Question

Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., started out as a single ice-cream parlor in Burlington, Vermont, but quickly caught the attention of investors through its ability to double in size every year through 1986. The company has been the subject of many news reports, including a documentary featured on PBS. What makes Ben & Jerry's remarkable, and an illustration of Aristotle's point, is that making profit and spawning a growth company was not the goal of the founders. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield wanted a socially responsible company, one that valued making a good product and used its corporate influence for good works. When the company went public in order to generate necessary capital that would allow the company to grow, stock was first offered only to residents of Vermont, allowing the community to be the owner of the firm. The founders view growth as a way of allowing the company to do more good works. Ben Cohen, chairman and co-founder of the company, says that one of the company's goals is "to celebrate our collective humanity and the interconnection of all things." The firm donates 7.5 percent of its pretax income to environmental and other causes, limits the maximum salary paid to executives to seven times the salary of the lowest paid worker, and has developed a corporate culture that puts the welfare of employees above everything else. In an article on a Ben & Jerry's annual meeting, the Wall Street Journal noted that "Ben & Jerry's has thrived on doing things differently—and playing it up to customers and shareholders." When the federal government lowered its milk support prices, Ben & Jerry's decided to continue paying a premium to its dairy suppliers to keep them from going under. In defending this strategy, Cohen said, "We refuse to profit off the misfortune of our dairy suppliers due to some antiquated(out dated) , misguided, convoluted federal system." Fortune somewhat condescendingly referred to the company's "oddball (strange) blend of political activism and corporate social responsibility," but there is nothing oddball about its annual sales, which exceed $100 million.

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