MGT 3110 Business and Society 2011/12 Group Coursework Professional report about an issue pertaining to business ethics

or CSR

OPTION 1 You work in the CSR department of EKIN, a large multinational company that sells branded sports apparel. Over the last two decades, EKIN has been facing a number of accusations from NGOs regarding working conditions and environmental performance in the companys vast supply chain. After initially insisting that they were not responsible for their suppliers practices, EKIN has over the last ten years begun to take responsibility for their supply chain, by drawing up a code of business conduct for suppliers and by auditing supply chain factories. About four years ago, EKIN acquired ACTIVE, another company, which is also a well known sports brand. The factories that make ACTIVE products have been the subject of a recent media investigation. These factories, all of which are based in South East Asian countries, belong to subcontractors of the companys main contractor for ACTIVE products and they employ about 10,000 people. Journalists carrying out interviews with people working in these factories found a large number of incidents of workers being physically and mentally abused. One female worker reported that she was kicked by a supervisor after making a mistake while cutting rubber for shoe soles. Other workers reported that they were being hit or scratched in the arm one man until he bled. The journalists also learned of an incident where a supervisor ordered six female workers to stand in the blazing sun after they failed to meet their production targets. And a woman reported that managers often call employees dog, pig or monkey, all of which are insults in her cultural context. NGOs working in this area have corroborated the workers stories, confirming that the examples given in the report are typical of the abuses that are happening in these companies. Worried about the effects of this report on EKINs responsibility image, you are asked by the head of the CSR department to write a report that sets out recommendations as to what can be done to address the issues raised in the media report. OPTION 2 You work in the CSR department of Moonquids, a large international coffeehouse chain. Your departments brief mainly consists of ensuring that the companys stakeholders ethical expectations regarding your supply chain, the treatment of your staff and your environmental performance are being met. More recently, however, Moonquids has been facing a rather unusual challenge. To attract customers, one of the companys strategies has been to create a home-like ambience in its outlets, by putting in comfortable leather chairs, playing smooth jazz music in the background, and providing Wi-Fi, so that people can use the space to work on their laptops or check their Facebook account and email while enjoying their latte. A recent newspaper report has highlighted that this home like atmosphere may lead customers to let their guard down and thus provide an easy target for petty criminals. 1

This has been confirmed by police statistics which show a rather high and steady number of handbag, purse and laptop thefts in your chain outlets, particularly in larger cities. The CEO believes that this is an issue that falls within the remit of the CSR department and should be seriously looked at, not least because of reputational concerns. The Head of the CSR department, in turn, passes this task on to you and asks you to write a report setting out what can be done to address this issue. OPTION 3 You are a team of ethics advisers to a medium-sized investment bank that operates in the City of London. You have been called in by one of the board directors who is worried about a report on drug abuse in the City of London. The report draws on the the experience of a specialist addiction counselling service and claims that a large number of City workers increasingly turn to drugs to cope with the pressure and stress that they experience in their jobs. Clients of the counselling service have reported that people put a 60 bottle of wine on their expense account when frequenting bars after work, but these expensive vintage wines are in fact code for wraps of cocaine that these bars are selling. They also say that City workers frequently buy drugs from colleagues to feed their habit. The report further argues that addiction to certain drugs, such as cocaine, will also lead people to develop an addiction to alcohol. Clients of the counselling service admit that they have frequently traded under the influence of the previous nights alcohol and drug binge. And they also report that at City Christmas parties the cocktail of binge drinking (fuelled by free booze) and drug taking may lead male workers to sexually assault their female colleagues. The board director feels that the issues raised by the report should be taken seriously by the bank. She asks you to write a report setting out what the company can do to address the issue of substance abuse in the City. OPTION 4 You are an ethics and compliance consultancy firm, which has been hired by the new CEO of GreatDrinks, an international alcoholic beverage company, which has stockmarket listings in London and New York. The previous year, GreatDrinks received a fine of 16 million US Dollars from US authorities for paying more than 3 million dollars in bribes in the companys growth markets in Asia. The investigators found that the companys subsidiaries routinely used third parties, inflated invoices and other deceptive practices such as re-labelling transactions as marketing promotion to disguise the true nature of the bribe payments. In one country, managers paid government officials cash service fees to increase government sales orders of GreatDrinks products and to secure favourable product placement in governmentowned liquor stores. In another country, a government official was paid to lobby and bribe other officials to adopt the companys position in a number of tax and customs disputes. The company also took numerous other officials on European trips to secure favourable treatment. GreatDrinks asks you to write a report, setting out what the company can do to clean up their tarnished image.

Instructions: Choose ONE of the four options above. Your report to the company should cover the following: A brief outline of the ethical issue. Use ONE ethical theory to justify why this issue deserves attention. An outline of one or several courses of action that the company can undertake to address this issue. A reflection about the LIMITATIONS of the courses of action you have suggested. Evidence that all group members contributed to the process to sufficient degree to justify an equal award of marks. Your word limit must not exceed 1,300 words. Do not forget to include your word count in your essay.

The essay will be marked using the following criteria: Outlining of the ethical issue(s) described in the case Correct application of one ethical theory to the issue described in the case Quality of the recommendations made to the company Quality of reflection about the limitations Style and Presentation (including accurate referencing and authenticity)

Process: 1. Choose your group members. You are expected to work in groups of 3-5. (Some marks will be deducted if you dont work in a group of that size.) 2. Email the module leader (Dr Andrea Werner, a.werner@mdx.ac.uk) your group members by Friday, 27 January 2012. 3. A final appendix to the report (1 page) will detail how the group worked as a collaborative team (meeting log). Every member of a group will receive the SAME mark for the report unless any member fails to contribute a fair share, in which case, tutor will have the discretion to decide the students mark based on the group feedback and evidence provided using a group meeting log. The meeting log could include the following: who attended, apologies received, issues discussed, decisions made, and implementation. 4. Submission deadline is Monday, 26 March, 2012, 4pm. Failure to submit on time will result in a fail grade. You are required to submit your coursework both electronically through TurnItIn (see instructions in module handbook and on MyUniHub module site), and as hard copy to the student office.