Reflective Learning Journal: Culture and Ethics in Business Report

This report presents a reflective learning journal focusing on culture and ethics in business, specifically examining the case of Pret a Manager and its CEO, Clive Schlee. The report is divided into sections addressing the challenges faced by global managers in integrating sustainability, areas needing development within organizations, the skills required for effective global leadership, and the ethical implications of business practices. The analysis highlights the company's efforts to address issues such as youth unemployment, food waste, and animal welfare, while also emphasizing the importance of ethical decision-making and sustainable practices. The journal reflects on the CEO's approach to integrating sustainability by helping the homeless people, maintaining the consistency with the fast growth of company, and the company's ethical strategies to overcome the challenges. It also explores the skills of global leaders and ethical implications.

Reflective learning journal (culture and ethics in Business)

Running Head: Reflective learning journal
Contents
Summary.....................................................................................................................................................2
Introduction about article.............................................................................................................................4
Challenges faced by Global manager..........................................................................................................5
Development of some areas.........................................................................................................................6
Development of the skills of global leaders.................................................................................................8
Ethical implications.....................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................10
References.................................................................................................................................................11
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
Summary
This report is divided into 4 parts excluding introduction and conclusion. First part is describing
the challenges faced by the Global manager during the integration of the sustainability. Second
part will explain about some of areas that need to develop by the Global manager related to the
cultural, organizational or situational environment. Moving to the third part, it will explain about
the development of the skills in the Global manager in order to interact with the future global
leadership. To become an effective and the successful leader, it is essential to develop the
leadership skills. In last part, the ethical implications will be explained that need to consider by
the manager while helping the homeless people.
The introduction part of the report outlines the overview of the article. This is a brief summary of
the interview session held between the Global Manager of the “Pret a Manager” company which
is a UK based small food chain. The main focus of the CEO of the company is to integrate the
sustainability by helping the homeless people, and maintaining the consistency with the fast
growth of company.
Second paragraph depicts the development of some of the areas that mainly focused by the
company to achieve the organizational goals and objectives. The big four focus area that the
company need to improve and shared by the CEO of the company are youth unemployment,
natural food and waste, society, and welfare of the animals. It is very important that company
should focus on contribution towards the society.
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
Third paragraph shows the skills that the leaders should have in order to interact with the future
global leadership. From the article, it is clear that Clive Schlee is a great leader who holds the
ethical leadership. His priority is to integrate sustainability and helping the homeless people by
providing jobs and fresh food in order to gain its image as well as profits.
Fourth paragraph is based on the ethical implications that have been observed from the situation
and it is analyzed that the company has implemented its strategies in an effective and ethical way
in order to overcome the challenges.
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
Introduction about article
Nowadays, every company wants to integrate sustainability and want to achieve the success by
focusing on the various customer needs and their demands. The article outlines the interview
session with the CEO of the company named as “Pret a manager” which is an international
sandwich shop chain in UK. The main focus of the CEO of the company is to integrate the
sustainability by helping the homeless people, and maintaining the consistency with the fast
growth of company. Clive Schlee is the CEO of the company which acts as a global leader. In
this article, various questions have been asked from the CEO related to the sustainability
approaches followed by the company and these strategies used by the CEO to meet the customer
needs. According to Clive, the sustainability priority for the company is to provide the jobs and
food to the homeless people in an ethical manner. During the interview session with CEO,
various questions have been asked related to sustainability efforts made by the company and the
big focus area in future for the company. Moving ahead, choosing this article as the topic for my
learning, I would like to learn from the global leader about how they handle the challenges. It
will be great opportunity for me to learn from the efforts of CEO to handle the challenges in an
ethical way. This is very important aspect as I can utilize this knowledge in the real life also
(Petrini and Pozzebon 2010).
This report is divided into 4 parts. First part is describing the challenges faced by the Global
manager during the integration of the sustainability. Second part will explain about some of areas
that need to develop by the Global manager related to the cultural, organizational or situational
environment. Moving to the third part, it will explain about the development of the skills in the
Global manager in order to interact with the future global leadership. To become an effective
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
and the successful leader, it is essential to develop the leadership skills. In last part, the ethical
implications will be explained that need to consider by the manager while helping the homeless
people.
Challenges faced by Global manager
Pret a manager is a very successful fast food market chain by focusing on the fresh food and
natural ingredients. Global manager, Clive Schlee, has faced many challenges while integrating
the sustainability and helping the homeless people. The biggest challenge that he shared in the
article is that it is related to the minimization of energy consumption. It is identified that every
customer demands hot food because of which reason company facing the challenge of reducing
the energy consumption. Moving on to another challenges, there are some transportation issues
also found from the conversation of CEO with the interviewee. As the company want to provide
food and job opportunities to the homeless people, but it is quite difficult for the company to
manage because Pret a manager needs to make a food every day. So there are time issues during
the integration of sustainability (Zynczak 2014). Also, the company needs to have vehicles or
vans for the transportation for London for the purpose of picking up the food from 10 to 15 shops
and then taking food to the hostels or the people staying without homes. The homeless people are
from the different areas such as Poland, Columbia and Spain, cultural difference also found.
According to the CEO of the company, Sustainability is not a new thing for the company as it is
already focusing towards the benefits of the society (UNDP 2016).
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
Moving further, to the environmental challenges that faced by the CEO of the Pret a manager is
related to keep the food fresh. The sourcing of food in an ethical way is also a big challenge for
the company. Managing the waste in the fast food business is always a challenge because it is
quite difficult to understand the fact that, what kind of food, customers would like to have at
what time of the day as it helps in reducing the waste. Moving further, CEO of the company also
talks about the upcoming challenge that the company may have to face is related to the animal
welfare ladder. Therefore, it is observed that managing the company goals and integrating the
sustainability involved a lot of things that need to be considered by the manager in order to gain
the success in the business (UNESCAP 2015).
Development of some areas
However, CEO of the company has clearly been discussed about the challenges that he faced in
achieving sustainability goals. After analyzing the challenges of the company, then he realized
that they need to improve some areas in an organization. The big four focus area that the
company need to improve and shared by the CEO of the company are youth unemployment,
natural food and waste, society, and welfare of the animals. It is very important that company
should focus on contribution towards the society. It is clear from the article that to overcome
these challenges, company decided to focus on the environment, society, food and waste,
employment of the young generation. The company already invested around 1 million pound in
order to overcome these challenges (CIMA 2012).
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
The company also bought 10 vans for the transportation of food from the shops to the hostels.
Moving further, the company improves its food quality by focusing on the fresh and natural
ingredients. Also the company tried to improve the ethical Sourcing of the food, which is not
easy thing for the company. Moreover, CEO of the company also shared that they built strategies
to overcome the challenges as after analyzing the various challenges they found that they need to
work on the management of waste by understanding the preferences of the customers and to
know the fact what type of food customers having at what time (Hollon 2012).
Moving ahead, the company found that it is very difficult for them to reduce the level of energy
consumption, because of the high demand of the people to have hot sandwiches. Because of
which reasons the company decided that control and reduces the annual growth percentage such
as from 15% to 5%. Also, Clive said during the interview that, 3 years ago the company hired a
team for the homeless people, but they shifted to the normal team after sometime because of the
less focused of the company. Therefore, it is analyzed that the company needs to focus on hiring
new talent in the organization and train to achieve sustainable goals of the company. Also, the
company needs to hire the people from the homeless areas because they are always craved for
the new job opportunities (Gordon 2015).
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
Development of the skills of global leaders
From the article, it is observed that the Global manager needs to work on their skills in order to
increase its ability to interact with the future global leadership. Clive Schlee has all the
leadership qualities and skills. Skills are playing a very important role in the leadership style in
order to work and manage the operations globally. From the article, it is clear that Clive Schlee is
a great leader who holds the ethical leadership. His priority is to integrate sustainability and
helping the homeless people by providing jobs and fresh food in order to gain its image as well
as profits. The interview session identifies that, CEO of the company concentrates on providing
the Fresh Food and natural ingredients to the people of UK for the better health, safety and well-
being of the people. During the interview session with the CEO, it is also observed that he is very
responsible, effective decision maker and performing their task very well (Vitell, Nwachukwu
and Barnes 1993). CEO of the company is not only focusing on the profitability levels; however,
it is also focused towards the sustainability. The CEO of the company need to improve its team
oriented skills where he can discuss about the problems with the employees and then listen to
their ideas and implement according to the situation. Also, it is suggested that CEO of the
company should implement the strategies in an effective way and in an ethical manner. Also,
Clive should develop its innovative skills in order to implement the creative ideas sustainable
goals for the company. Effective leadership skills are important for the growth of the company.
From the viewpoints of the Clive Schlee, it proves that he has a goal oriented and challenging
behavior which helps the company to perform well in the organization. The leaders are playing
very important role in the organizations as they are the one who encourages and motivates the
employees to work towards the goals of the organization. The main goal of the Pret a manager is
to serve the community by providing them healthy and quality food (Ireland 2016).
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
Ethical implications
All the actions taken by the company and the CEO of the company are ethical in nature. The
main focus of the company is towards the welfare of society by offering healthy food to the
people such as bread and salads and healthy sandwiches. The company has implemented its
strategies in an effective and ethical way in order to overcome the challenges. The best ethical
approach used by the CEO of the company is that they getting their customers to recycle
properly which requires a lot of skill in how you design the recycling bins, how you make sure
the area doesn't get too crowded, and so on. The company is also focusing on the improvement in
other areas such as animal welfare, waste management and unemployment (Crocamo 2015). The
company also believes in the equality as they offer the equal job opportunities to the homeless
people as well as the residents of UK. Also the homeless people came from the various areas
such as Poland, Spain and China, so their language, culture, taste and preferences are different.
However, CEO of the Pret a Manager company handled these cultural differences also very well.
A culture encompasses the behavior, social interactions, and languages, religions that represent
the characteristics of the people or society. It is very easy to analyze from the individual
characteristics that to which country or society he or she belongs. For example, people speak in
Hindi are from Indian Culture, French from France and English from British culture and every
culture has the different ways of greetings and give respect to their elders. Culture can be
applied in organizations and families. Talking about the Hofstede study and their cultural
dimensions, there are mainly four dimensions included in the structure of the organization (Lu,
Rose and Blodgett 2009).
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
Conclusion
From the above report, it is identified that the main focus of the CEO of the company is to
integrate the sustainability by helping the homeless people, and maintaining the consistency with
the fast growth of company. Clive Schlee is the CEO of the company which acts as a global
leader. In this article, various questions have been asked from the CEO related to the
sustainability approaches followed by the company and these strategies used by the CEO to meet
the customer needs. The environmental challenges that faced by the CEO of the Pret a manager
are related to keep the food fresh. The sourcing of food in an ethical way is also a big challenge
for the company. Managing the waste in the fast food business is always a challenge because it
is quite difficult to understand the fact that, what kind of food, customers would like to have at
what time of the day as it helps in reducing the waste. Moving further, CEO of the company also
talks about the upcoming challenge that the company may have to face is related to the animal
welfare ladder. However, choosing this article as the topic for my learning is best as I would like
to learn from the global leader about how they handle the challenges. It will be great opportunity
for me to learn from the efforts of CEO to handle the challenges in an ethical way. This is very
important aspect as I can utilize this knowledge in the real life also. Therefore, it is concluded
that all the actions taken by the company and the CEO of the company are ethical in nature.
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Running Head: Reflective learning journal
References
CIMA. 2012. "Leadership Skills – An Overview." 1-8.
https://www.cimaglobal.com/Documents/Thought_leadership_docs/2010-06-18%20-
leadershipskillsoverview_techrpt_0501.pdf.
Crocamo, F. 2015. "The impact of the national culture on the ethical standards of the German
restaurant market." 1-75.
http://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/95843/Crocamo_Filomena.pdf;sequence=1
.
Gordon, M. 2015. "A guide to developing enlightened leadership - 26 lessons from A to Z." 1-
28. http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/Leadership%20Guide%20(Roffey%20Park).pdf.
Hollon, J. 2012. "8 Major & Emerging Challenges Facing Global Employers in 2012 ."
https://www.tlnt.com/8-major-emerging-challenges-facing-global-employers-in-2012/.
Ireland, F. 2016. "Personal Leadership Effectiveness: Leadership Skills." 1-18.
https://www.failteireland.ie/FailteIreland/media/WebsiteStructure/Documents/
2_Develop_Your_Business/1_StartGrow_Your_Business/Leadership-Skills.pdf.
Lu, L, G Rose, and J Blodgett. 2009. "The Effects of Cultural Dimensions on Ethical Decision
Making in Marketing: An Exploratory Study." Journal of Business Ethics 18 (1): 91–105.
https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1006038012256.
Petrini, M, and M Pozzebon. 2010. "Integrating Sustainability into Business Practices: Learning
from Brazilian Firms." 362-378. http://www.scielo.br/pdf/bar/v7n4/04.pdf.
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