This the team work executives are often perplexed by the continuous expansion of society's expectations of corporations. For example, in the corporate world, numerous laws and extensive government regulation affect virtually every aspect of business activities. They touch "almost every business decision ranging from the production of goods and services to their packaging, distribution, marketing, and service" (Carroll, 1979, p. 98). Thus, not only are companies held responsible for maximizing profits for the owners and shareholders and for operating within the legal framework, they are also expected to support their employees' quality of work life, to demonstrate their concern for the communities within which their businesses operate, to minimize the impact of various hazards on the global environment, and to engage in purely social or philanthropic endeavors.
Among researchers, this issue has provoked an especially rich and diverse literature investigating the role of business in society. Research in this area has followed two major streams. The most popular of these studies have focused on the relationship between a firm's social responsibility and its financial performance (McGuire, J., Sundgren, A., & Scheeweis, T., 1988, p. 858). The other stream of studies has examined the effect of board members' demographic and non-demographic characteristics on their individual corporate social responsiveness orientation (Wood, 1991, p. 389).
Since the societal marketing involves some kind of corporate response to social demands, the first step is to identify and classify the numerous social needs. There are three categories of such needs. First, survival needs consist of the various needs that are necessary for individual members of the social segment to survive, such as food, shelter, and the preservation or restoration of one's health.
A second category is concerned with safety needs. These are the needs that are necessary to protect the members of the social segment from external and internal threats. Not only do nations have defense establishments for protection from external threats, but they also enact and enforce laws to protect individuals and groups from others in society. Such laws cover numerous areas ranging from environmental protection to safeguarding individual liberties.
The third category is composed of various growth needs which, in turn, can be broken down into material needs and spiritual needs. The former are concerned with the enrichment of the social segment through economics (the allocation of limited resources) and technology (the use of tools and techniques to generate wealth). Spiritual needs are related to the spiritual growth of the social segment; they include metaphysics, education, science, arts, and entertainment.
Social segments expect different agents to fulfill these needs. These agents can be an individual (e.g., a parent who supports a family), a group (e.g., political parties and interest groups who represent their members), a business organization (e.g., a corporation which supports inner city revitalization), a not-for-profit organization (e.g., a hospital that provides services to the community), and government (e.g., for protection from external threats). Both the type and extent of the needs to be fulfilled and the agent who is expected to satisfy these needs will depend upon the social segment's culture and ethics, the legal environment, and the degree to which the members of the social segment perceive that such needs are not fulfilled.
As a key member of society, a corporation should take into account the societal needs that are expected to be met by business. These needs constitute a social demand. Thus, social demand incorporates not only demand for a firm's products and services, but also extends to the fulfillment of other societal needs. With this framework in mind, it can be stated that the scope of a business organization, i.e., what products and services it provides, is determined both by the organization itself and by society's expectations. In other words, it can be said that a given firm operating in two different social segments has, in effect, two different scopes. Failure on the part of an organization to understand and satisfy the various demands of the social segments within which it operates will lead to its rejection by society and its eventual demise. Consequently, a firm's mission and objectives should not only address traditional organizational concerns such as profitability and markets served, but should also be concerned with determining and meeting various societal expectations.
One of the aspects of the societal marketing includes alliances that have arisen between environmentalist groups and businesses in the last decade. The new relationships have been described as path breaking and innovative (e.g., Long & Arnold, 1995; Wasik, 1996). Typically, they are distinguishable from the prior charitable (e.g., donations to or sponsorships of environmental causes) and commercial relationships (e.g., calendars, T-shirts produced for environmental groups) because they engage the expert knowledge of the environmental group and involve it, to varying degrees, in joint problem solving or strategic decision making with the corporate partner (Clair, Milliman, & Mitroff, 1995, p. 188). In this category are green product endorsements, audits by environmental groups of business programs or practices, and joint projects of the type engaged in by green alliance between McDonald's and Environmental Defense Fund, where the corporate partner's business practices are evaluated and improved according to ecological criteria.
Green alliances also function rhetorically in a more complex way than traditional business-environmentalist relationships. Here I follow Levy who has pointed out that environmental management - that is, corporate practices to reduce the ecological harm of economic processes - serves symbolic and political purposes by helping to construct business as green and thus to legitimate its role as manager of the natural environment (1997, p. 127). Green alliances, a strategy within corporate environmental management, also have symbolic and political value - for both partners. The corporation borrows not only the environmental expertise, but also the credibility, of the ecology group, which by its allegiance implicitly or explicitly endorses company actions - e.g., producing earth-friendly products and services or operating in pollution-free ways (Ottman, 1994, p. 86). The partnership also brings corporate actors into the group of those to be entrusted with the work of saving the earth.
McDonald's is the leader of the fast-food industry, with worldwide operations employing approximately 500,000 people in 11,000 restaurants and serving 22 million customers a day. At the time Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) approached McDonald's, its entanglement in controversy over its packaging frustrated the company. From EDF's perspective, McDonald's leadership position, its problematic history of waste management, and the iconic value of waste management as an environmental issue made the company an attractive work.
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