As the world turns companies with principles sell out. It was disappointing but not surprising to hear last week that that Innocent Smoothies had sold a stake in the company to Coca-Cola. Innocent has gone the same way as Green and Blacks and the Body Shop. Now, these ethical companies are part of larger corporations which don’t seem to share their principles.
According to Richard Reid, one of Innocent’s founders, the change will not have any effect on the company’s morals
“Every promise that Innocent has made – about making only natural healthy products, pioneering the use of better, socially and environmentally-aware ingredients, packaging and production techniques, donating money to charity and having a point of view on the world – will remain.”
In my experience, while principles and ethics work well in smaller companies where real people are in charge, in larger companies where directors answer to institutional shareholders who then answer to other institutional shareholders the human checks and balances don’t seem to work so well.
This is not a hard and fast rule and perhaps some larger companies can be positively affected by the principles of a smaller company – generally where they see a commercial advantage. When Cadbury bought Green and Blacks, who were a leading Fairtrade company, Cadbury were not in favour of Fairtrade but now there do seem to have been some positive moves. I hope that Innocent does have the right effect on Coca-Cola but if any of the allegations in the book Pop are true, they have a lot of work to do.
Filed under: Posts in English | Tagged: Business Ethics, Fairtrade, Innocent Smoothies
