BABS Foundation: Corporate Social Responsibility Essay on Tesco

This essay examines Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), defining its importance and impact on stakeholders. It explores Carroll's Pyramid of CSR and its application to Tesco, a leading retailer. The essay details Tesco's CSR activities, including reducing carbon emissions, code of business conduct, feeding people in need, and supplier relationships. It analyzes Tesco's performance across the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities outlined in Carroll's Pyramid. The essay further discusses the reasons why businesses should consider CSR practices, such as building a positive public image and gaining long-term business interest, while also addressing the challenges of implementing CSR strategies, including food waste and ethical sourcing. In conclusion, the essay emphasizes the role of CSR in maintaining a good brand image and the need for support from social and governmental authorities for companies performing CSR activities. The essay uses references to support its arguments and findings.

CORPORATE SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY

Introduction
● Corporate social responsibility or
CSR is how organizations manage
overall business processes to
produce a positive effect on
society.
● CSR helps a business to remain
socially accountable.
● CSR must be considered because it
helps to provide value to
stakeholders.

Defining CSR
● CSR stands for Corporate Social
responsibility and it can be defined
as a self-regulating business model.
● Stakeholders of business contribute
to addressing social needs through
different CSR activities (Rosado
and de Mattos 2017).

Impact of CSR on stakeholders
● CSR helps to increase image
among target customers (El-
Kassar et al. 2017).
● Loyalty of customers increases
after successful implementation
of CSR.
● CSR boosts morale of employees
and motivates them to perform
better.

Contd...
● CSR activities help to increase
relationships with external stakeholders
like suppliers (Simões and Sebastiani,
2017).
● CSR plans and programs help to gain
sustainable development that fulfills
government guidelines.
● CSR programs help to solve different
community issues and create awareness
in society (Wagner, 2019).

Defining Carroll's Pyramid of CSR
● There are 4 components of Carroll's
pyramid of CSR that compliments
each other.
● The basic components of this model
include economic and legal
responsibility (Carroll, 2016).
● Philanthropic and ethical components
that help a firm to act ethically and
responsible to society.

Overview of Tesco
● Tesco is the leading grocery and general
retailer, which runs its business in
different countries of the world.
● Headquarters of this company is based
in Welwyn Garden City, United
Kingdom.
● This retailer is serving millions of
customers every week with the help of
their approximately 450000 colleagues
(Tescoplc.com, 2020).

CSR activities of Tesco
● Reducing carbon emission: Tesco
has committed to reducing carbon
emission from its operations
(Tescoplc.com, 2020).
● Code of business conduct: Tesco
has provided its minimum
expectations for employees
irrespective of role.

Contd…
● Feeding people in need: Tesco donates
good quality surplus food items to local
charity and different community groups
(Tescoplc.com, 2016).
● Supplier relationships: This firm has
standardized payment terms across the
UK and central Europe.
● A new supplier helpline and website
have been created by this organization.

Carroll’s Pyramid on Tesco
● Economic responsibility: Tesco is being
profitable through its excellent service
and products and it can help them to
contribute to the community on long-
term basis (Zaitsev and Dror, 2020).
● Legal responsibility: They are
complying with legislations of Health &
Safety, employment and others related to
business with honesty.

Contd…
● Ethical responsibility: They have launched a
new refreshed code of conduct for remaining
ethical and they have fixed a standardized
payment term for all of their suppliers.
● Philanthropic responsibility: This company
is honestly publishing assured data on food
waste by its operation and they are reducing
the sugar content from soft drinks by nearly
5% each year (Tescoplc.com, 2016).

Why business should Consider CSR
practices
 Business organizations like Tesco
need to consider CSR
● For building a good public image:
This can help to increase consumer
base (Woerkom and Zeijl-Rozema,
2017).
● Converting resistances to resources:
Functional capacity of resources can
be increased.

Contd…
● Gaining long term interest from
business: long term profit can be
gained from a better society
(Newman et al. 2020).
● Eliminating government
intervention: failure of a firm in
maintaining social responsibilities
attracts intervention from the
government.

Challenges of implementing CSR
strategies
● Food waste data by Tesco has
shocked everyone as it is straining
the environment directly (Hultman
and Elg, 2019).
● Similar CSR programs
implemented by rivals is another
challenge for Tesco to implement
CSR.

Contd…
● Tesco is facing a challenge to solve
the issue of children’s education in
the UK due to a lack of support
from different levels of society
(Tang-Lee, 2016).
● It is challenging for Tesco to get all
the Cocoa from ethically sourced
suppliers (Choi et al. 2018).

Conclusion
● Different CSR programs help
organizations to maintain good brand
image by doing good to environment
and community.
● Different social and government
authorities need to be more
supportive of companies that are
performing CSR activities.

Reference list
Carroll, A.B., 2016. Carroll’s pyramid of CSR: taking another look. International journal of corporate social responsibility, 1(1), p.3.
Choi, J.J., Jo, H., Kim, J. and Kim, M.S., 2018. Business groups and corporate social responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 153(4),
pp.931-954.
El-Kassar, A.N., Messarra, L.C. and El-Khalil, R., 2017. CSR, organizational identification, normative commitment, and the
moderating effect of the importance of CSR. The Journal of Developing Areas, 51(3), pp.409-424.
Hultman, J. and Elg, U., 2018. Developing CSR in retail–supplier relationships: a stakeholder interaction approach. The International
Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 28(4), pp.339-359.
Newman, C., Rand, J., Tarp, F. and Trifkovic, N., 2020. Corporate social responsibility in a competitive business environment. The
Journal of Development Studies, pp.1-18.
Rosado, B.H. and de Mattos, E.A., 2017. On the relative importance of CSR ecological strategies and integrative traits to explain
species dominance at local scales. Functional ecology, 31(10), pp.1969-1974.
Simões, C. and Sebastiani, R., 2017. The nature of the relationship between corporate identity and corporate sustainability: Evidence
from the retail industry. Business Ethics Quarterly, 27(3), pp.423-453.
Tang-Lee, D., 2016. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and public engagement for a Chinese state-backed mining project in
Myanmar–Challenges and prospects. Resources Policy, 47, pp.28-37.
Tescoplc.com (2016), CSR, Available at: https://www.tescoplc.com/media/475739/corporate-responsibility-update_nov-2016-final.pdf
[Accessed on 3rd march 2020]
Tescoplc.com (2020), About, Available at: https://www.tescoplc.com/about/our-businesses/ [Accessed on 3rd march 2020]
Wagner, R., 2019, September. Activating Employees for Sustainability–The Importance of Narrative and Sensemaking in a salutogenic
approach to internal CSR Communication. In CSR COMMUNICATION CONFERENCE (p. 230).
Woerkom, P.M.V. and Zeijl-Rozema, A.V., 2017. Improving local implementation of an MNC's global CSR strategy: the importance of
stakeholders. International Journal of Business Environment, 9(3), pp.247-265.
Zaitsev, N. and Dror, S., 2020. A corporate social responsibility (CSR) model–a QFD-based approach. Total Quality Management &
Business Excellence, 31(1-2), pp.137-148.