Business plan

Key questions

Why is corporate responsibility important in today’s business environment?
What is the value proposed by ethics in workplaces?
Why should the employees abide by the values and principles of the organization?
What are the factors that drive corporate responsibility and ethics in workplaces?

Methodology

The research is an exploratory one, where it tries to find out the causes and results of ethical and corporate responsibility issues pertaining to the organizations. The data collection methods will be both primary and secondary. The primary data will be gathered through interviews conducted in organizations. In these interviews, insights will be taken from employees regarding the ethical practices of the organization. The secondary data will be gathered from the documents of the organizations that highlight the corporate culture. A sample of 50 organizations will be chosen consisting of 100 participants in each organization.

The data will be both qualitative and quantitative, where information about the topic will be collected from the employees along with numerical figures. Quantitative data will be collected through surveys conducted within the organizations, which will have objective questionnaires. The data will be collected through google forms and analyzed in excel and in sophisticated software like SPSS. Following the qualitative methods of data analysis, it will be done through content analysis. This will categorize and discuss the words, phrases as well as sentences used by employees to come to an overall result about their opinions and thoughts.

Problems in conducting the research

Ethics and corporate responsibility are common issues faced by most of the organizations in the current business environment. Many organizations have prominently stated about ethical practices in their documents but do not practice them in reality (Reinecke et al. 2016). It has been difficult to generate data and information from the employees regarding this subject as most of them have tried to conceal the fact and have provided misleading information about their ethical practices. Challenges occurred while interviewing the employees as most of them were not comfortable in revealing information about their corporate responsibility practices. Some of these employees could not provide proper evidence or examples that will showcase the corporate responsibilities of the organizations. It was difficult to access the documents of the organizations as they were confidential and were not meant for public display. Special permission had to be taken from the concerned authorities for accessing the documents.

Data has been analyzed through qualitative and quantitative methods. The quantitative methods would generate objective results while the qualitative methods would generate subjective results. This is because surveys have generated a single opinion of the participants whereas interviews have generated multiple opinions of a single participant (Groenland and Dana, 2019). Under these circumstances, it has been difficult to come to a common conclusion about the ethical practices of a single organization. Many elements and factors have been considered under which organizations have been classified as ethical or non-ethical. Subjective information is difficult to comprehend and has aggravated errors in the research results.

Timescale

The timescale for the conduction of research is given below.

The first step of the research will be gathering ideas about the raised issue and planning the complete set of tasks to be conducted throughout the research. The duration of the planning phase will be 2 weeks.
The next step will be shortlisting of the potential organizations through specific evidence and examples. These organizations have prominent issues related to ethics and corporate responsibility. The stage will take place in 1 week.
The next step will be the collection of data through interviews and surveys. The interviews and surveys will take place in one organization at a time. This stage is a lengthy and time-taking one which will last till 4 weeks.
The next step will be the sorting of data and information that is gathered from all the organizations. The qualitative and quantitative data will be kept separately for a separate analysis. Respective methods will be applied to analyzing the two kinds of data. The stage will require 1 week for completion.
Data analysis will be done through sophisticated software. This stage will take place in 2 weeks.
The inference will be drawn from the data analysis and results will be published. This will require 3 days.

Introduction

The research is going to focus on the issues and challenges persisting in the organizations in the field of business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Business ethics can be regarded as the moral guidelines which segregate business practices as right, wrong, or fair. Sometimes, employees can make business decisions based on their own consciences which might prove to be unethical for the functioning of the business. In other cases, many companies indulge in fraudulent behavior and activities which not only hamper their corporate cultures but also degrade their reputation in the market. Many employees might feel pressurised by their superiors to get involved in unethical practices within the organizations.

Background and rationale

Corporate social responsibility relates to a business philosophy that stresses on the fact that businesses should behave as good corporate citizens, obeying the moral and ethical principles of the workplace. The firms are also required to comply with the needs and desires of the society, community, and the environment (Alzola, 2017). However, in many businesses corporate social responsibility has not been an ideal concept and these organisations have failed to be socially responsible. The research is going to focus on these organisations which have failed to improvise practices of ethics and corporate social responsibility into their businesses and find out suitable reasons behind such phenomena.

It has been widely noticed that many organisations involve in unethical practices only to make short-term profits for the business. Many organisations have not followed the code of conduct stated in their official documents and have not obeyed laws and regulations in their operations (Heikkurinen, 2018). The research will try to find out insights from these organisations and also find out the extent of deviation from the ethical practices observed in these organisations. It is always realised that ethical behaviour and corporate social responsibility create value for the shareholders of a business and drive value for the organisations.

The organisations can develop an ethical framework for nurturing the growth and development of their business. Many a times the organisations have to cope up with ethical dilemmas in facing decisions related to their business or the people of the business. In such cases, an ethical framework can help in solving the issue (Odongo and Wang, 2018). The first step is to recognise the various ethical dimensions affecting the business. The next step is to identify the key stakeholders and generate choices between ethical and unethical responses. The best response provided by the stakeholders and other employees should be chosen and implemented.

Conclusion

From the above research, it can be inferred that corporate social responsibility and ethical business practices are important components of the organisation and should be taken into account for achieving long-term success in the market. Many organisations have been reluctant to follow moral guidelines and principles. Many employees have been compelled to practice unethical activities within the organisations. Therefore, methods should be applied for raising awareness among these organisations about the importance of ethics and corporate social responsibility.

Critique

Well-being in adolescence attract much research attention in recent years, with a number of studies highlighting the poorer psychological well-being of UK youth compared to youth from other nations. As well as being studied as a topic in its own right, psychological well-being has also been examined with other behaviours including; experiences of bullying in school; use of the internet and social networking sites worries and problems in adolescence. Bullying has for many years been acknowledged as a serious problem in schools. People have suggested that approximately 10 – 20% of adolescents experience some form of bullying in the previous 3 to 6 months and has been found to have a serious and sometimes long term negative impact on psychological well-being.

Technology has transformed the lives of many adolescents, with over 97% of adolescents aged 12 to 16 years owning a mobile phone and approximately that 98% of young people aged 5 to 18 have access to a computer, technology has become an integral part of the lives of many teenagers. However, much media and research has tended to ignore the beneficial aspects of technology, focusing instead on the risks and dangers associated with the use of technology. Research studies have highlighted that some students suffer with depression and higher levels of social anxiety. Conversely other studies have identified many positive aspects to internet use, particularly in terms of the benefit to education.

The sentences have slight grammatical errors and minute sentence construction errors.
In some sentences, usage of article is not appropriate.
Some sentences have multiple subject-verb disagreements (singular tense has been used with plural words)
Choice of words have not been very proper in the last sentence of the paragraph.

References

Alzola, M., 2017. Character-based business ethics. In The Oxford handbook of virtue.

Groenland, E. and Dana, L.P., 2019. Qualitative Methodologies and Data Collection Methods: Toward Increased Rigour in Management Research (Vol. 1). World Scientific.

Heikkurinen, P., 2018. Strategic corporate responsibility: a theory review and synthesis. Journal of global responsibility.

Odongo, N.H. and Wang, D., 2018. Corporate responsibility, ethics and accountability. Social Responsibility Journal.

Reinecke, J., Arnold, D.G. and Palazzo, G., 2016. Qualitative methods in business ethics, corporate responsibility, and sustainability research. Business Ethics Quarterly, 26(4), pp.xiii-xxii.

Research proposal on corporate responsibility and ethics in business firms

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