Ben & Jerry's Super Audit Crunch

BEN AND JERRY’S SUPER AUDIT CRUNCH

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Organization usually submits audit reports which contains financial data which are positive and favourable to them and sugar coat the failures and other details. Ben and Jerry’s Homemade, Inc took the risk to showcase both financial and social issues. The difficulty arises when the company sales is down.

Executive

Summary Word Count-48

CASE ANALYSIS

Organizations usually submit their audit reports featuring numbers, audits, portraits that displays the positive aspects and they sugar-coat the bad aspects such as failures. They are mainly considered about the financial aspects of the organization and not concerned about the social aspects of the company.

Ben and Jerry’s Homemade, Inc., the Waterbury, Vermont- based, super-premium ice cream was an exception for this case. They published their reports considering both financial and social aspects.

CHANGES BROUGHT IN AUDIT

• They provided unedited financial statements keeping in mind that it could provide a chance of improvements that the company can in their respective fields.
• Their social audit rates the companies in areas such as

employee benefits, plant safety, ecology, community involvement and customer involvement.

• They  displayed  honesty  in  submitting  their  reports,  for

example, they criticised the company for its poor plant safety. They even kept the negative aspects of the company without any sugar coating.

• Introduction   of   7:1   salary   ratio,   in   this   highest paid

employee gets not more than seven times of the lowest paid employee.

• They displayed the loss in production that occurred due to

accidents that occurred inside the company. That is number days lost by the persons who met with accidents and production loss that occurred due to accident

They also introduced charity programs which was absolute flops such as “Save the Family Farm” campaign which was severely criticised in their audit reports.

ADVANTAGES

• By providing unedited reports they could display both positives and negatives that occurred in a financial year. By this they could get suggestions from all the members of the organizations for the improvements.
• By  introducing  7:1  salary  ratio  they  could  send  a real

social message to the people that there is not much salary gap between highest and lowest paid employees.

• They        can        get        clear        idea        about        what        all        areas        to        be

improved in their organization.

DISADVANTAGES

• By introducing 7:1 ratio many key positions left unoccupied as the employees could get higher salaries in other companies.
• This type of publishing reports can be only done when the

company is presently running at high profits and not when the company is running is loss.

CONCLUSION

Ben and Jerry’s main aim was to signal through transparency that is by submitting reports considering social aspects .They could get the improvement aspects from all the members of the company. But this type of reports can be submitted when the company is running on profit and not when the company is running on loss.