Individual Report and Reflection: Business Communication, Semester 1

This individual report and reflection for the Foundation of Business Communication unit explores business management theories, macro and microeconomics, and strategic planning. The report examines sustainable business strategies, including ethical operations and the importance of CSR for micro, SME, and corporate businesses. It analyzes different approaches to CSR, comparing their similarities and differences, and discusses methods for measuring their success. The report also includes a reflective section on key skills development, covering self-assessment, VARK, Belbin analysis, and personal development activities related to communication, numeracy, ICT, problem-solving, and working with others. The report uses examples like Nestle to illustrate concepts and provides references for further reading.

Running head: INDIVIDUAL REPORT AND REFLECTION
Individual Report and Reflection
Foundation of Business Communication
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Part 1:.........................................................................................................................................2
Introduction............................................................................................................................2
Summary of the assignment brief and task............................................................................2
Explanation of a sustainable approach to business strategy and management..................3
Analysis of the different approaches to CSR of Micro, SME and Corporate Business.....7
Comparison of the approaches to find out if they are similar or dissimilar.......................8
Measuring the success with the CSR Strategies................................................................9
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................9
Part 2: Reflective Report on Key Skills Development.............................................................12
Description of self-assessment analysis, VARK, Belbin and all personal development
activities that link to key employability skills..................................................................12
Communication – both verbal and written.......................................................................12
Numeracy.........................................................................................................................13
ICT Problem Solving.......................................................................................................13
Working with Others........................................................................................................14
References................................................................................................................................15

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Part 1:
Introduction
The branch of education that mostly deals with the knowledge about the training
required for understanding the different aspects of running a business feasibly. The planning,
execution, supervision and analysis of the business enterprise to fulfil the objectives of the
business enterprise are all followed throughout the management of the business. There are
several approaches that induces the appropriate management of a business. As a result,
researches have been developed to find out the different theories that business executives can
perform or implement in an ongoing business and have the best result etched out of it. Now,
business is also found to be dependent upon the state of economics so that the executives can
move further to make the best decisions out of the information about the business scenario
and the available resources in the business (Costea and Amiridis 2020). It is extremely
important for a business personnel to understand the business management theories for
applying them accordingly based on the macro and micro economics supporting the decision-
making process. The particular reason for following the business management theories based
on the scenarios is responsible for determining the success and failure of the businesses as
well. Depending on these factors, the case study based on Nestle would be evaluated to find
out how the macro and micro economic state have been used in the organization. The study
would also provide a closer look at the strategic planning and challenges primarily faced by
businesses. The formal report below would be elaborated in the next segment.
Summary of the assignment brief and task
The different approaches to feasible handling of a business depends on various
theories and factors. There are several stages that any business goes through during a
business initiation and runtime. Irrespective of the size of the business and the industry from

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which an organization belongs, the management theories provide support throughout the
business. The brief about this particular report lies in the demonstration of the understanding
for the different management theories and the basics of macro and micro economics.
Furthermore, the demonstration would be provided by the understanding for the decision-
making process backed up by the management theories and the basics of economics. The
driving factor behind the performance of an organization is supported by this understanding
that would be gartered through the report. The strategic management approaches are also
responsible behind the performance of any organization and this is why, it would be also
placed as a factor to understand as per the journal content about the Nestle organization. The
current scenario, the factors behind the performance of the organization and the ways that the
strategic approaches to shape the decision-making process would be described through this
report for providing a thorough understanding of the decision-making process and an entire
business management approach.
This would begin with the explanation of a suitable business strategy as per the
management of the businesses. The evidences would be drawn from the different forms of the
examples set by different businesses that operate in an ethical and sustainable way. The next
set would ensure how the different forms of the evidences and analysis would find out about
the CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility, owing to Micro, SME and Corporate Business.
All the approaches would be compared to find out if they have been similar or they have
differences based on their CSR strategies. Understanding these would move forward to the
next segment where the evidences for each of these factors described would be provided in
the report.
Explanation of a sustainable approach to business strategy and management
Ethical business operations: It is extremely important that a business organization
seeking development for the betterment that ethics and sustainability is appreciated as a

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business strategy (Seele 2016). During the conduction of a business, it is often a question
asked by business executives that looks for the rationale behind the importance of ethics in a
business. This will be elaborated in this section about how the operation of a business can be
strategized to be conducted as ethical and as sustainable as possible:
Ethics and Sustainability in a business strategy
The concept of ethics is concerned with the conduct of any person with respect to any
other individual or situation depending on the environment. The behaviour of an individual or
an entire organization deals with the common human values and following how the
behaviours generate a better lookout at the human values, morale, segregation between the
good and the bad. In business, the applied ethical behaviour is regarded as business ethics.
Business ethics examines the ethical involvement of the principles used to all aspects of a
business conduct such that the application of the moral values can be applied to the conduct
in favour of the entire organization.
Ethics is particularly important to business; this is because the involvement of every
stakeholder needs to be identified in due course of the business conduct and the ongoing
business processes. Every stakeholder has certain expectations regarding the organization and
maintaining the morale values in the conduct of every individual is necessary in this regard.
Just not because of the stakeholders, but also for the dependency of the organizations towards
the society makes the business adapt to the morally correct ethical conducts (Phillips and
Moutinho 2018). This makes the business become more appreciated and accepted in the
society. Again, the business is also dependent on the acceptance of the business norms. They
would only be accepted as an effectively operating business organization once the business
operating conducts are regarded as respectful because of the ethically correct standards.
Ethical behaviour also has their intrinsic value because of the responsibility that the business
has on its stakeholders and the rest of the society.

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The long-term value of the business is determined by the building of the shareholder
value which is much more important than having short termed profit in the market.
Respecting the conduct of the business in the true ethically correct value ensures the business
to become much more respective about the rights of the people involved directly or indirectly
and also ensures the gaining of the trust of the involved people to be facilitated by the
conduct of the organization.
Example: There can be several situations that might instigate the situation for an
ethical dilemma within an organization. For example, during the studies it was found that an
incident where the bottled water company, known as AquaPure were advertising their
product. The advertising account went over 75,000 GBP per year. The company has already
threatened the account of 75,000 GBP with a newspaper unless they agree on running a story.
This is because, the newspaper had previously provided a news about the health benefits of
tap water and the deficiencies of the bottled water. AquaPure has now demanded to put down
their account due to this story and at the same time, wants the organization to focus on the
benefits of bottled water.
If this would have been the situation, being morally correct would bring about both a
beneficial situation and a problematic one. The morally correct behaviour understands that
there are no ways that bottled water could instigate a healthy benefit to the humans. However,
declining the offer would result into losing a huge contract for a renowned business
organization. Despite this situation, where not just the business was about to be hampered
because of the loss of account, the other aspect of the business would also be hampered by
supporting the morally incorrect demand by AquaPure (Halinen and Jokela 2016). However,
as per the moral thinking is concerned, even if the business is going to be hampered, it is
better that the newspaper does not support printing the false reports about the health benefits

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of bottled water. This would not just boost up the morale of the people in the newspaper for
supporting the right thing, but it will also gain the trust of the end users.
Sustainable business operations
Sustainability as a concept is extremely important for any business just as the ethical
considerations. The understanding of the business problems is extremely important just as it
is important to make a strategy about the sustainability of business. as it is a known fact that a
business particularly focuses on the resources being used, it treats the resources as inputs and
the waste products after the completion of a project as an output (Conrad 2018). Business can
be affected by several sustainability issues like climate changes. This means that
sustainability lies within an organisation when it goes through several changes due to the
environmental causes or any other factor and the way it coped with the situation. There might
be consequences where the business has to adapt to the ever-changing nature of the
environment. How the business processes this become extremely important.
The input of the people within the organisation referring to the climate change is
extremely important to maintain sustainability in the organisation. In a country like United
Kingdom, changing of the weather is an extremely common factor and the climate is never
the same. For attaining sustainability, it is found that two business processes or approaches
are applied together to help the organisations assess the climate change and its impact on the
business. These are mitigation and adaptation. while mitigation helps in the reduction of
carbon and other GHG emissions, the adaptation helps in living with climate change and
looking for new ways to make it an opportunity for the business to get working. Both threats
and opportunities are to be taken seriously by every organisation to help the business game a
sustainable business mode to turn the challenges into the strengths of the business making it
susceptible to several changes in future, even in the long-term.

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Example: Nestle always advances to have their approach for managing the resource
efficiency so that the business can understand and lead through sustainability. The resources
that the business inputs are much more than the waste as an output (Wheeler 2018). Nestle
understands that the business needs to take care of its resources such that they can access the
production of higher quality of products with the long term social and economic development
preserving the environment for the future generations.
Analysis of the different approaches to CSR of Micro, SME and Corporate Business
CSR in Micro Business
Micro businesses or small businesses understand the requirement for the corporate
social responsibility for CSR as an idea that typically is put into practices in the large
organisations. However, which time the mentality of the micro businesses is also changing
and they are also understanding the responsibility towards a social and environmental
development with the products and services that they provide to the customers including the
other business services as well (Liang and Renneboog 2017). It is understood that small
businesses do not have much resource for enabling corporate social responsibilities, but the
idea behind corporate social responsibility is also understood by them. Corporate Social
Responsibilities would provide small businesses with a much-enlarged arena of being known
to a community or a group of customers that they are looking forward to. It provides them
with huge exposure, generate bigger sales and happy employees and even provide them with
larger chains of organisations.
CSR in SME Business
Small to medium sized businesses develop public interest statements where CSR has
become a primary factor of operation for the long-term survival of these businesses. they
have generated the key factor of the operation such that the companies become increasingly
concerned with the management of quality and CSR practices in general. Since they have

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elaborated resources than the other micro businesses, they have a better possibility of
enabling the CSR (Wang et al. 2016). Just like the same reason that the micro businesses
have, the small to medium organisations had the same motive of being able to compete with
the larger organisations and be known to the group of customers that they are targeting. These
Corporate Social Responsibilities help them in having a greater reach out to the people that
they want to gather as the target customers. Not only that, the sense of sustainability and
ethics are also enhanced when out of morally correct virtues, the business enables itself to
work for the social and environmental factors and enhance them for the society.
CSR in Corporate Business
For large organisations or corporate business, corporate social responsibility is a must.
It is largely associated to corporate houses where high profile status attracts the attention of
media and these organisations are concerned for protecting the enhancement of their
reputations and having a broader public approach with the key stakeholders. They have larger
infrastructure and resources to work for the CSR having media exposure and even the reach
out to the customers (Wang et al. 2016). The customer prospect is comparatively much larger
than other sizes of business, thus it is easier for a larger organisation to think and plan about a
corporate social responsibility structure within the organisation. Every organisation as a
corporate business house, has the responsibility towards the enhancement of social and
environmental factors affecting their business so that their products and services are not only
meant for the customers but also for the enhancement of the other factors affecting the
customers.
Comparison of the approaches to find out if they are similar or dissimilar
When it comes to the corporate social responsibility and their approaches, it is easier
to notice that size of a business does matter. The investment in corporate social responsibility
by a big organisation and small to medium sized enterprise is different and each other. Where

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the small organisations, micro organisations and medium organisations think about utilising
the resources to engage in corporate social responsibility after the provision of the services
and products thinking about how much and why would that be invested in to corporate social
responsibility; the large corporate houses usually have enough resources ready for enabling
then for the enhancement of social and environmental factors.
For example, large organisations like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo invest in the water
conservation for the bottling plants in different countries but in the same aspect, Indian
counterparts of the same organisation had to be closed down for abusing water resources and
adding to the water shortage issues (Crane, Matten and Spence 2019). It is extremely
important to understand that based on the size of the organisation, the determination of the
CSR should be maintained.
Measuring the success with the CSR Strategies
CSR translates to a business success as well but it is yet to understand how success is
related to health, stability and prosperity of a business. It is understandable that one of the
highest standards in business in the recent times for every company has become related to the
factors of corporate social responsibility (Grayson and Hodges 2017). Every organisation
aims that they have a positive impact on the society and even maximizes the shared value for
the business owners and the other stakeholders. This maximization is in the long run due to
the investments made in corporate social responsibilities is what marks the success of an
organisation.
Conclusion
Therefore, in conclusion to this report, it can be said that there are several factors that
work for the success and failure of an organisation. It might be about the differences in in the
perception of ethics and sustainability in a business strategy for the corporate social

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responsibilities that different organisations take in. the understandable factors behind the
different business approaches in case of these factors is what determines the success and
failure of a business. In the above report, it has been analysed in details about how an
organisation respective of its size and industry can look forward to have ethics and
sustainability and even the corporate social responsibilities what for the betterment of the
business, both financially and socially. Therefore, the success factor of a business lies not just
in having a better product and service, but also show about the other activities that business
takes in to have a better reach out to its customers and the potential future customers in the
long run.

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