MN22026 Corporate Responsibility: Principles And Perspectives, Assignment Semester 1, University of Bath

Assignment Brief 

Your assignment consists of one 2,500-word essay. This essay is an individual piece of work. It should present an analysis of a corporate responsibility issue/challenge faced by a company of your choice, applying a particular principle covered in class. The analysis requires the theory and arguments presented in this unit to be applied to a chosen company in order to rigorously analyse one issue/challenge related to that firm’s corporate responsibility strategy: the nature of the challenges faced by the firm, the strategic options available and the strategy that the firm has chosen.

The assignment must be double-spaced, have one-inch margins on all sides, be a Word document (.doc or .docx; not .pdf), conform to the word count restriction (within which everything but the list of references and list of contents is counted) and be submitted via Moodle. Assignments should appropriately reference relevant academic literature and any other materials used (using the Harvard Referencing System). Assignments should also conform to the University’s regulations on plagiarism (see Student Regulations, in particular 7.4 and 15.3, and also the information regarding plagiarism provided by the library).

Please note: All submissions will be analysed using plagiarism detection software.

ASSIGNMENT STRUCTURE

The assignment should be written as a three-part, structured case study based on a company of your choice. It should comprise the following numbered sections:

Part One: WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE/ISSUE?

In part one you need to identify and present a challenge/issue that your chosen firm faces or faced with respect to its corporate responsibility. In describing the challenge, you should identify:

• what is the challenge/issue?
• why the firm faces the challenge (e.g. Is it because of the impacts of their operations? Is it because of some positive action the firm has implemented? Is it because of some negative event/incident associated with the firm?);
• any key stakeholder groups associated with the challenge/issue (e.g. employees, surrounding community, costumers, the natural environment, etc);
• the key impacts associated with the challenge (e.g. discrimination, workplace injuries, unfair pay, pollution etc).

Please note that in order to identify and collect information about the challenge you chose, you should read not only corporate reports and the company’s website, but also sources such as media news items, civil society organisations’ reports, and any research papers or other documents that cover both the company’s activities and the relevant social and environmental impacts associated with your firm and issue. By reviewing different points of view over the same topic you will be better equipped to draw your own conclusions and analysis.

Part Two: WHAT IS THE PRINCIPLE?

In part 2 you should select and present one principle of corporate responsibility, i.e. one of the eight principles we covered in this unit. This is the principle you will use in your analysis in part 3 to evaluate the firm’s behaviour.
You do not need to prepare a lengthy description of all aspects of the principle and theoretical framework associated with it. You should instead seek to establish detail and clarity in relation to the specific concepts and/or arguments that you seek to apply in Part 3, clearly explaining the key features of key concepts and arguments, relating to your chosen principle.

Part Three: WHAT SHOULD THE FIRM DO (OR HAVE DONE)?

In Part 3, you should apply the principle of corporate responsibility you have introduced in Part 2. More specifically, you should use the arguments associated with the particular principle you chose in order to evaluate how the firm behaved in the context of the challenged presented in Part 1, and identify how the firm should respond (or should have responded) to the challenge/issue (i.e. a strategy that, according to that principle of corporate responsibility you applied, would imply responsible behaviour on the part of the firm).

You will need to use the theory/theoretical concepts (for example: utilitarian ethics, rights ethics, institutional theory, stakeholder theory, etc) to draw conclusions about what it takes for a firm to behave responsibly. In doing so, you should explicitly draw on the concepts and arguments you seek to apply, as well as their implications for the firm and the challenge it faces.