Business Ethics and Responsible Management

Assessment Brief

The Task

Your assessment will take the form of a 1500 word submission consisting of three parts in total.

You will be expected to show that you understand the importance of individual and organisational ethical thinking and practice and that you can apply ethical decision making. You will also need to show that you can think critically about the role of business in society.

Further, you will need to show that you have understand the way in which theory can underpin how ethical issues are viewed, but also that you understand that theory offers a guide but not necessarily the answer to practice. The assessment also requires you to show that you have reflected on what makes an ethical leader and manager and what that means in the context of organisational culture.

Your assessment into two parts with part 1 being further split into two. Read the requirements below and attempt all three parts. You will submit all three parts together in the same submission.

You should look at the following cases of businesses that have attracted attention due to some aspect of practice – each will be outlined in a separate case brief on Moodle. You should choose BOOHOO.

Part 1

1. You are required to write a brief report for senior managers at the case of your choosing. This report is written from the perspective of a middle manager tasked to outline the ethical nature of the case. You will need to explore a number of factors including - Why should this be explored as an ethical question? How might the company want to think about the role of business in society? You will also need to outline who the key stakeholders are and in what way they are affected. You should include research into examples of how ethical choices impact on other companies (e.g where is there research that shows good choices benefit companies and bad choices have a negative impact?). Finally you should conclude with some recommendations for what the company should do

This part of your assessment should be written as a report, but should be referenced in the normal academic way using Harvard citations and referencing.

1. For this part you should again use your chosen case study – but this time choose TWO ethical theories and demonstrate that you can apply these to the case to show how your chosen theories lead you to a view on the ethics of the case. You should choose theories we have explored in class, but if you have chosen to research a different ethical tradition, for example Islamic ethics, you may use that; it would be useful if you confirm with your tutor if you wish to use an idea not fully covered in class.

Your choices for cases are:

1. Boohoo: Sweating the pandemic

Part 2

Part 2 is NOT related to the case study. This section requires you to discuss what makes an ethical leader and how you would, as an ethical manager, manage your business and/or others to a high ethical standard.

You will need to think about personal ethics, about the conditions that bring about unethical organisations and practices, about organisational values and methods of compliance. This part can be written in a more reflective style.

Assessment Case Choice 1

Boohoo: Sweating in the pandemic

Background

Clothing companies outsourcing production in order to cut costs is nothing new. Looking for the leanest production is good business practice. The fashion industry however is always under something of a spotlight because of the prevalence of production by low paid workers. It is something the industry and many companies have recognised needs addressing.

The Boohoo group has recently had negative press reporting when a report exposed low paid workers toiling in very poor conditions. Again, maybe nothing new, other companies have been exposed for not paying enough attention to their supply chains. This time there were two other factors that propelled the report to the front pages of newspapers. First, the factories were not in Turkey or Bangladesh, but in Leicester. Second, the exposure of poor practices was, in part at least, the result of trying to establish why Leicester was suffering a resurgence of Covi-19 infections. The report suggested that workers had been ‘forced’ to work when guidelines were telling companies not to have workers on premises, and hat the proximity of people in poor workplaces was an obvious conduit to infections. The reports below give you’re the story, they outline Boohoo’s initial response, plus. Also given is a link to a very up to date report on an independent review by Alison Levitt QC, and a link to a Guardian podcast. By way of contextualising this a link is given to a more wide ranging article from the Wall Street Journal called ‘The High Price of Fast Fashion’ – it is the kind of thing you probably covered in citizenship classes at school. Maybe time to dust of that knowledge and thinking again and, this time, think about how a company that places ethics and responsibility high in its guiding values would want to approach this subject.

There are plenty of other reports online, these are just to give you a start.

BBC News (2020) “Leicester lockdown: Boohoo 'putting workers at risk of coronavirus'”

Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53263733

Bland, A and Makortoff, K. (2020) ‘Boohoo knew of Leicester factory failings, says report’ The Guardian 25 September 2020 available at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/25/boohoo-report-reveals-factory-fire-risk-among-supply-chain-failings

The Guardian podcast The Leicester garment factories exposed by Covid-19 available at https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/jul/09/the-leicester-garment-factories-exposed-by-covid-19

Thomas, D. (2019) ‘The High Cost of Fast Fashion’ The Wall Street Journal available at

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-high-price-of-fast-fashion-11567096637

Part 1

a) Approx. 600 words

b) Approx. 500 words

Part 2

Approx. 400 words