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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