Business — Nestle Values
The Nestle Company was originally founded in 1867 by Henri Nestle for the express purpose of addressing a profoundly important human social need. He created Farine Lactee Nestlee (“Nestle Milk Cereal”) to help reduce infant mortality throughout the world, particularly in impoverished regions. That fundamental concern with the betterment of the human community has continued to guide the organization into the modern age.
The Nestle Management and Leadership Principles (2009) were first established in their current form in 1997, and provide the blueprint for organizational management, leadership, and operational planning functions, in conjunction with the Nestle Corporate Business Principles, revised most recently in 2002. In combination, those concepts are designed to manage the tremendous complexity of modern corporate affairs efficiently at every level within the foundational framework of the Nestle Company’s commitment to help raise the standard of living and quality of life for everyone, everywhere, to the extent possible through its products and its related contributions.
Legal Issues, Ethics, and Corporate Responsibility
The Nestle Company operates under a guiding principle according to which its corporate activities can only be beneficial to the organization in the long-term to the extent they are simultaneously and genuinely beneficial to the human community. More specifically, the Nestle Company has always emphasized, recognized, and respected the fundamental differences in local cultures, norms, values, and expectations prevailing within different human societies in different regions of the world. At the time of its founding, these principles had express value that was essential to the success of the company’s initial product line. Henri Nestle understood intuitively that if Nestle Company products were to be successfully introduced where they were most needed, they had to be formulated, presented to consumers, and capable of being used in ways that were consistent with local eating habits and social perceptions and norms.
Today, that concept has been applied to ensure that Nestle products comply fully and in good faith with the codified (and non-codified) rules, values, norms, and laws of every society and venue where its products are sold. Toward that end, the Nestle Company embraces cultural and social diversity; indeed, the organization’s efforts and commitment in that regard actually predate the general recognition of the importance of diversity in society, gong back to long before any such concepts were ever formally codified in formal law.
In essence, the Nestle Company maintains a fundamental corporate belief that ensures ethical and legal compliance irrespective of any legal obligations. In principle, the Nestle Company operates at every level of organization embracing the belief that in order for any of its corporate activities to benefit the Nestle Company over the long-term, those activities must be mutually beneficial to the local community as well. With offices and plants worldwide, the Nestle Company implements this approach to the mutuality of corporate and community welfare and responsibility on a global level by applying it at the local level through specific action and commitment to the benefit of every local community in which it operates, as well as in others.
In that sense, the Nestle Company has embraced the philosophy of respect for cultural and social diversity since long before those concepts rose to their contemporary public and corporate consciousness within the last several decades in the Western Hemisphere. Whereas the most common dynamic in that regard has been for modern corporations to adapt to recognize and support the importance of cultural diversity and social benefit t the community as ethical and legal obligations, the Nestle Company has adhered to those values for almost a century and a half.
The Nestle Company has been instrumental in addressing social needs throughout its corporate history. In modern times, it became a principal member of the World Cocoa Foundation expressly designed to in areas of South America recover after the devastation of crop disease. That effort has included educating farmers in better farming techniques, sustainable approaches to farming, and better environmental management in general. Likewise, the Nestle Company has also been instrumental in the global response to illegal and immoral practices of forced labor, child exploitation for labor, and illegal child trafficking. In that regard, the Nestle Company is a founding member of the , established in 2002 in response to growing corporate ethical concerns in those areas.
Most recently, the Nestle Company’s efforts in relation to global human welfare include its 2009 announcement of its financial support for the establishment and achievement of a more environmentally healthy and sustainable crop of cocoa plants in regions affected by crop disease. The company has set out a goal of replacing at least one millions plants within three years and of establishing a fully sustainable global cocoa supply within ten years.
Organizational Planning and Operational Management
The Nestle Company corporate culture and approach to management is defined by the commitment to ethics, integrity, honesty, and quality. Those values manifest themselves operationally through management flexibility and a management structural hierarchy based on fewer levels of management and broader areas of operational control and oversight. That structure is intended to ensure clear levels of operational responsibility, and well-defined objectives at every level. In general, the prevailing focus at Nestle is to maximize operational speed through emphasis on personal responsibility, and minimal non-essential corporate bureaucracy.
Within the Nestle Company, that corporate management and operational philosophy is expressed primarily through the emphasis on the concept of adding value to the organization. Toward that end, the Nestle Company encourages all of its employees (especially those in management) to avoid any unnecessary exercise of formal authority. Instead, it expects that employees at all levels will embrace personal initiative, flexibility, and honesty, and the appropriate and efficient management of necessary change.
The Nestle Company is structured in a very decentralized manner, expressly to support the relative priority of ensuring the quality of its products and the benefits they contribute to the human community over the systems necessary to accomplish corporate objectives. Moreover, that concept also emphasizes a corporate and operational management culture of continuous improvement over one-time changes. Finally, the Nestle Company corporate values promote the establishment of both internal and external credibility through coherent action, leadership, and a meaningful record of achievement.
Sources Consulted
George, J.M. And Jones, G.R. (2008). Understanding and Managing Organizational
Behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Robbins, S.P. And Judge, T.A. (2009). Organizational Behavior. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
Nestle Corporation. (2009). The Nestle Management and Leadership Principles.
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