You are working for “Computing Supplies Ltd” and you are an idealist: you only buy Fair Trade, you work in a charity shop over the week-end, you often participate in charity runs, and every year you attend community beach cleaning events.

Although you’ve already tried to approach the subject of Corporate Social Responsibilities, nobody has taken it seriously. However, the company recently received bad publicity after a documentary showing the obsolete computers being stripped down for gold by 10 year-olds in Africa. To complicate things further, the computers are actually being burnt to collect the gold which creates dangerous fumes both for the environment and for the children.

In addition to this new issue, “Computing Supplies Ltd” pays the majority of its employee the minimum wage in order to maximize profit. Several employees have now joined a union and trying to negotiate a living wage to no avail, which has also caused some bad publicity.

Due to the bad publicity, 4 large clients have already terminated their contract and as a consequence, the revenue is down 15% compared to the previous year.

To make the matters worse, although this has not emerged in the news, “Computing Supplies Ltd” is planning on relocating some of its manufacturing to India in order to cut down costs, however it seems that it would not really benefit the locals as the subcontracting cost implies cuts, in particular relating to local wages and local use ofwater.

You believe that this time senior management will listen, but you know that you should prepare the ground before the meeting in order to make a successful proposal.

 

  • Provide an illustration showing the different approaches to business ethics. You should then provide examples of ethical issues that could affect the operations. Also provide examples of “absolute” and “relative”ethics.
  • Create a mind map of the stakeholders, and comment on the implications for each stakeholder when operating ethically, including potential conflicts between the stakeholders
  • Explain the regulatory framework for CSR

 Provide a case study of an organization that has implemented Corporate Social Responsibility. You should:

  1. Briefly describe the changes that the organization , and why.
  2. Review the impact of CSR on their supply chain
  3. Analyse the impact of changes in CSR on business performance such as profitability, revenue, brand,etc.

 Based on the scenario, write a report to suggest an implementation of CSR. You should:

  1. Research a current ethical issue in an organisation.
  2. Describe how business objectives are affected by ethical considerations.
  3. Report on how the business could improve the ethics of their operations.
  4. Recommend changes to CSR policy to benefit different stakeholders.