Business Ethics in the Clothing Industry

UGB264 Business
Ethics, Responsibility
and Sustainability

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Clothing Industry........................................................................................................................3
Business Ethics and Clothing Industry.......................................................................................3
Key challenges relating to corporate responsibility and sustainability relating to The Clothing
Sector...........................................................................................................................................4
Best practice within the Clothing Sector with references to ethical and moral issues................6
Recommendations for businesses in the Clothing sector taking into account global
considerations..............................................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Business ethics are the practices and the policies which are implemented in the business
to govern the conduct and behaviour of the people of an organisation. Ethics in a business plays a
very important role in the growth and success of a company. It explains the corporate social
responsibility which a company have towards the society at large. The environment is also
impacted by the activities of the business so for that the companies are expected to fulfil its
duties towards it. Any business must enforce ethical policies into its organisation so that the
management and its people are aware of the conduct and behaviour which is expected out of
them (De Angelis, Amatulli and Pinato, 2020). In this report the chosen industry is “The clothing
industry”. This report explains the ethics and its requirements in the clothing industry. It also
explains the key challenges that are related to the corporate responsibility and sustainability of
the clothing industry. This report consist of the best practices of the clothing sector with respect
to the moral and ethical issues. Lastly, the report also recommends business on how the clothing
sector be more responsible by taking into account global considerations.
MAIN BODY
Clothing Industry
Clothing industry is a globally widespread industry. It includes all type of trades and
industries that relates to the production and life chain of the cloths. This industry is very wide
and includes: textile industries that helps in the production of cotton, wool, etc., fashion industry,
apparel retailers, etc. The industry relates to all the activities that relates to the clothes starting
from its manufacturing till the selling of its end products to the consumers. With the increase in
the globalisation and industrialisation the business of clothing industry is widespread and the
demand of it is in many countries that even includes places which are very small or villages.
Business Ethics and Clothing Industry
Business ethics plays a very crucial role in carrying out any of the business activity. It is
important for an organisation to act ethically and make such decisions which help a company
grow and succeed but a company should keep focus on the fact that such decisions shall not be
unethical (Guarnieri and Trojan, 2019).
The clothing industry is considered as one of the biggest industry in the world. It is
important for such sectors to practice ethically keeping in mind that in an urge to generate profit

they are not neglecting their responsibilities towards the society at large. It must be focused by
the company that the practices of it must not be unethical just to benefit the company. The
organisation must always act in accordance to the provisions relating to its obligations towards
the society and environment.
Key challenges relating to corporate responsibility and sustainability relating to The
Clothing Sector
Corporate responsibility is an obligation of an organisation towards the society by
increasing its positive impacts and also decreasing its negative impact on the society. It is an
ethical practise of a business to fulfil its obligation towards the society. Corporate responsibility
is not only limited to the obligations towards the employees or shareholders of the company but
it has its obligations towards various other people, organisations, government, environment, etc
(Yoo, Divita and Kim, 2018).
Corporate social responsibility is broadly divided into two parts. The first is that the
Organisations have responsibilities towards humans and the second is that it has responsibilities
towards the environment. The human responsibilities includes: its employees, shareholders,
investors, suppliers, government, competitors, society at large, etc. while the environmental
responsibility includes an organisations responsibilities to protect the environment and exercise
such practises that do not harm environment in any manner (Park, Lee and Koo, 2017).
It is important that a company's activities must be in accordance with their
responsibilities and obligations towards society. This ethical practices of an industry benefits in
many ways. Few of the benefits are:
 It improves public image of an organisation and also increases awareness of a brand and
its recognition in the society. For e.g.: volunteering at some charity will help a company
shows that the brand is helping others and is committed towards it.
 This helps in saving cost of a company. For e.g. when a company decides to make
changes relating to sustainability by using minimum packaging of a product or by reusing
resources so as to decrease the cost of production of its products.
 This helps in increasing customer engagement either by posting about company's
sustainable programs or by showing efforts by the company in its local media outlets.
There are many challenges which a clothing industry have to face in order to maintain the
business ethics and corporate social responsibility. With the increase in the awareness,