Business and Management: Contemporary Research, ALDI Case Study, Business Ethics, Class Discussion, and Portfolio Collation

This report covers topics related to Business and Management, including Contemporary Research, ALDI Case Study, Business Ethics, Class Discussion, and Portfolio Collation. It discusses the impact of the pandemic on food supply chains, ALDI's business model, Starbucks' ethical practices, and marketing concepts.

BUSINESS AND
MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Task 1: Contemporary Research.................................................................................................1
Task 2- ALDI..............................................................................................................................2
Task 3- Business Ethics..............................................................................................................3
Task 4: Class Discussion.............................................................................................................4
Task 5: Collate the portfolio.......................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Business and management is a significant field of study which help in order to teach
everything that leads the business activities towards the successful growth and expansion (Norris
and Ciesielska, 2019). The primary difference among both the concepts is that business
administration focuses towards strategies while management centres on the human and structural
elements. This report will illustrate the concepts of contemporary research, aspects based upon
ALDI case study, topics related to business ethics along with discussion over certain topics.
MAIN BODY
Task 1: Contemporary Research
In order to complete this research, two articles have been chosen over the topic “Food
and consumer product shortages during pandemic situation”. To elaborate the concept articles
such as “Food security and Covid-19” and “Food supply chains and Covid-19: Impacts and
policy lessons” has been selected. According to first article, the key operational issue that is
being faced by the world are reduced income level and disrupted supply chain system because of
the redundancy of people due to Covid-19. This drastically impacts severe and widespread
enhancement in the global food insecurity that highly affects vulnerable household in almost all
countries of the world. The causes of issues that are raised during the pandemic situation
includes limited amount of production of goods and services within the companies which
elevates the prices of goods and transportation costs that hit the poor and developing countries to
the hardest (The world bank, 2022). Numerous countries are experienced high food prices
inflation at the retail level, reflecting labour shortages, currency devaluation, extreme rise in the
prices of fertilizers and similar other factors. This creates issues and challenges for low to
medium class people. In order to resolve this issue, there are certain measures that need to be
adopted by the government which includes the practices that assist them in order to get over
such critical conditions. Although, in some countries, government did tremendous job but the
actions required all across the world.
In the second article, the key operation issue describes that Covid-19 pandemic situation
had placed unprecedented stress over the food supply chains because farmers are facing issues in
order to get inputs which lead towards limited generation or production of goods. Moreover, the
processes had been disrupted by labour shortages and shutdowns along with the modes of
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transport also had been affected. Most of these disruptions are a result of policies that are being
adopted in order to contain the spread of the virus. Specifically, the food supply chains had
demonstrated as a remarkable resilience in front of these stresses. In order to resolve such issues
within the society, the problems requires appropriate attention from policy-makers by taking
inputs from the production departments or farmers about the notable labor (OECD, 2021). The
policies should be prepared in a way that highly beneficial for each and every person within the
market place and generated according to getting inputs from varied diversified people who are
involved within the whole procedure.
Task 2- ALDI
1. From the given case study it has been evaluated that ALDI and similar stores offer
diversified range of consumer experiences. The business model that is being utilized by
the company i.e. ALDI is that they operates from smaller sessions or spaces as compared
to large stores that is generally being utilised by other majority of traditional stores did.
Basically the concept behind originating this is to accommodate smaller stores sections
that are easier to find because they are close to the targeted locations which includes the
most significant places including varied city centers (Direction, 2019). This business
model will appropriately suitable to other business industries as well because nowadays
people are more prone to look after convenience rather than adopting varied options over
comfort level. This particular thing eliminates consumers to travel great distances for
items that they highly require to shop and desire for frequent visits. For example, Wal-
Mart is the biggest competitor of the organization as they also try their maximum to
adopt similar kind of business model or strategy in order to perform their functions
within the competitive market space.
2. With the adoption of this specific business model, the company becomes highly unique
in their own ways but on the other hand it has also been evaluated that the customers of
ALDI also have to make certain sacrifices in context of having an access to the shopping
experiences. Because the smaller stores sizes also naturally reduces the number of
products that can be offered to the consumers. ALDI carries only a few number of
variants of each and every product over the name of their own brand which makes them
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highly efficient enough to manage their inventory into most effectual manner. It is
because of the fact that planning and forecasting for one or two products instead of
dozens of items are much easier in every manner. This special characteristics enables the
firm to easily reduces the chances of stock outs open brackets storages closed brackets
and products exceeding their shelf life (Verhoef and Bijmolt, 2019). This also reduces
the overall wastage of the items or products that has been selling by the company.
Task 3- Business Ethics
From research, it has been evaluated that Starbucks id considered among the most ethical
company according to which the management team of the enterprise practised and implement
positive ethical approaches within their functioning. They provide 100% sustainability sourced
coffee and utilizes a system called Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices in order to modify their
sustainable sourcing. The management team of the firm have four ideas for the Starbucks
sourcing system which are related to the quality, social responsibility, economic transparency
and environmental leadership (Kriebitz and Max, 2020). The company always strives for ethical
practices in order to offer their product such as coffee at fair prices along with make sure about
each and every step related to coffee planting, harvesting, processing and buying which is
always done in most ethical manner by the establishment. They automatically set their standards
in a way that the company is being recognized as the industry which highly fulfil all the
standards for ethical sourcing.
In order to sustain there such kinds of practices, they work with numerous farmers and
also generate billions of pounds in terms of revenue every year. The firm have highly able to
remain profitable and set company standards in front of their other competitors who are also
dealing into similar industry to fulfil the purpose of sustainability in most appropriate manner.
This is among the most ethical companies within the society which highly care about the other
factors as well and provide their services to their customers in most ethical ways. Moreover,
they also deal with their employees as well in highly ethical manner by providing them all the
rights which are being significant for an employee to work within the firm. The program that
illustrate their ethical behaviour support the firm to fulfil and achieve their mission which is to
protect the culture and their reputation by providing appropriate resources that also assist them
to make ethical decisions at work premises. Starbucks is also a leader in fulfilling environmental
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responsibility in most ethical ways which includes conservation of water and energy, generate
green building by meeting certain standards into their future business construction along with
recycling and reducing waste materials into the stores and utilize usable cups by 30% (Singh and
Gaur, 2020). This is the ethical practice that helps the government and society to act most ethical
ways. They also fulfil all the code of ethics to resolve all the internal issues within various
individual departments of the organization.
Task 4: Class Discussion
There is a group activity that was going to conduct by my tutor according to which we as a
group have to present a demonstration over the topic Marketing in which I was also one of the
participants. My team mates were highly serious about preparing the presentation and we did our
best in order to make its appearance highly attractive in each manner. We as a team share all the
necessary points that we were advised to cover (Kotler, Pfoertsch and Sponholz, 2021). The
details such as impact of marketing over operating management, their overall business impacts,
challenges faced by managers, the ways without which the business is unable to operate within
the market space were discussed. The whole presentation goes well as we got extreme good
comments over our communication and representation part. The positive part of the whole
activity was that we did the job in working as a team and highly able to achieve the expected
target of our tutors.
However, there are certain things that can also become added into the whole activity such
as the concepts can be more attractive and meaningful for others if we utilize real life company
examples in order to illustrate the aspects of marketing along with their importance to the
business (Zeithaml and et.al., 2020). Moreover, the videos will also able to illuminate the
illustration of the complete topics in more effectual manner. Apart from this, the factors that
greatly affects the functioning of the marketing department within any organization also needs to
be added or involved within the whole presentation which also increases the value of the
complete evaluation.
Task 5: Collate the portfolio
The whole report has been prepared on the basis of gathering all the tasks that are related
to the learning’s that has been gained through detailed evaluation of the task topics which
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consists of specific topics such as contemporary research, ALDI case study and the relevant and
related question and answers, business ethics and their significance with the real life company
example who follows the most ethical practices into their functioning and the last one is class
discussion over the marketing topic by discussing over their related necessary aspects helps the
learner to elaborate the concepts in detailed ways successfully.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that business and management both requires
certain skills that are highly beneficial for the betterment of business practices in order to
achieve success within the competitive world.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Direction, S., 2019. Aligning supply chains with product variety: The business performance-
boosting potential of achieving strategic harmony.
Kotler, P., Pfoertsch, W. and Sponholz, U., 2021. H2H Marketing: The Genesis of Human-to-
Human Marketing. Cham: Springer.
Kriebitz, A. and Max, R., 2020. The Xinjiang Case and Its Implications from a Business Ethics
Perspective. Human Rights Review, 21(3), pp.243-265.
Norris, D. and Ciesielska, M., 2019. Towards a framework for innovation orientation within
business and management studies: A systematic review and paths for future
research. Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Singh, S.K. and Gaur, S.S., 2020. Corporate growth, sustainability and business ethics in
twenty-first century. Journal of Management and Governance, 24(2), pp.303-305.
Verhoef, P.C. and Bijmolt, T.H., 2019. Marketing perspectives on digital business models: A
framework and overview of the special issue. International Journal of Research in
Marketing, 36(3), pp.341-349.
Zeithaml, V.A., and et.al., 2020. A theories-in-use approach to building marketing
theory. Journal of Marketing, 84(1), pp.32-51.
Online
The world bank, 2022. [Online]. Available Through: <
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-security-and-covid-19>.
OECD, 2021. [Online]. Available Through: < https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-
responses/food-supply-chains-and-covid-19-impacts-and-policy-lessons-71b57aea/>.
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