1. What does it mean to "manage" customers and suppliers? Why is this important to a business and what risk(s) does it take if it does not? Support your answer.

Like suppliers, customers are important to organizations for reasons other than the money they provide for goods and services. Customers can play competitors against one another, as occurs when a car customer (or a purchasing agent) collects different offers and negotiates for the best price. The Internet has further empowered customers, by making information about the lowest possible price available to everyone and by forcing organizations to compete with each other online.

be ready with new ways to communicate with customers and deliver the products to them.

giving customers what they want or need, when they want it

focused on continually meeting the needs of customers to establish mutually beneficial long-term relationships.

Suppliers provide the resources needed for production and may come in the form of people (supplied by trade schools and universities), raw materials (supplied by producers, wholesalers, and distributors), information (supplied by researchers and consulting firms), and financial capital (supplied by banks and other sources). But suppliers are important to an organization for reasons that go beyond the resources they provide. Suppliers can raise their prices or provide poor-quality goods and services. Organizations are at a disadvantage if they become overly dependent on any powerful supplier. A supplier is powerful if the buyer has few other sources of supply or if the supplier has many other buyers. In many cases, even when alternatives are available, managers have to take switching costs into account. Switching costs are fixed costs buyers face if they change suppliers. For example, once a buyer learns how to operate a supplier's equipment, such as computer software, the buyer faces both economic and psychological costs in changing to a new supplier. In recent years, supply chain management has become an increasingly important contributor to a company's competitiveness and profitability. By supply chain management, we mean the managing of the entire network of facilities and people that obtain raw materials from outside the organization, transform them into products, and distribute them to customers. In sum, choosing the right supplier is an important strategic decision. Suppliers can affect manufacturing time, product quality, and inventory levels.

2. What do you feel a company's responsibility or responsibilities to society is? How do you intend to implement this philosophy in your cookie company or other business? 

Corporate ethics

Here's a small but potentially powerful suggestion. Change your vocabulary: The word ethics is too loaded , even trite. Substitute responsibility or decency and then act accordingly.

Corporate ethics programs commonly include formal ethics codes articulating the company's expectations regarding ethics; ethics committees that develop policies, evaluate actions, and investigate violations; ethics communication systems giving employees a means of reporting problems or getting guidance; ethics officers or ombudspersons who investigate allegations and provide education; ethics training programs; and disciplinary processes for addressing unethical behavior. When top management has more personal commitment to responsible ethical behavior, programs tend to be better integrated into operations, thinking, and behavior.

Corporate social responsibility is the obligation a corporation has towards society assumed by the business

Specifically categorized as:

Economic responsibilities - producing goods and services that society wants at a price that perpetuates the business and satisfies its obligations to investors

Legal responsibilities - obeying local, state, federal, and relevant international laws

Ethical responsibilities - meeting other social expectations, not written as law

Philanthropic responsibilities - additional behaviors and activities that society finds desirable and that the values of the business support

The extent of business's responsibility for non-economic concerns has been hotly debated. In the 1960s and 1970s, the political and social environment became more important to U.S. corporations as society turned its attention to issues like equal opportunity, pollution control, energy and natural resource conservation, and consumer and worker protection. Public debate addressed these issues and how business should respond to them. This controversy focused on the concept of corporate social responsibility.

The first tenet directly relates to capitalism which is widely associated with the early writings of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, and more recently with Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist of the University of Chicago. With his now-famous dictum "The social responsibility of business is to increase profits," Friedman contended that organizations may help improve the quality of life as long as such actions are directed at increasing profits. Some considered Friedman to be "the enemy of business ethics," but his position was ethical: He believed that it was unethical for unelected business leaders to decide what was best for society, and unethical for them to spend shareholders' money on projects unconnected to key business interests.

The second perspective is different from the profit maximization perspective. Followers of Friedman and The Wealth of Nations might sneer at such soft-headed propaganda. But Adam Smith wrote about a world different from the one we are in now, driven in the 18th century by the self-interest of small owner-operated farms and craft shops trying to generate a living income for themselves and their families. This self-interest was quite different from that of top executives of modern corporations. It is interesting to note that Adam Smith also wrote A Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which he argued that "sympathy," defined as a proper regard for others, is the basis of a civilized society.

3. All of the following are forms of collaboration across boundaries EXCEPT:

            A)  partnering with a supplier to build success of both companies.

            B)  competitors joining forces to cooperate in pursuit of a common business interest.

            C)  sharing knowledge freely across the organization.

            D)  creating a new product within a division to replace an existing one the company already produces.