Level 3 Business Ethics Report: McDonald's Ethical Issues and Analysis

This report delves into the realm of business ethics, using McDonald's as a case study to illustrate key concepts. It begins by defining business ethics and exploring ethical activities, business values, and professional and individual ethical behavior. The report then identifies various ethical issues at McDonald's, including concerns related to corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, environmental impact, sustainability, human rights, corruption, fair trading, legal compliance, business practices, working conditions, and individual ethical responsibilities. It analyzes the stakeholders involved, outlining potential conflicts and implications. The report concludes with recommendations for improving the ethical condition of McDonald's, such as implementing proper food and nutrition, hygienic practices, flexible working hours, and incentive schemes. The report references several academic sources to support its findings and recommendations.

Running head: BUSINESS ETHICS
Business Ethics
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1BUSINESS ETHICS
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3

2BUSINESS ETHICS
Business Ethics
As stated by Crane et al. (2019), the operational activities of a business are only
successful when the same is performed with substantial ethics and honesty. Business ethics,
in this connection, is defined as the applied form of policies and procedures in the concern of
the responsibilities a business firm has to perform (Grayson and Hodges 2017).
Ethical Activities
Ethical activities in a business organisation mean to carry up business transactions
with no unfair and fraudulent means (Means 2017).
Values of Businesses
The values of a business are considered to be the set of plans and policies followed by
a business organisation in order to maintain the sustainability of the firm (Tomasella and Ali
2018).
Professional Ethics
Professional Ethics is considered as the ideology that encompasses the corporate
standards as well as the personal standards of the work behaviour that is expected by the
professional level employees (Bond 2015).
Individual Ethical Behaviour
The ideology of individual ethical behaviour states the way an individual behaves in
connection with society as well as the business organisations (Culiberg and Mihelic 2016).

3BUSINESS ETHICS
Ethical Issues at McDonald’s
Studies show that the organisation of McDonald is known to deal with different kind
of ethical issues in their day-to-day operations (Pierce and Velliaris 2019). In this connection,
the issues undermined with regards to the organisation of McDonald’s is specified as below.
Corporate Governance
Studies show that the organisation of McDonald’s have failed to satisfy the safety
regulations for the customers (Schrempf-Stirling 2018.). There are repeated cases regarding
the temperature of the beverages being too high than what the same is required to be, and the
lid of those containers are not easy to open. This, in turn, causes adverse burns to the
customers and leads to lawsuits as well as fine to the organisation of McDonald’s.
Corporate Social Responsibility
As examined above in the report that McDonald’s have not turned out to be sufficient
enough in dealing with the safety issues of the customers, thus, the rate of interest of the
customers was known to get decreased because of the threat they received (Eckenwiler 2016).
This decrease in the interests of the customers have been determined as the lack in the CSR
of McDonald's, and therefore, the same is stated to be the ethical issue of the firm.
Environment
The manufacturing unit of McDonald’s have been known to harm the natural
conditions of the environment because of the waste materials it dumps in an unethical
manner.
Sustainability

4BUSINESS ETHICS
In the concern that the organisation of McDonald’s is not able to fulfil the concerns
related to the sustainable society and the carrying the capacity of its business based on the
health laws, the same is known to have the ethical issues of sustainability.
Human Rights
The ethical issue of human rights states that every business organisation should ensure
that the rights a customer has in the concern of staying protected. In this connection, it was
found that the information the customers provide to McDonald's was hacked leaked, which
turned out to be an ethical issue for the organisation.
Corruption
The employees at the organisation of McDonald’s have been recorded to use their
allocated resources as well as opportunities in an unethical and disruptive manner.
Trading Fairly
It is examined with the help of the studies that McDonald's provides a massive
amount of discounts and offers to the customers by using cheap quality of food and beverages
which turns out to be an ethical issue of fair trade. The same becomes unfair for other similar
organisation to maintain low charges with high quality food.
Legal and Regulatory Compliance
The food quality standards and the safety of the customers are not maintained by the
concerned organisation, and this becomes an ethical issue of legal and regulatory compliance.
Business Practices
The concerned organisation follows the theory of Kantianism, which is stated to be
unethical, whereas they should follow the theory of Utilitarianism.

5BUSINESS ETHICS
Working Conditions
The employees connected to McDonald's have to work for long working hours and in
a standing position, which turns out to be an ethical issue.

6BUSINESS ETHICS
Individual Ethical Responsibilities
The employees of the concerned organisation have been recorded to follow
unhygienic means of producing food and beverages, which affects the health of the customers
and is determined as an ethical issue.
Stakeholders of McDonald's
The primary stakeholders of McDonald's are recognised as the owners of the
company itself, employees, and customers, the suppliers of the goods, the potential
competitors as well as the communities and the citizens.
The conflicts that arise amongst the stakeholders is that the high or low demand of the
customers affects the work of the employees. Another one is recognised as the following of
the ethical values would increase the cost price, and the profit would decrease.
Implications
The stakeholders connected to McDonald's can effectively influence the organisation of
McDonald's to follow the ethical values and concepts to earn a better competitive advantage
in the market.
The affected stakeholders of the company are recognised as the employees as well as
the customers. This is because the working conditions and the health conditions are affected
respectively for these stakeholders.
Recommendations to improve the ethical condition
 Implementing the use of proper and nutrition food.
 The hygienic practice of producing food.
 Flexible working hours for the employees.
 Incentive scheme to benefit and motivate the employees.

7BUSINESS ETHICS
References
Bond, T., 2015. Standards and ethics for counselling in action. Sage.
Crane, A., Matten, D., Glozer, S. and Spence, L., 2019. Business ethics: Managing corporate
citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalisation. Oxford University Press.
Culiberg, B. and Mihelič, K.K., 2016. Three ethical frames of reference: insights into
Millennials' ethical judgements and intentions in the workplace. Business Ethics: A European
Review, 25(1), pp.94-111.
Eckenwiler, L.A., 2016. Defining ethical placemaking for place-based
interventions. American journal of public health, 106(11), pp.1944-1946.
Grayson, D. and Hodges, A., 2017. Corporate social opportunity!: Seven steps to make
corporate social responsibility work for your business. Routledge.
Means, G., 2017. The modern corporation and private property. Routledge.
Pierce, J.M. and Velliaris, D.M., 2019. Sustainable Supply Chains: Ethical Challenges and
Actions for Best Practice. In Emerging Applications in Supply Chains for Sustainable
Business Development (pp. 115-129). IGI Global.
Schrempf-Stirling, J., 2018. Ethical Issues in the Food Supply Chain. In Food Ethics
Education (pp. 85-103). Springer, Cham.
Tomasella, B. and Ali, A., 2018. The importance of personal values and hospitableness in
small foodservice businesses’ social responsibility. Hospitality and Society.