Business Ethics Assessment 2 - Tesco: An Ethical Company

This report discusses Tesco as an ethical company, the ethical philosophies it follows, challenges faced by the company, and the role of stakeholders in maintaining business standards.

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.

Health and safety within the workplace: Under the law of employment, human
resources within the organisation are accountable for management of health and safety.
Within Tesco, the employees of the company are affected by the changing climate and
temperature of the environment. These unfavourable environmental conditions of the
respective organisation greatly influenced the health of the workforce of the company
(Pava, 2020). To address this type of challenge, the organisation created an active and
effective workplace safety and committee of health safety. The company had made daily
safety inspections for providing safe working environment to the human resources of
the company. Tesco had also informed its manpower about the safety inspections,
statistics of injury and illness and other issues related to safety. This helped the
employees of the company in staying aware of these challenges.
Whistle-blowing: It refers to the illegal practices or misconducts that arise within the
organisation. Within Tesco, there were some wrongdoings of the employees of the
organisation such as problems related to trust, organisational repercussions, retaliation,
etc. It hampered the functioning of the organisation and also impacted its brand value in
an adverse way in the market. To address this problem, Tesco has conducted promptly
and complete investigation regarding the complaints. The company also followed a
corrective action by becoming proactive towards the challenge to overcome from it.
Poor customer service: Within Tesco, it became a challenge for the company to
provide better customer services to the targeted-audience. The company was lacking in
listening the problems of the customers and were not responding to their feedbacks. The
organisation also faced a challenge regarding the absence of right tools within the
business along with meeting the customer expectations (Popescu, 2019). For
addressing such types of challenges, the company started addressing the problems of
their customers by knowing their issues. It also offered a solution of giving a feedback
request regarding the product or service offered by the organisation.
Challenges related to horsemeat scandal: This was the biggest challenge within Tesco
that meat from horses turned the supply chain as beef and stopped selling most of the
products within the country. Horsemeat was unfit for human consumption and because
of it most of the people got harmed. It became a great challenge for company as because
of this the brand value of the company got impacted negatively. The customer-base of
the respective organisation also got reduced because of this problem and hence,
profitability within the company get hindered. For addressing this challenge Tesco had
poached a senior initiative from Union of National Farmers and because of it the
company started to restore the trust of its customer-base.
TASK 4
Key stakeholders within Tesco and their role in Tesco
Stakeholders are the persons that are involved in a business by vesting
some amount within it and are having some interest in the organisation (Provis, 2017).
The stakeholders are categorised into two types such as external as well as
internal stakeholders. External stakeholders include creditors, suppliers and
public groups while internal stakeholders involve company owners, employees,
volunteers and donors, board members and many more. Stakeholders within the
Tesco consist of the shareholders, customers, suppliers and many more. The role
of these stakeholders are discussed as under:
Shareholders: Within Tesco, they are the owners of the organisation and gives
financial outcomes in return for seeking the potential dividends over the lifetime
of business. Shareholder does not maintains the daily activities of the business
but the decisions regarding the objectives and goals of the company requires
approval of shareholders. They also play a role in taking the decisions regarding
the overall performance of the organisation.
Customers: These stakeholders in Tesco rely on the organisation for offering any
product or service. Customers facilitate the company with every operation they
make with it and each operation expresses the organisation that what product or
service is required to invest in further (Rawwas and et.al, 2018). Customer as
stakeholders also play a crucial role in the success of business as without them
the organisation cannot survive.
Suppliers: In context to Tesco, they are considered as the primary stakeholder
within an organisation and seeks higher level of interest in the output of a project
as they are directly impacted by the outcome of the company (Scharding, 2018).
Suppliers as stakeholder plays an important role in building the reputation of the
company in respect to quality of the products or materials they supply.
CONCLUSION
From above explanation, it is concluded that business ethics
within an organisation plays an important role in expanding the law by tracing
acceptable attitudes beyond the control of government. Within business, it helps
in promoting integrity among the human resources of the company and also
builds trust with stakeholders of the organisation. Within this present report,
Tesco has been considered as an organisation that is following business ethics.
The ethical philosophy followed by the company is also discussed in this
portfolio. There were some challenges that bare faced by the company in past
years are also taken into consideration within the project. The way through
which these challenges are addressed are also explained that helped the
company in gaining competitive advantage over the competitors in the market.
Furthermore, stakeholders within the respective company are also discussed
within the assessment along with their roles.
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