Assessment Brief – Business Perspectives Coursework
General Instructions
The work must be carried out individually and independently – you should neither seek nor accept any advice or guidance from anyone other than the Module Co-ordinator. You are required to produce a typed document, using an appropriate business font/size (Calibri or Times New Roman 11), of a specified 2,000 word length (+/- 10%). The word count excludes the title page and reference list.
Your essay should apply relevant theory, models, frameworks and current issues using business management vocabulary and draw upon your own secondary and tertiary research. Throughout this assignment, students should demonstrate their skills, knowledge, and expertise in applying their learning.
Specific Requirements
To cover learning outcome 3.
Table 1: Learning Outcomes
Learning Outcome 3
Discuss key ethical and professional issues impacting organisations, including codes of practice, morals, principles, and behaviours.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an increasingly important function to businesses of all kinds. CSR can be adopted as a reaction to external pressures or as a deliberate proactive strategy to engage with and mediate society’s expectations. This is especially true for businesses with transformation processes which, while providing society with demanded good and services, result in harmful by-products. Stakeholders are most often the first to raise society’s alarms to harmful health and social costs.
You are required to:
Using one of the provided business environments, evaluate CSRs effectiveness in resolving stakeholder concerns. Your answer should consider ethical concerns, specific to your chosen setting, and evaluate how effective models of CSR are in encompassing the moral responsibility of business.
These settings are:
Airlines and climate change
Online gambling and addiction
Cosmetics and animal testing
Some environments may contain inherent contradictions to claims of ‘responsibility’. These observations are valuable in your evaluation
The answer should take the form of a 2,000 word structured essay (+/-10%), allowing the use of headings, appropriately labelled graphs, images, and appendices. Any graphs, images, diagrams, etc., must pertain to the section to which they are attached.
This allows you to capitalise on many sources of information when introducing key stakeholders. Lecture material will provide models of CSR; however, considerable value is added by consulting broader academic literature via the library collections and Business Source Complete
You will find the following structure helpful:
Introduction – introduce the task and provide clear signposting for essay contents
Context/Background – introduce the selected environment, identify the primary ethical concerns, identify prominent companies and key stakeholders.
Literature – this is where you demonstrate your academic reading. Include your selected CSR models. Certain models will be more resonant to specific environments.
Discussion – evaluate how well the models map onto the problems of your chosen environment. Are there problems or inconsistencies with the models?
You may find it valuable to use examples of CSR policies employed by organisations within the industry to address stakeholder concerns.
Conclusion – Provide a conclusion on the effectiveness of CSR in your chosen environment. Predictions on the future and/or potential changes to improve CSR effectiveness in future are encouraged.
