Starbucks College Achievement Plan

MGMT 410 POSITION PAPER Starbucks College Achievement Plan Starbucks recently (within the last 2 years) announced that they would provide their employees with full tuition assistance. You can find a description of the program on Starbucks website and interviews with the CEO Howard Schultz and several employees. In this position paper you need to take the role of a business consultant to Starbucks and take a position of either the program is good for Starbucks or that it is not (too expensive, not enough return). Obviously from an employee viewpoint the program is a plus but you need to look at it from the business perspective. You should do some research and include at least two journal articles. The best way to find journal articles (and not just websites) is to go to the library's home page and click on databases. You can search Business Source Complete or Proquest or probably several others. If you take the positive side you need to justify why it is good for the business. You might look for information on the Service Profit chain which is the research that has shown that employee satisfaction leads to customer satisfaction which leads to increased profits. Or you could research the cost of employee turnover and how the program could reduce those costs. You could look at the impact on the brand. Obviously customer service is very important at Starbucks. If you take the negative side, you could look at the added cost and assume that it gets passed on to consumers through increased prices. You could look at wages at Starbucks compared to other fast food chains. There has been a lot written about increasing the minimum wage and its impact on the economy (Adding benefits does increase the overall compensation costs). You could look if this program is offered globally and how that impacts Starbucks ability to expand internationally. You should argue only one side and make whatever arguments you want. The above are just ideas to help you understand what is expected in the position paper. Your paper should be at least 2 pages.