MCN: Nestle
Structure of the organization
Nestlé has a Board of Directors. The Board is responsible for managing the overall business and is currently led by Chairman Paul Bulcke ( the company’s former CEO). The day-to-day operations of the Nestlé business are overseen by the company’s Executive Board. Members of the Executive Board manage diverse parts of the global Nestlé business and occupy C-level and executive vice president position such as operations, human resources, finance, and technology.
Nestle is the biggest food and beverage company in the world, Nestle owns more than 2000 brands globally and renovated over 8000 products. It is one of the world's biggest companies with the broadest and most diverse product portfolio.
Headquarters are located in Switzerland
Twenty-nine of their brands have sales of over $1 billion a year
They have over 8,000 brands.
They have 447 factories across 194 countries and employ around 333,000 people
Products:
Powdered and Liquid Beverages
PetCare
Nutrition and Health Science
Prepared dishes and cooking aids
Milk products and Ice cream
Confectionery
Water
Rules & Regulations:
Because Nestle is such a big company with a worldwide reach it is bound by international law. Meaning the corporation is subject to the domestic laws and regulations of the state in which they operate. Thus the rules and regulations Nestle has to follow vary from country to country.
Aims and Practices
The main aim of the company is to distribute high quality food and beverage to consumers around the world for generations to come.
Nestle manufactures and distributes a wide variety of food and beverage products across the globe.
Sustainability aims:
Nestle claims to work in contribution to the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals and it aims to do so by enforcing certain policies to ensure the distribution of high-quality, nutritious products, and lower carbon emissions. limit their impacts on the environment, ensure fair wages and human rights are respected for employees, etc...
Effects
As previously mentioned Nestle’s products are sold in 186 countries across the globe. The company has serious impacts regarding health, human rights, and environmental issues.
Environmental: Major contributions to plastic pollution, Nestle’s extraction of water practices are said to drain natural waterways worsening the condition of states already experiencing water shortages, water waste, and high carbon footprint
Human rights: Notorious for child labor, profiting off the distribution of bottled water (CEO claimed water is not a human right and should be privatized).
Health: Controversies surrounding the quality and nutritional value of their products.
Case Study
The case study discusses The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights that were endorsed in 2011 and have since become the framework for business human rights globally
What the UNGP principles are based on:
The State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties; The corporate responsibility to respect human rights, a responsibility for companies to avoid infringing the rights of others and to address any adverse human rights impacts that occur as a result of their corporate activity; The need for greater access by victims to effective remedy, a responsibility of both States and companies.
click to edit
The UNPG have created policies that have been in-forced in-order to protect human rights and believe all business practices should follow such policies. Those being: A policy commitment to meet their responsibility to respect human rights;A A human rights due diligence process to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address their impacts on human rights; Processes to enable the remediation of any adverse human rights impacts they cause or to which they contribute.
Doe v. Nestle SA: Six men from Mali were trying to sue Nestle in U.S. Court who claimed that they were forced to harvest cocoa pods on cacao plantations in Ivory Coast when they were children. The plantations supplied to international chocolate giants and the men claim that Nestle should have known about the human rights abuses in its suppliers' operations.
By collaborating with the Fair Labor Association (FLA), Nestlé took action in 2012 to address child forced labor in its cocoa supply chain. They implemented a plan of action to stop supply chain violations of human rights. Nestlé created an effective internal monitoring system that was in line with the This is in line with UNGP. The system t monitored/went over everyone involved with its supplier.
Nestlé was one of the five early adopters of the UNGP Reporting Framework in 2015. The UNGPs, a global standard, served as the foundation for this Framework. The Framework's Database now includes information on 67 businesses, including the top 500 firms in the banking and finance, extractive, food and beverage, ICT, and tobacco industries. This demonstrates once more how the UNGPs have evolved into the global norm for business in terms of human rights.