Social Responsibility of Business

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
OF BUSINESS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Social Responsibility of business can be referred as the activities that a company
manages above and over the legal requirements of concern for the benefit and well-being of the
society. In simple words, social responsibility is the in recent times is the obligation of corporate
to pursue those practices, to take those decisions and implement those practices and actions that
are useful in terms of goals and values of the social group.
Marks & Spencer is one of the British major corporate company selling its products in various
countries across the world and deals in affordable clothing and products related to home and
food. The following report discuss in detail about the issues in social responsibility.
MAIN BODY
Part 1.
Students are the future of nation and their activities, actions and behaviour decides their
way of conducting a business. Ethics and moral values in the individual play a key role in the
success of organizations today. Corporate organization like Marks & Spencer cannot just rely on
the earning of profits & growths with the help of society, it is very essential that it give back to
the society in which they are operating their business in to all the stakeholders related to their
business. Marks & Spencer has involved in some scandals one of the most famous scandal is
'Sweatshop scandal'. In this scandal it was found that the clothing factory that supplies the three
high street fashion brand were paying lower than the minimum wage and forcing the workers to
overtime more than there working hours. Company said all the allegations are false and M&S
had a plan A which ensures that the all business practices are operated in ethical manner. But
soon after this allegation, M&S actively solved this issue on breaches of conduct and enhances
the situations of workers quickly (Tench and Topić, 2017). But it has also impacted the image of
company and customers lost the trust for the time being and were really upset by this unethical
act. This case is one of the most unethical acts in history of M&S, through which it was known
that being a multinational supermarket company still it didn't care about the employment
legislation act. This practice not only harnessed the image of company but it showed their
managers unethical working conduct towards its workers. With the help of its Indian factory,
where this case happened it is already able to lower down its production cost because they are
getting the talented workers in much lower rates and then not giving them enough instead

paying them lower than the minimum wages is exploiting them (van Driel, 2018). M&S have
promoted their Plan A so much and received so much appreciation and from the customers and
this act showed the unethical act of the company. However, not all employee and managers of
the company are involved but this scandal defames the company's image. But after this scandal,
M&S made some strict policies and to improve its image it further added 80 sustainability
commitments to its Plan-A initiative, that included its extended commitments to just and fair
partnership and making sure that its employees and communities ads take advantage in supply
chain. Later, M&S made sure that it company is taking ethical sourcing and trust in brand very
seriously.
Similarly, like Marks & Spencer, Tesco was also involved in doing big accounting scandal; it
misinterpreted its financial reports due which there were major changes in the price of Tesco’s
share. This impacted its shareholders a lot and they in resentment filed the legal suit against the
Tesco. The legal suits and proceedings had a great impact on the image of Tesco which caused
loss of faith in customers and downfall in its reputation (Scrivens, 2019). Again Tesco had to
come up with new plans, policies and strategies which develops the faith and company
apologized and gave back some return its shareholders recreated its relations with the all the
interest parties and shareholders. Again in this case, few managers were involved and it cost the
image of whole company.
If the basic concepts and practices of ethics and responsibilities were taught from the
education time, it would have stopped such practices in the company which brings slander to
M&S operations. As a child everyone is taught the basics ethics, not to cheat, lie, blame etc. in
order to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong. Similarly , after completing the
education when the individual is ready to work in market it is expected from them that they
would have knowledge about the working business ethics and complete detailed knowledge and
information will be communicated to them by management of the company at their time of
joining (Ciulla, 2020). Management or Business schools produce the leaders for the future or
future managers. But it can be seen that the management schools in US are not taking any
initiatives in building the value of social responsibilities and corporate ethics in their students.
Due to which there are some scandals taking place in the big organization because of the lack of
ethical and moral skills in students.