Business Ethics, CSR, and Ethical Issues in Computing Supplies Report

This report delves into the realm of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR), examining their critical role in shaping organizational conduct and governance. The report begins by defining business ethics and its significance, followed by an analysis of Tesco's CSR initiatives, including the positive changes experienced through CSR implementation, such as earning consumer trust, enhancing brand image, improving financial performance, and reducing operational costs. It then reviews the impact of CSR on Tesco's supply chain, encompassing suppliers, manufacturers, stores, and consumers. Furthermore, the report analyzes the impact of CSR practices on business performance, focusing on profitability, revenue, and brand image. The study also researches a current ethical issue within the organization, Computing Supplies Ltd, highlighting unethical practices such as child labor, anti-environmental practices, and unfair wages. The report then describes the effects of these ethical issues on business objectives and suggests improvements to ethical operations, including process mapping, analysis, redesign, resource acquisition, and implementation. Finally, it recommends changes to CSR policies to benefit various stakeholders, including environmental responsibilities, sustainability, human rights, fair trading, and legal compliance, all aimed at fostering ethical conduct and sustainable business practices.

BUSINESS ETHICS

Table of Contents
INTORDUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
1. Describing the changes in Tesco with implementation of CSR..............................................3
2. Reviewing the impact of CSR on the supply chain.................................................................4
3. Analysis of the impact on business performance due to change in CSR practices.................4
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................5
1. Researching a current ethical issue in an organisation........................................................5
2. Describing the effect on business objectives...........................................................................6
3. Suggesting improvements in ethics of the operation for business organisation......................6
4. Recommending changes to corporate social responsibility for benefiting various
stakeholders.................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTORDUCTION
Ethics is derived from the Greek word Ethos means moral and belief of a person. Ethics
in business is of utter importance and it defines the policies and practice, corporate governance,
CSR (corporate social responsibilities) of an organisation in a correct manner. Ethical behaviour
of a business does not allow bribery, insider trading and incorrect behaviours and practice within
organisation. The present report is all about business ethics and CSR. The report includes
various approaches of business ethics, ethical issues, and creation of mind map over implication
of ethical operation and regulatory framework of CSR. Furthermore, it includes CSR study of
Tesco and impact of working of Tesco (Constantinescu and Kaptein, 2019). Also, current ethical
issue within an organisation is identified with describing impact of objectives and improvement
made and making recommendations.
TASK 1
ENCLOSED IN PPT-
TASK 2
Tesco is a retail supermarket chain which has adopted corporate social responsibility in
its business practice and has experienced major positive changes. The effects of adopting CSR
are explained below:-
1. Describing the changes in Tesco with implementation of CSR
CSR at Tesco is a crucial part of its corporate structure. It has undertaken several external
and internal activities for effective implementation of CWSR within organisation (Aßländer,
Gösslin and Seele, 2016). This includes development of environmental consciousness,
considering community issues and local regeneration projects. With effective CSR Tesco has
experienced several positive changes which are:
Earning trust of consumers: with adoption of CSR in form of taking initiative to protect
environment and taking measures to save water and energy and relying Tesco have earned the
trust of it consumers (Kim, Kim and Qian, 2018). As customers these days are more aware about
environment and ethical practise, with adoption of CRS Tesco have gained trust of its consumer
as it is heading in right direction.
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Stronger brand image: with great ethical practices and no unethical practice at
workplace Tesco have become one of the loyal and trustworthy organisations. It abide with the
duties towards society and environment and sustainability the brand image have strong among all
stakeholder and it leads to have good prices at stock exchange.
Better financial performance: with effective CSR the brand image gets good and
consumer become loyal along with attracting new consumers (Chakrabarty and Bass, 2015).
Tesco has gained a good credit rating so it borrows funds from market. Overall financial
performance gets better with lower debt, high equity and increased sales.
Saving of operational cost: Tesco has indulged in environmental practise, has reduced
one time pasting use and environmental friendly packing material are used resulting in reduction
of the operational cost (Ahmad and Umrani, 2019). Suppliers also sale raw material with low
margin to support such CSR practises.
2. Reviewing the impact of CSR on the supply chain
The supply chain of Tesco includes manufactures, suppliers, store and consumer; impact
on them is explained below:
Suppliers: have started supplying material with lower cost to support the act and they also use
environmental friendly products.
Manufacturer makes efficient use of water and energy. It recycles the wastage and water which
can be used in further activities.
Store has stopped entertaining any unethical practice and strict ethical polices are bring followed
(Thornton and Rupp, 2016). Each employee is treated equally and every issue is handled with
same clarity and significance. CSR have made business more ethical.
Consumers:
3. Analysis of the impact on business performance due to change in CSR practices
Profitability: as CER practice Tesco believes in retaining loyal people and meeting
stakeholders need (Rupp et.al., 2015). With pleasing the consumers and having top notch
competitive prices increases the profitability of business along with pleasing shareholders as
well.
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Revenues: For retaining old consumers and making new customers Tesco have
introduced a card policy (Zhou, Luo and Tang, 2018). Where every consumer is given a point for
every time they come shopping. This has increased over revenues of the business.
Brand image: has increased with meeting environmental needs, incorporation of
sustainability practise and serving the community with different beneficiary projects to help
society.
TASK 3
1. Researching a current ethical issue in an organisation
As given the scenario, the organisation Computing supplies Ltd is facing an issue of bad
publicity which is due to engaging child labour and anti-environmental practices (Ferrell et,al.,
2019). The organisation is also involved in practice of paying lower wages in order to maximize
profits. The ethical issues here for Computing supplies Ltd are determined as:
Unethical practice of paying lower wages:
Anti-social practice of engaging child labour (violation of human rights):
The organisation Computing Supplies Ltd is engaged in employing 10 year children in
Africa branch of their organisation for stripping out obsolete computer to find out gold in them.
Over this a full documentary has also been released (Wang and Chan, 2019). This is a clear
violation of human right where employing a child below the age of 16 is a criminal offence and
strict legal action can be taken for those involved in such an activity. This is a huge ethical abuse
by Computing Supplies Ltd as it has outrun a human right and engaged in child labour
employment.
Anti-environmental practice (legal and regulatory non-compliance):
Another, ethical issue faced by Computing Supplies Ltd is that it has allowed burning of
the computer for collecting gold (Weller, 2017). The burning of computer hardware cause severe
destruction to the environment and under CSR it is required to protect environment. Rather it is
engaged in anti-environmental practises and has not taken any strong measure to stop
environment deterioration.
Lower minimum wages to employee (unfair business practice):
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Computing Supplies Ltd is also found to engage in unfair business practice where in
order to maximise the profits it cuts the wages of its employees (Eva et.al., 2019). The employee
wages are lower than the minimum national wages which is not a fair practice.
2. Describing the effect on business objectives
Ethics in business is of vital importance as it leads the conduct on business in correct
direction with considering moral values as well as personal and organisational believes and
values. The impact on business objective is explained below:
Employee behaviour: every individual in an organisation have different behaviours and
ethical issues rises from them (Tormo-Carbó et.al., 2016). Sometimes then can involve in illegal
practice or do personal work at office hours. With conducting their behaviour ethically
organisation control their behaviours ad they are guided to work in best interest of organisation
and this lead to achieving business objective effectively with faster pace.
Working condition: All employees are required to have impartial characteristic towards peers in
the organisation. There shall be no politics and unhealthy competition at workplace (Gao and He,
2017). This can be achieved with ethically guiding the employee and chain their focus on
attaining organisational goal. This conduct affects the business objective in positive manner as
ethical conduct leads to faster attainment of business goal and newer objective can be set.
Consumer and supplier relationship:
An organisation dealing unfairly with it suppliers and involved in unfair practices
deteriorate it brand image and creditability at market place (Doh, Husted and Yang, 2016). This
leads to develop trust issues with suppliers and loyalty of consumers is also put on stake. With
adopting ethical principal of fair trading, environmental protection, sustainability, strict
disciplinary rule an organisation can gain trust of its suppliers as well as consumers (Chang and
Lu, 2019). This result in good revenue generation and meeting the profit margin and the
profitability objective of organisation have positively impacted by employing ethical behaviours
within business organisation.
3. Suggesting improvements in ethics of the operation for business organisation
For bringing improvements in the process of business, there are certain stages described below:
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The mapping process: with understanding the procedure which requires improvements,
all steps must be documented in a flowchart. This will show the exact visual process of change to
be done.
Analysis of full process: with the use of flowchart, investigation of the process is done
for specific problems. The places where consumers are highly frustrated must be recognised
(Corporate social responsibility (CSR), 2019). The bottleneck processes must be identified
where costs are high and quality is degrading in order to take extra caution.
Redesign of the process: redesigning of process is required to eliminate the problem
identification. The best process is to involve people who have a direct connection with the
process.
Acquisition of all resources: Safeguarding all the resources required for
implementations is a prime responsibility of an employee (Lőrinczy et.al., 2015). List of the
entire required element must be made for attaining the desired goal and for which they went
under this procedure.
Implementing and communicating alteration: The process of alteration is not easy
and to start a new process as per plan of an individual is considered to be a complete new project.
Therefore, proper planning and management are of utter importance for all things where are to be
done.
Process reviewing: is of vital importance and must be done as soon as the entire
planning and management of the project is done (Saurage-Altenloh and Randall, 2018). The
strategies must be adopted whenever required and improvement must be done on regular basis to
ensure that the whole process is staying relevant and effective.
4. Recommending changes to corporate social responsibility for benefiting various stakeholders
Suitable ethical and CSR policy for benefiting different stakeholder:
Environmental responsibilities: Computing Supplies Ltd must take serious action to protect the
environment such as use of renewable resources, protection of wastage, recycling the water and
wastage (Nejati, Salamzadeh, and Loke, 2019). It must also take step of doing community
services and good work for society to protect harmful effects of activates of the organisation.
Sustainability: is another action which must be involved in the CRS by Computing
Supplies Ltd, where it must limit the use of natural resources and take initiative, launch project
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over protection of natural resources (Asad and Haider, 2018). This includes energy saving
projects use of solar light in organisation and others.
Human rights: it must protect the human rights and shall not violate any legal provision.
Computing Supplies Ltd shall treat employees equally, there must be no discrimination among
the employees.
Fair trading: is another policy that must be added in CSR of Computing Supplies Ltd
where organisation must engage in fair dealing with its suppliers and consumers (Mind map,
2019). It must not engage in insider trading or charge unfair prices for maximising the profits.
No to corruption:
Legal and regulatory compliances: All laws and regulations must be abided with without any
lag for making organisation a fair and loyal for market, consumers, suppliers and other
stakeholders.
Better working conditions: one of the stakeholders of organisation is employees and a business
has responsibility towards them as well (Quarshie, Salmi and Leuschner, 2016). So providing
them better working condition and a healthier environment is of crucial importance. This must be
included in the CSR policy of Computing Supplies Ltd.
Making each individual ethically responsible: this is another action that must be taken by
Computing Supplies Ltd where each employee must be made responsible for their work
and actions (Business Ethics, 2019). Under this each employ will be held personally responsible
for their work. So everyone will work diligently and in ethical way.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that business ethics conduct the behaviour of
an organisation in good and positive manner. Different approach to business ethics are identified
as Virtue, consequentialist and Deon logical ethics. There are different issues faced in operation
of business are outlined and absolute and relative ethics has been explained. The CSR adopted by
Tesco Plc in its business operations and its positive impact on its operations have been outlined.
The revenue, profitability and brand image have also emphasised with incorporation of CSR.
Moreover, ethical issues faced in Computing Supplies Ltd have been identifying as abolishing of
human right and as well no following the regularity and legal rule related with environment
protection. For this effective solutions have been suggested for benefiting the stakeholders.
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Business objective are affected by ethical consideration as making operation moral principled
and disciplined.
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