Tesco's Business Ethics: Philosophy, Challenges, and Stakeholder Roles

This report provides an analysis of Tesco's business ethics, identifying the company as ethical due to its commitment to customer satisfaction, employee well-being, and environmental responsibility. It explores Tesco's adherence to the utilitarianism ethical philosophy, which prioritizes actions that maximize happiness and minimize harm. The report also examines ethical challenges faced by Tesco, such as harassment, workplace safety, whistle-blowing incidents, poor customer service, and the horsemeat scandal, detailing the strategies used to address these issues. Furthermore, it identifies key stakeholders, including shareholders, customers, and suppliers, and discusses their respective roles in maintaining business standards. The report concludes that business ethics is crucial for promoting integrity, building trust, and gaining a competitive advantage.

Business Ethics
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 been
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 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:
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. There are several ethical philosophies
that are followed by the organisations such as deontological ethics, utilitarianism ethics,
virtue ethics and many more. Tesco is following Utilitarianism ethical philosophy which
recommends activities that promote pleasure or happiness and is against of those actions
that are causing harm or damage within the company. This philosophy facilitates in
fostering the highest amount of products for the largest number of people. Utilitarianism
philosophy states that an activity is considered to be right if it tends to foster pleasure or
happiness (Elstein and Tian, 2020). 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 the business, 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 the business, 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 refers to behaving unfairly or
differently with employees of the organisation (Giannouli, 2020). Within the 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 the company 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.

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.
REFERENCES
Brennan and et.al, 2021. Business Ethics for Better Behavior. Oxford University Press.
Cherré, B., Laarraf, Z. and Peterson, J., 2019. Why is it difficult to be virtuous in business
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Clark and et.al, 2020. Attitudes toward business ethics: empirical investigation on
different moral philosophies among business students in Vietnam. International
Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 14(2), pp.123-143.
Elstein, D. and Tian, Q., 2020. 3. Confucian Business Ethics: Possibilities and
Challenges. In Wealth, Commerce, and Philosophy (pp. 53-74). University of
Chicago Press.
Ermasova, N., Wagner, S. and Nguyen, L. D., 2017. The impact of education, diversity,
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To assess the enforced regulation and dominant
administration: This is a proactive measure of
monitoring and review. As there should be proper
and regular checking of implemented standards in
organisation.
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: 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 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: They are considered as the primary stakeholder within an