GSBS6484 - Tobacco Companies: Unethical Practices & Advertising

This essay explores the unethical practices of tobacco companies, focusing on advertising and product offerings. It discusses corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, and ethical considerations within the tobacco industry. The essay uses the Australian ban on tobacco advertising as a case study, highlighting the negative social impacts of tobacco marketing, particularly on children. It examines the tension between shareholder value and social responsibility, referencing Philip Morris International as an example of a company facing ethical challenges. The essay concludes that corporate governance and social responsibility are crucial for ensuring transparency and ethical behavior in organizations, but international businesses often struggle to balance local and global CSR approaches. The document is available on Desklib, a platform offering study tools and resources for students.

Running head: TOBACCO COMPANIES: DANGEROUS PRODUCTS & ADVERTISING
TOBACCO COMPANIES: DANGEROUS PRODUCTS & ADVERTISING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1TOBACCO COMPANIES: DANGEROUS PRODUCTS & ADVERTISING
Introduction
The medium that ensures the factors of transparency, accountability and fairness in an
organization through the framework of practices and rules in accordance with the connection
between the stakeholders and organization, depicts the concept of corporate governance.
Corporate governance includes the responsibilities, rewards and rights of stakeholders and the
associated implicit and explicit contracts (Jeffrey, Rosenberg & McCabe, 2019). The ethical
framework that is designed for the organizations operating in a societal environment with the
obligation of abiding by the boundaries of good and bad. The purpose of this paper is to
understand the ethical constraints and practices of a tobacco based company. The paper will
present an overview of a real life case, which is known for adopting unethical advertising and
marketing strategies. In the paper, the concept and practice of social responsibility and
corporate governance will be discussed through the depiction of existing literatures. The
paper will be concluded by presenting a summary of the boundaries and practices adopted by
organizations.
Body
Question-
The paper will address the potentiality of unethical practices of tobacco organizations in
regards with the practice of advertising and product offerings.
Hypothesis-
Tobacco organizations involvement in unethical practices of advertising and designing
product offering.
Literature review-
Corporate social responsibility:

2TOBACCO COMPANIES: DANGEROUS PRODUCTS & ADVERTISING
There are research papers, which highlights the corporate social responsibility of
multinational organization. The papers discussed the challenges arising from the
implementation of corporate social responsibility. The main challenge identified by the
research paper was integration of the practices of forming a social brand in the presence of
implementing operational activities in the organizations. Another set of challenges and
concern of the organizations may include the size of the company network, impact of the
intrusion of non-governmental organization and irresponsible behaviour from the risks of
arising public scandals. Another challenge for the multinational organizations for
implementing or involving corporate social responsibility is the ability of coordinating and
controlling responsible behaviour in all the existent subsidiaries of the organization (Biglan,
Van Ryzin & Westling, 2019). These paper presents the scenario of the integrating
coordination and control practices with the support from non-governmental institution. There
are research papers, which presents the contribution of corporate social responsibilities in
responding to increase negative social and environmental impacts through the adoption of
developing business functionalities and economies. The Multinational organizations
experiences complexity with the increasing diversity amongst stakeholders in the business
setting (Filatotchev & Stahl, 2015). The research papers presented the possibility of two
predicaments, the need for maintaining an ethical standard throughout presence with the
consideration of changing global business environment. These papers extracted the range of
challenges by understanding the difference between the Corporate Social Responsibility
approach of a locally imposed CSR strategy and in the state of implication on the
multinational companies. These papers presents the concept of both local CSR approach and
global CSR approach (Kennedy, Welch & Monshipouri, 2017). The global CSR implies the
concept of consistency in respect to the CSR strategies throughout the global presence of the
business without the consideration of preferences and boundaries of locally present

3TOBACCO COMPANIES: DANGEROUS PRODUCTS & ADVERTISING
stakeholders. On the other hand, the local oriented method of CSR reflects the responsive
practices in regards to the local sensitivity and conditions of the organization.
Ethics of corporate governance:
There are papers that directs the concept of corporate governance in the scenario of
organizations. The management decisions of prioritizing the shareholder values or corporate
social responsibility is complex. Directing the managerial decisions towards cohesive
integration of corporate social responsibility and shareholder values. These research papers
presented the concept of corporate governance in a business scenario by depicting the roles
and responsibility in controlling the business activities based on the ethical and social
responsibility constraints. There are papers which attempted at establishment of a link
between behavioural ethics, CSR and organizational justice (Robertson, Parmenter & Low,
2016). The integration process may result in the focus on individual rights, morality and
fairness for the organizational decision making. The papers depicted the importance of a
combined form of macro and micro collaborations of sociology, law, political science,
psychology, business ethics and behavioural economics (Schrempf-Stirling, Palazzo &
Phillips, 2016). An effective integration can be facilitated by the directing the concentration
on ethical and social consciousness of the influencing and decision making agents of the
organizations.
Case study-
The case or situation selected for this paper is ‘the ban of tobacco advertisement in Australian
tobacco companies’. Australia banned the facilitation of communication strategy by the
tobacco companies, as it can reflect a message of encouraging an injurious habit for the
audience. The case depicts the factors and causes behind the decision of banning brand
communication. The scenario or decision reflects the application of boundaries regarding
corporate social responsibilities for the Tobacco companies. The case presents the impact of

4TOBACCO COMPANIES: DANGEROUS PRODUCTS & ADVERTISING
involving marketing communication strategies for a Tobacco company (beta.health.gov.au,
2019). The Tobacco companies of Australia have invested in the strategy of advertising
product offerings due to the factor of positive return on investment. However, the profit
capability of the strategy negatively affects the state of being healthy. The main purpose of
the Tobacco companies of Australia directed towards the aspect of company loyalty and/or
brand switching rather than encouraging audience to incorporate the ill habit (health.gov.au,
2019). However, the application of tobacco advertising also acts as a major influencer
regarding the rate of consumption. The scenario presented various negative impact in the
society due to marketing strategy of promoting the product offerings. Social impacts includes
influencing children and adults for experimenting the feeling of using tobacco products. The
daily consumption of the tobacco users can increase with the implication of advertising
content from tobacco companies. Advertising from the Australian tobacco companies can
influence the quitting decision of the users (naa.gov.au, 2019). The corporate social
responsibility and the policies of corporate governance includes the practices, which can
benefit the stakeholders associated or exposed to the business activities of the business. Open
discussion of the ill effects of tobacco can be restricted by the exposure of media
communication by tobacco companies.
The case scenario also presents the marketing strategies of the tobacco companies of
Australia that reflects negative influence of the audiences, which also includes children. The
imagery used for the packaging and for advertising the product offerings of tobacco
companies attracted youngsters with the perception of fun and popular (Freeman, 2019). The
case also presented few evidences from Western Australia, where the children highly
recognized the content of the ad by heart and can recall the ad with few indicating signs
(Crane, Matten & Spence, 2019). The business strategies of the tobacco industry was aligned
with the policies and procedures of Corporate Social Responsibility. The alignment enabled
the realization of the corporates in terms of transnational organizations for understanding the

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negative impact in environment and communities, which leads to the decision of modifying
the business strategies in accordance with the social concerns. Moreover, the decision of
utilizing Corporate Social Responsibility as a medium of increasing image or actually
incorporating the boundaries is still debatable, as presented in the identified scenario.
One of the example of a well-known company Philip Morris International deviated by
the policies and promises regarding corporate social responsibility. The example
demonstrated the shift of focus of the company to Corporate Social Responsibility for
building a ‘good’ image (Strandberg, 2017). The company reflected the concern of negative
societal impact by the presenting contents related to CSR in two pages of their website but
the company was found misrepresenting the promise by the aspect of encouraging users and
non-users by depicting the option of external links for the product.
The case helped in understanding the unethical practices linked to the ignorance
towards the policies of social responsibilities of organization. The case depicted the
importance of abiding by the policies and procedure for aligning business activities with
ethical behaviour.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that corporate governance and social responsibility of
organizations reflects the transparency and ethical behaviour. The corporate social
responsibility of the organizations are dependent on their understanding of the link between
justice, social responsibility and behavioural ethics. Corporate governance policies and social
responsibility allows organizations to frame its ethical business practices for benefitting the
stakeholders and shareholders of the business. However, international businesses experiences
the challenge of deciding on the different approaches of establishing Corporate Social
Responsibility practices, local driven approach and global approach. The case presented the
evidence of establishing a decision regarding corporate governance and social responsibility.

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Australia have established the boundary of eliminating marketing communication practices
from the organizational strategies due to the negative effects of promotion of tobacco
products on the societal scenario. The control and coordination of business activities in
accordance with the societal impact can frame the ethical behaviour of the organizations. The
organization’s capability to understand the local preferences and need for CSR with the
association of basic CSR activities can ensure a strong position in the market.

7TOBACCO COMPANIES: DANGEROUS PRODUCTS & ADVERTISING
References:
beta.health.gov.au (2019). Tobacco advertising bans | Australian Government Department of
Health. [Online] Retrieved from https://beta.health.gov.au/health-topics/smoking-and-
tobacco/tobacco-control/tobacco-advertising-bans
Biglan, A., Van Ryzin, M., & Westling, E. (2019). A public health framework for the
regulation of marketing. Journal of public health policy, 40(1), 66-75.
Crane, A., Matten, D., & Spence, L. (Eds.). (2019). Corporate social responsibility:
Readings and cases in a global context. Routledge.
Filatotchev, I., & Stahl, G. K. (2015). Towards transnational CSR. Corporate social
responsibility approaches and governance solutions for multinational corporations.
Organizational Dynamics, 44(2), 121-129.
Freeman, B. (2019). Australia’s Tobacco Plain Packaging. In Global Health Leadership (pp.
1-13). Springer, Cham.
health.gov.au (2019). Department of Health | Tobacco advertising. [Online] Retrieved from
https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/tobacco-advert
Jeffrey, S., Rosenberg, S., & McCabe, B. (2019). Corporate social responsibility behaviors
and corporate reputation. Social Res
Kennedy, E. T., Welch, C. E., & Monshipouri, M. (2017). Multinational corporations and the
ethics of global responsibility: Problems and possibilities. In Human Rights and
Corporations (pp. 123-147). Routledge.

8TOBACCO COMPANIES: DANGEROUS PRODUCTS & ADVERTISING
naa.gov.au (2019). Tobacco advertising ban in Australia - Fact sheet 252 – National Archives
of Australia, Australian Government. [Online] Retrieved from
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs252.aspx
Robertson, R. W., Parmenter, C., & Low, P. (2016). THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. Journal on Management, 10(4).
Schrempf-Stirling, J., Palazzo, G., & Phillips, R. A. (2016). Historic corporate social
responsibility. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), 700-719.
Strandberg, C. (2017). The role of human resource management in corporate social
responsibility.