Ben & Jerry's Case Study

Ben & Jerry’s is an American ice cream company established in 1978. It became part of Unilever’s portfolio in 2000. It manufactures ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet, and ice cream novelty products. This firm strongly displays its corporate social responsibilities and the extent to which the team channels its energy to create prosperity to everyone that is linked to the business: suppliers, customers, employees, farmers, and franchisees. Indeed, Ben & Jerry’s operates on a three-part mission:
1) A Product Mission: the firm has a drive to make fantastic ice cream.
2) An Economic Mission: the firm engages in careful and well-planned activities in order to ensure sustainable financial growth.
3) A Social Mission: this mission compels them to use

These outputs can refer to the number of people that attended a social event, or to the number of people affected by a health program, and so forth. In Ben & Jerry’s case, they did quantify some of these outputs. For example, in 2012, the company pledged to transition their North American sourcing to only non-GMO ingredients for all their products. They then reported that by the end of 2013, about 87% of their ingredients became non-GMO (SEAR, 2013). The firm also adopted a model to measure specific goals for their social and environmental performance. They created the Quality of Results (QoR) framework for this measure. However they stated that “while QoR method provides some good information and has helped us stay on target […] this method has its limitations.” And indeed, this QoR doesn’t measure the outcomes nor the impacts of their

In Ben & Jerry’s case, their focus is on children and families, the environment, and sustainable agriculture on family farms. The firm succeeded in listing some of the outcomes they generated. Indeed, they stated that the water use was 1.2% better in 2013 than in 2012, and that the solid waste was 195.8% better in 2013 than in 2012 (SEAR, 2013).
Finally, impacts refer to the long-term benefit and social change created as a result of an investment. However, it can take years to see the final impact of a program and measure it. As stated by the KPMG report, some companies neglect the importance of reporting the long-term effect of these investments, and that was Ben & Jerry’s case. While the firm successfully reported the inputs, outputs, and outcomes it managed to generate, it failed to report the long-term impact the firm had over its 36 years of