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Business Ethics
2,500 words
Success Through Business Ethics – Ethical Analysis of an FMCG Brand
This assessment is an individual written report for the Success Through Business Ethics module. The assignment requires students to critically examine ethical issues and challenges within a Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) brand and evaluate how ethical theories, decision-making approaches and leadership practices can be applied to understand unethical business behaviour. The report has a total word limit of 2,500 words and accounts for 100% of the assessment. Students are required to select an FMCG brand that has been involved in unethical practices between 2000 and 2025. The selected brand may originate or operate anywhere in the world and may still be operating or may have ceased operations. Students must ensure that sufficient information is available about the organisation and its external environment before selecting the company. The report begins with an introduction explaining the nature of business ethics and introducing the selected FMCG brand and the unethical business practices associated with it. The main analysis requires students to select three normative ethical theories, explain their key principles and critically evaluate whether the company's behaviour adhered to or violated those principles. Students must use this analysis to explain why the identified business practices can be considered unethical. A second analytical section requires students to choose either ethical decision-making or social accounting. The selected concept must be explained and then critically applied to the unethical practices of the chosen FMCG brand. A further analysis focuses on the leadership style of the company's leadership team. Students must explain the principles of the leadership style, consider its positive and negative aspects, and analyse how the leaders responded to the unethical business practices. The report concludes by summarising the key findings from the analysis and providing two important recommendations for the selected brand. The recommendations should be directly relevant to the unethical practices identified and should be justified using evidence and findings from the report. Where a selected company has ceased operating, recommendations should still be provided on the assumption that the brand is operating. The assessment develops students' ability to apply ethical frameworks to business decision-making, understand ethical decision-making and corporate social responsibility, align ethics and values with business contexts, analyse ethical challenges in business strategies and operations, and evaluate moral dilemmas using economic, legal and ethical considerations. The report must use Harvard referencing for in-text citations and the reference list, with the reference list organised alphabetically.
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Consultancy Project
1,464 words
Enhancing Sustainable Supply Chain Practices through Digital Transformation: A Case Study of Unilever Plc
This consultancy project proposal examines how digital transformation can enhance sustainable supply chain practices at Unilever Plc. Unilever is presented as a multinational fast-moving consumer goods organisation operating across more than 190 markets, with a complex global supply chain and sustainability commitments linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The proposal focuses on the challenges associated with achieving supply chain transparency, managing fragmented sustainability data, and balancing sustainable sourcing and operational costs. The project investigates how emerging digital technologies, particularly blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), could support greater transparency, traceability, operational efficiency and sustainability within Unilever's supply chain. The organisational analysis identifies issues including the complexity of tracing raw materials across multi-tier supply chains, fragmented procurement and sustainability information systems, and the tension between sustainability investments and short-term operational costs. The proposal also considers infrastructure readiness, data security and employee upskilling as factors affecting digital transformation. The research aims to examine how digital transformation technologies could improve sustainable supply chain planning at Unilever while supporting long-term business and environmental goals. Three objectives are established: examining sustainability challenges affecting Unilever's global supply chain, assessing how blockchain, IoT and AI could improve transparency, traceability and efficiency, and proposing strategic recommendations for integrating digital innovation into Unilever's sustainability framework. The central research question examines how digital transformation can contribute to an ethical, transparent and sustainable supply chain while maintaining operational efficiency. A qualitative exploratory case-study research design is proposed. The main emphasis is on secondary data, including Unilever's annual reports, sustainability information, digital transformation publications, company news, industry articles and analyst reports. Where feasible, primary data may be collected through semi-structured expert interviews and a short qualitative questionnaire. The proposed analysis includes thematic analysis, document review and descriptive statistics using relevant secondary numerical data. Validity is supported through triangulation, while reliability is addressed through consistent coding and an audit trail. The proposal also addresses ethical considerations, including research integrity, transparency, confidentiality, informed consent, anonymity, GDPR requirements, plagiarism avoidance, Harvard referencing and potential corporate bias or greenwashing. Overall, the project explores the potential contribution of digital innovation to Unilever's sustainability objectives and the wider responsible digitalisation of the FMCG supply chain.
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Business Ethics / Corporate Social Responsibility
2,500 words
Success Through Business Ethics (BS846) — Individual Report: Ethical Failure in an FMCG Brand, Moral Philosophy, Decision-Making and Leadership Response
This Level 7 individual report examines a real fast-moving consumer goods brand that was found to have engaged in unethical business practices between 2000 and 2023, and works through why the failure happened rather than simply recounting what occurred. The brand is selected on the basis that sufficient documented evidence exists about both the company and its external environment — regulatory findings, investigative journalism, financial disclosures and NGO reporting — so that every analytical claim can be supported rather than assumed. The introduction establishes what business ethics means as an academic field, drawing on recognised sources, before introducing the chosen brand and setting out concisely what the unethical practices were, when they came to light and who was harmed. The first and largest analytical section applies three moral philosophical bases from the module to the case. Each is used as a lens rather than described in isolation: the utilitarian calculation the company appears to have made and where its accounting of harm was deficient, the duty-based obligations to consumers, workers or communities that were breached regardless of outcome, and the character and organisational culture questions that virtue ethics raises about how such decisions became normal internally. The evaluation is genuinely critical — it identifies where the company's conduct could be partially defended under one framework while failing badly under another, which is where the analytical marks sit. The second section takes one of the two theoretical approaches offered and applies it in depth. Where ethical decision-making is chosen, the report traces the sequence of judgements that produced the outcome, examining awareness, intent, organisational pressure and the moral intensity of the issue. Where social accounting is chosen, it assesses what the company disclosed about its social and environmental impact against what was actually occurring, and what that gap reveals about the purpose its reporting served. The third section evaluates leadership. It characterises the prevailing leadership style from the evidence and then focuses on the response once the practices were exposed — whether leaders denied, deflected, settled quietly or accepted accountability — supported by tables, figures and quoted material showing the consequences in share price, revenue, regulatory penalties and documented social or environmental harm. Three concrete recommendations follow, each derived directly from a failure identified in the preceding analysis and justified specifically for this brand rather than offered as generic good practice, with a short conclusion drawing the sections together. Harvard referencing is applied in text and in an alphabetised reference list.
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