Business Ethics and Sustainability PDF

Business Ethics
and
Sustainability

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Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................2
Case Study Overview..................................................................................................................2
Recommendations.....................................................................................................................3
Strategic and operational dimensions.......................................................................................6
Opportunities and Challenges....................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
In this report, the case study titled ‘Zara: Fast Fashion’ will be evaluated in order to
understand the key issues arise in the case relating to global warming. This report will
analyse how the operations and processes of Zara have failed to consider their impact on
the environment which results in created challenges for everyone. Various
recommendations will be given in this report which can assist in addressing the ethical and
sustainability issues raised in this case of Zara while considering their implications for
governments, producers and consumers. Lastly, the challenges and opportunities which are
inherent in the recommendations relating to ethics and sustainability will be identified
within the retailing industry.
Case Study Overview
In the case study of ‘Zara: Fast Fashion’, details regarding the operations of Zara are given
which assist Inditex (the parent company of Zara) in becoming a key player in the fast
fashion retailing market. The corporation offers its products and services in 96 offline
markets and 46 online markets. Inditex has generated a competitive advantage in the fast
fashion based on its responsive supply chain which enables the corporations to offer new
and designer products to its customers every week. The supply chain assists the corporation
in changing more than 75 percent of its merchandise display in its stores situated across the
globe within a period of 3 to 4 weeks (Corfton and Dopico, 2012). The key competitors of
Zara include GAP, H&M and MANGO. The supply chain of these competitors is not efficient
enough to ensure that they are able to change their offering within a period of 3 to 4 weeks.
Companies such as GAP take around 6 months to change its entire offerings due to which
they are unable to provide competition to Zara. Zara is able to achieve efficiency in its
supply chain because it uses both in-house and outsources manufacturing process to
manufacture its products (de Jorge Moreno and Carrasco, 2016).
The corporation produces around 50 percent of its products through the in-house
manufacturing process. The corporation outsources 26 percent of its manufacturing process
to countries in Europe and 24 percent to Asian countries (Corfton and Dopico, 2012). Due to

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this supply chain, the company has been able to ensure that it maintains high quality in its
products and supply them within relatively less time. However, this business strategy did
not consider the impact of Inditex on the environment. This fast pace supply chain leads to
creating wastage of products and raw materials which is negatively affecting the
environment. In order to continue to serve their customers, the corporations are failing to
implement relevant policies to reduce their carbon footprint. Inditex started to
implemented environment policies in the organisation to address the issue of waste and
pollution caused by the enterprise. The company looks at every section of its supply chain in
order to reduce its energy consumption. Currently, 41 percent of the global energy
consumption sources of the enterprise comes from clean sources which result in reducing
the carbon footprint of the enterprise (Inditex, 2018). However, these actions are not
enough to ensure that the company is able to reduce its carbon footprint and other steps
must be taken by the enterprise to ensure that they are able to address the issues such as
global warming.
Recommendations
The importance of compliance with ethics and sustainability policies has increased
substantially for corporations across the globe as the issues of climate change, and global
warming become more significant. The actions of corporations directly create challenges for
the environment by increasing their carbon emissions; however, these challenges can be
reduced by implementing sustainability policies in the company. Implementation of business
ethics and sustainability policies are important to ensure that the management of the
company avoids acting unethically when it comes to implementation of environmental
policies in the company (Quarshie, Salmi and Leuschner, 2016). Increasing number of waste
across the globe is a major reason for climate change. The problem is associated with
methane which is produced from anaerobic decomposition of organic materials which is a
primary cause of global warming. The fast fashion industry uses different chemicals and raw
materials and their waste increase methane in the environment which resulted in causing
global warming (Hoskins, 2017). There are various actions which can be taken by
corporations to ensure that they are able to reduce carbon emissions and implement
sustainability policies in the enterprises.