They need to find out who their stakeholders are in this situation and what environment will benefit the most amount of people. The processes in which New Belgium makes decisions is a crucial part of their business model and having this certification might change that. Also they need to assess ethical theories their company operates in and if the certification’s theories aline with the same theories. Finally they need to see how the certification will affect their triple bottom line.
The employees are the first major stakeholder that we have to account for when making the decision of whether to get a B-Corp. …show more content…
Since New Belgium opened its doors it has been making their own pro-active ethical decisions on their management style and business plan. To realise the importance of pro-active decisions we first need to establish the difference between pro-active vs reactive decision and why it better to be pro-active. Pro-active decision making is making decisions before a problem occurs. New Belgium has done this all through out there company. For example, they anticipated that it would be economically beneficial to not waste water and become environmentally friendly long before most of the beer industry was focused on keeping their environmental impact to a minimum. Additionally they made the proactive decision to make employees part owners of the company. This made their worker satisfaction rate increase and it also help retain their workers. A reactive decision making process would have noticed that their workers were not happy with their work place and leaving to go to other jobs. Then they would have to figure out why they were unhappy with their job and organize some sort of fix to the problem. New Belgium would rather provide a culture that recognizes and solves moral issues before they become a problem in the company without the hindrance of a regulatory board telling them what is …show more content…
The ethical dilemma of making the decision to get B-Corp. certified plays a major role in the ability to sustain a triple bottom line. While the financial part of the triple bottom line will be effected by getting this certification because of the yearly costs and legal fees. We also must look at New Belgium Brewery as an employee driven organization whose employees take pride in sustaining this idea. While the B-Corp. certification may seem to legitimize the company’s efforts to achieve the triple bottom line. It goes against the intrinsic rewards that New Belgium Brewery offers their employees. Intrinsic rewards are the non-monetary rewards the employees receive such as job satisfaction and increased moral. With the B-Corp. certification being there employees may lose their sense of job satisfaction because they may feel as if they are being watched over to achieve specific goals. Since the employees are major stakeholders as we previously discussed we must use the utilitarian form of ethics to analyze and make an ethical decision around this dilemma of certification. Triple bottom line also deals with the environment so we must consider the environment as a stakeholder in this decision. New Belgium Brewery has a core value of environmental stewardship and is considered one of the leaders in the beer industries environmental friendly