QAB020X601S Business Ethics and Responsible Management

The exact proportions will vary and this is part of your challenge to write informatively and concisely across the required tasks.

How will we support you with your assessment?

·Assessment briefing Week 1 (lecture)

·Briefing material and guides in addition to the assessment brief (Please make sure that you read these)

·Dedicated seminar session on your formative assessment  - see LTAF for the weeks

·Prompt feedback session on your formative assessment and tutorial session to support the development of your summative assessment.

·An assignment writing workshop in week 12

·Tutorial session to support the completion of your summative assessment in Week 13.

How will your work be assessed?

Your work will be assessed by a subject expert who will use the marking grid provided in this assessment brief.  When you access your marked work it is important that you reflect on the feedback so that you can use it to improve future assignments.

Between you handing in your work and then receiving your feedback and marks within 20 days, there are a number of quality assurance processes that we go through to ensure that students receive marks which reflects their work. A brief summary is provided below.

·Step One – The module and marking team meet to agree standards, expectations and how feedback will be provided.

·Step Two – A subject expert will mark your work using the criteria provided in the assessment brief.

·Step Three – A moderation meeting takes place where all members of the teaching and marking team will review the marking of others to confirm whether they agree with the mark and feedback.

·Step Four – Work at Levels 5 and 6 then goes to an external examiner who will review a sample of work to confirm that the marking between different staff is consistent and fair.

Step Five – Your mark and feedback is processed by the Office and made available to you.

a)You are now required to write a brief report to senior managers at Ladbrokes from the perspective of an employee who has been asked to write a report for senior managers about the companies approach to problem gamblers and restructuring its workforce by deciding redundancies through the mechanism outlined in the story. You will need to explore and write about a number of factors including - Why should the company be looking at this issue from the perspective of ethics? How might this issue influence the public image of the company? What alternatives ways are there to think about a business’ role in society? Who/what are the stakeholders impacted in the scenario you are reporting on and how are they impacted on? Are there examples of business that act responsibly and ones that do not? You should illustrate this by including research you can find e.g. 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 (here you may want to look at the Harvard Business Review paper linked above which has some pointers on avoiding ethical crises  -but remember to do your own research and thinking too).

Submission consisting of three parts in total. You should look at 5 cases of businesses that have attracted attention due to some aspect of practice. You should choose the ONE of these that interests you and complete the following.

Part 1-A REPORT

This part is based on the selected company. Please remember there are 5 company case studies available and you need to choose one.

The suggested word count for this part of your assignment is 1200—1400 WORDS without the references. The main materials could be found in weeks 1, 2 and 3.

This part should consist of five main sections:

1.Ethical issue or issues – you need to identify the ethical issue and explain, using relevant sources.

2.Role of business in society – you are asked to discuss how the company and the ethical issue identified affected the society.

3.Five Stakeholders – you need to outline five stakeholders in your case study and discuss how they have been affected by the ethical issue identified.

4.Examples of good and bad ethics – you are required to find two companies with good and bad ethical practices. Here the use of relevant materials is crucial. You might want to refer to such sources as BBC, Financial Times and other journals.

5.Recommendations – You need to provide a number of recommendations for the company, which are aligned with above discussion. Please remember these are recommendations rather than conclusion.

Please provide a reference list for this part.

Part 1-B TWO THEORIES

This part is also based on your selected case study.

The suggested word count for this part is 900-1000 words. The key materials could be found in weeks 3, 4 and 5.

This part should consist of 4 sections:

1.Describe the theories – you need to discuss the theories and explain their key aspects in your own words. References are key here, as you are using academic sources. Please do not copy and paste.

2.Apply the theories – you need to apply the theories to the case study you have selected.

3.Critique – you should provide advantages and disadvantages (pros and cons) of theories you have selected.

4.Recommendations – you are required to provide improvements for the ethical issue/issues identified in Part 1a, based on the two theories.

Please provide a reference list for this part.

Part 2 Reflective essay

This part requires you to provide a reflective essay on ethical leadership management. This part is NOT related to the case study. This part of the assignment 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.

This part should include four sections:

1.You need to discuss what is an ethical leadership management is in an un/ethical organisational culture.

2.You need to analyse how to maintain integrity and compliance in an un/ethical business environment.

3.You need to reflect (hence reflective essay) on your own experience and knowledge. You may wish to provide examples from your own experience.

Please provide a reference list for this part.

This is a recommendation and following this structure does not automatically guarantee a high mark. You mark depends on a number of other factors such as your writing style, understanding of the course material, application/analysis, grammar and references.