Business Ethics Assessment 2 - Tesco: An Ethical Company

INTRODUCTION
The term business ethics refers to a direction that governs company’s
values and their beliefs along with business actions. This is generally concerned with
the aspects of human behaviour and aims in differentiating the things between right and
wrong. Business ethics includes a concern upon the business environment along with
the challenges or issues that can be raised in company during the conduct of commercial
activities. The present report focuses upon a discussion over a company which is
considered to be ethical along with its reasons to be ethical (Brennan and et.al, 2021).
The various ethical philosophies are also discussed in the report with context to Tesco
and which philosophy the organisation applies in its business. Further, it also includes
the challenges or hurdles which Tesco has faced in its past and through which key
elements the company was able to address such challenges in successful manner. Lastly,
the identification upon company’s Stakeholders along with their role in maintaining
business standards is mentioned.
TASK 1
Identifying a company which is ethical along with its reason
A company which is being identified is Tesco. Tesco is a UK based
multinational company that deals in retail supermarket business. The company is known
as the third biggest organisation in world. Tesco is having more than 4811 across the
world which is being operated by more than 472,000 staff members. The main motive
of company Tesco is to serve “Every little help” to its customers (Cherré, Laarraf and
Peterson, 2019). Tesco offers furniture, kitchen, electronics, home essentials, groceries
to the customers across the world. The company is considered as an ethical because it is
implementing different ethical practices in its business operations that allows the
organisation to add value to their goods and services. The company is being ethical
because is functions its business operations in a way that provides higher customer
satisfaction along with paying high emphasis upon the safety and right treatment to its
employees. Following are the reasons due to which Tesco is considered to be an ethical
company:
Business Ethics
Dedicated towards vision and mission: The Company Tesco is directed towards
its vision and mission for which it formulates strategies in a way that can justify
their mission and vision. The employees on the other hand are also directed
towards the concern of same and work accordingly.
Environment and Community: The Company Tesco is focused towards
environment through adopting less carbon emission products, use of disposal
wastes, organizing different social campaigns towards the awareness of different
things, etc (Clark and et.al, 2020). Through these Tesco shows its concern
towards as well as conducts those activities which justifies its ethical behaviour
and business operations.
Corporate social responsibility: It is a strategy or a practice that is undertaken
by the corporations intending to have a favourable influence on the world. The
main opinion behind corporate social responsibility is to pursue other objectives
that are pro-social and additionally maximising the level of profits. Within Tesco,
the primary objective of Tesco is to reduce the externalities of the environment.
Another objectives of CSR within the workplace is to foster volunteerism among
the human resources of the company and donations to charity.
TASK 2
Ethical philosophy followed by Tesco
These philosophies consist of systematizing, defending as well as
suggesting the concepts of wrong and right behaviour. Adhering ethical
philosophies also facilitates the company in charging high prices that can assists
it in growing and paying more to its suppliers for the goods or services they
supply. Within Tesco, there are several ethical philosophies that are followed by
the organisation such as deontological ethics, utilitarianism ethics, virtue ethics
and many more. It is considered as wrong when it causes any harm or
unhappiness within the company. This type of philosophy provides assistance to
the respective company by providing a guiding framework to make better
business decisions. The main motive of this philosophy is to serve the social
benefits that directly facilitates the business toward more ethical behaviour.
Within Tesco, it is a practice of carrying tiered pricing strategies for a particular
commodity or service to distinct types of customer-base. Utilitarianism
philosophy commonly shares its four components and that are welfarism,
additive aggregationism, consequentialism and impartiality. This philosophy
helps Tesco in making better business decisions through analysis of cost-benefits.
Decisions within the organisation are often made on the basis of the starting line
of the profit, affected stakeholders or entire utility to the business (Ermasova,
Wagner and Nguyen, 2017).
The primary emphasis of the respective philosophy is that it helps in reducing
unemployment rates and also facilitates the business in improving the incomes
of households. It is the most general approach for the respective organisation
because of the way that it is accounted for the costs as well as benefits of the
company. Therefore, this type of philosophy is associated with the actions or
activities that obtains benefits or advantages and avoid harms and
unhappiness. Within the workplace, it includes some values such as
professionalism, honesty, avoiding conflicts of interests, keeping promises,
caring for others, accountability and many more.
TASK 3
Ethical challenges faced by Tesco and key elements of its successful
addressing
Ethical challenges within the business refers to a situation when
a conflict of morale arises. Within Tesco, the ethical challenges arise in the
form of issues of honesty and integrity, bribes, any misconduct or wrongdoing,
conflicts of interest. There are several types of ethical challenges that are faced
by an organisation. In respect to Tesco, there are many ethical challenges that
bare faced by the company in past time. Some of these ethical challenges are
described below:
Harassment and discrimination within the workplace: These type of issues
are the largest ethical issues that are faced by Tesco. Harassment is an illegal
issue if it is based on the characteristic of an individual or status that is
protected under the laws of anti-discrimination. Discrimination within the
workplace of Tesco refers to behaving unfairly or differently with employees
of the organisation (Giannouli, 2020). Within respective company, the human
resources are treated in an unfair way in the past times that brought negativity
within the workplace. This challenge had greatly impacted the overall business
of the organisation. The key elements that were used by Tesco to address this
challenge were proper documentation, understanding the legal rights, raised
voice to supervisor, filing official report, seeking legal counsel and many
more. This helps the company in overcoming form this challenge and also
assists in growth of the business.