CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY: PRINCIPLES AND PERSPECTIVES [MN20445]

ASSIGNMENTS
You will write TWO, 1,500-word papers, each of which presents an analysis of a company of your choice. More
specifically, each assignment considers a challenge for the firm with respect to its corporate responsibility, and
the analysis should apply 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 issues
surrounding that firm’s corporate responsibility strategy – the nature of the challenges faced, the strategic
options available and the strategy that the firm has chosen.

The assignments 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 is
counted) and be submitted via Moodle. Assignments should appropriately reference relevant academic
literature and any other relevant materials (using the Harvard Referencing System), and should 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, Turnitin.

You must select the same company for both assignments, but the two assignments must apply different
principles of corporate responsibility.

Paper 1 (1500 words)

Part One: WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE?
Part Two: WHAT SHOULD THE FIRM DO (OR HAVE DONE)?

Paper 2 (1500 words)

Part One: WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE? (Same company, but a different challenge)
Part Two: WHAT SHOULD THE FIRM DO (OR HAVE DONE)?

ASSIGNMENT STRUCTURE FOR BOTH PAPERS

Each assignment should comprise the following numbered sections:

Part One: WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE?

Identify a challenge that the firm faces with respect to corporate responsibility. In describing the challenge,
you should clearly identify:
 why the firm faces the challenge (e.g. Is it because of the impacts associated with their operations? Is
it because of some positive action the firm has taken? Is it because of some negative event associated
with the firm?);
 any key institutional pressures (e.g. health and safety regulators or green consumerism) that are
associated with the challenge;
 any key affected stakeholder groups (e.g. employees or the natural environment);
 the key impacts (e.g. unfair pay and workplace injuries) that are associated with the challenge.
In order to identify these challenges, you should read not only corporate reports and the company’s website,
but also media reports and any research papers that offer commentary on both the company’s activities and
its significant social and environmental impacts.
Part Two: WHAT SHOULD THE FIRM DO (OR HAVE DONE)?

Here, you should apply a principle of corporate responsibility (i.e. one of the nine covered in class). More
specifically, you should use the arguments associated with a particular principle in order to identify how the
firm should respond (or should have responded) to the challenge (i.e. a strategy that, according to that
principle of corporate responsibility, would imply responsible behaviour on the part of the firm).

This, of course, implies the use of theory (e.g. utilitarian ethics, rights ethics, institutional theory or stakeholder
theory) to draw conclusions about what it takes for a firm to behave responsibly. In doing so, you should
clearly explain the concepts and arguments you seek to apply, as well as their implications for the firm and the
challenge it faces.

SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ASSIGNMENTS

Does the firm have to be controversial?

You should choose a firm that permits you to identify two challenges that, due to the nature of the firm and its
activities, arise for the firm. It is not required that the firm is poorly positioned on these challenges. They may
instead have positioned on one or both of these challenges in ways that are creditable or relatively neutral.
The point is that there is some identifiable aspect of the firm’s actions or impacts that ensures that the firm
faces the challenge – the firm may have met the challenge and acted responsibly, or failed to respond and
behaved irresponsibly.

How general can the challenges be?

One might be tempted to define challenges very broadly, along the same lines as we define dimensions of
corporate social performance (e.g. environmental, community-oriented, employee-related) or by listing
stakeholder groups (e.g. the local community, employees, investors). Neither approach is suitable. Each
dimension of CSP and each stakeholder group provides for a host of different challenges – for employees, we
might think of gender discrimination, racial discrimination, unionisation, child labour, low wages, excessive
working hours, and a vast array of others. Though challenges likely relate to particular dimensions of CSP, and
are expectably more relevant for a subset of stakeholders, challenges should be defined in a manner that
identifies a particular form of impact that arises within the relationship between business and society. For
example, one might focus upon those negative health impacts that can arise for employees as a result of their
working conditions. Doing so leads to a focus upon employee-related CSP and the employee stakeholder
group, but the challenge identified relates to employee health and safety (or some similarly phrased wording).

How different do the challenges need to be?

The two challenges that the firm faces with respect to corporate responsibility should be distinct
from each other, such that they can be separately analysed. For example, the two challenges may:
relate to different institutional pressures (e.g. health and safety regulators and green consumerism);
affect different stakeholder groups (e.g. employees and the natural environment); and/or be
associated with different types of impacts (e.g. unfair pay and workplace injuries). In describing each
challenge, you should be clear why the firm faces the challenge (e.g. Is it because of the impacts
associated with their operations? Is it because of some positive action the firm has taken? Is it
because of some negative event associated with the firm?).

Are the challenges I have chosen sufficiently different?

If you are unsure whether the challenges you have chosen – say, two environmental challenges, both of which
relate to impacts on environmental sustainability – are sufficiently separate, I advise that you consider whether
it is credible that the firm could be differently assessed on the two challenges. For example, a firm may be
assessed to have taken appropriate measures to safeguard habitats (say, woodland habitats in the south of
England), but may be judged to have performed poorly on climate change. Additionally, you may consider
whether the two challenges are such that the associated corporate responsibilities demand to be separately
analysed because the responsibilities arise for different reasons. For example, this would be the case if: a firm’s
responsibilities on one challenge are best understood with respect to an imperative to protect human rights,
but its responsibilities on the other challenge are best understood with respect to an imperative to manage
reputational risks.

How many principles should be applied?

In each assignment, you should analyse one challenge and apply one principle. Moreover, the two
assignments should analyse different challenges and different principles. Therefore, across the
coursework, you should apply two principles in total.

How much discussion of theory is expected?

The point of the assignments is to test your understanding of the syllabus of the unit – and please note that
the unit syllabus is dominated by theory. The objective here is not to investigate a company for its own sake.
Rather, I ask you to consider a case because it permits you to demonstrate your understanding of the unit by
applying the material to a particular scenario. Applying the theoretical content of the unit to a case is a
challenging test of your understanding. So, when composing your assignments, you should be mindful of the
need to provide enough information about the chosen company to permit the reader to understand your
analysis, but your primary focus should be upon taking every opportunity to demonstrate a rigorous and
detailed understanding of key theoretical approaches to corporate responsibility.

Is the assignment structure flexible?

No. As stated in the assignment outline, each assignment should comprise two numbered sections. In
composing each of these four sections (two in Assignment 1 and two in Assignment 2), you should presume
the reader's knowledge of all preceding sections.

Is the word limit flexible?

No. The word count restrictions for the assignments will be enforced with no extra 10%. Thus, the upper-limit
on word count for each assignment (excluding the reference list) is 1,500 not 1,650.