The intent of this paper is to present an essay to identify a business issue focusing on business leadership, the influence of social media on business and corporate social responsibility. It is being presented by an intern of Tesco Company as its research on the relevant issue of the company. The essay is majorly concentrating on supporting the organization to improve its responsible leadership profile in the market by providing some of the recommendations for its current policies and activities.
Tesco is one of the well-known general merchandiser and multinational groceries retailer with headquarter in England, UK. All over the world, it is the third largest retailer in terms of revenue. The company was established by Jack Cohen in 1919 (Tesco PLC, 2019).
Sustainable development is said to be the organizing principle for encountering the goals of human development while concurrently supporting the capability of natural systems to offer ecosystem services and natural resources upon which the society, as well as economy, depend. Sustainable development is defined as the growth or development that encounters the needs of the present generation by not compromising the capability of the future generation to encounter their requirements (Barkemeyer, Holt, Preuss and Tsang, 2014). Corporate sustainability has today become a catchword in businesses. Number of businesses has considered sustainability their main priority for moving forward. The three pillars of sustainability are the environment, social, and economy (Hall, Daneke and Lenox, 2010). Climate change is one of the important aspects of sustainable development and a part of the environment pillar. However, the other sustainability pillars that impact the performance of Tesco in the market are social and economic.
Social Pillar – The social pillar is related to the concept of social license. A sustainable business must have the support as well as approval of its stakeholders, employees and the community in which it operates its business (Grubb, 2014). Under this head, the major business issue that is experienced by Tesco is food wastage. As per the report presented by The Guardian (2014), the company is involved in a high amount of food wastage. This information revealed when the company introduced its new campaign with the title ‘No Time for Waste’ where it planned to encourage everyone to reduce food wastage. Under this campaign, the company itself revealed the data of food wastage at Tesco, which backfired it and became a huge controversy and sustainable issue for the company. In its report, the company revealed that the total amount of food wastage was 28,500 tonnes in the year 2013 (Thorpe, 2014). This negatively impacted the reputation as well as the performance of the company in the market. Food wastage is considered to be one of the biggest social concerns as it is impacting the people living under the poverty line. In the United Kingdom in 2013-2014 were 39.6% and people who lie in this category even do not get food (Office of National Statistics, 2014). Besides this, there is a number of people of society who are involved in producing the food products whose efforts were wasted by the company.
Economic Pillar – Sustainability’s economic pillar is something where all the companies feel like they are on the firm ground. In order to be sustainable, businesses should be profitable. This means that profit could not trump the other sustainability pillars like social and environment. Profit is not just the criteria of the economic pillar. Activities or operations of the business that lie in this pillar are proper governance, risk management, and compliance (World Bank, 2012). According to World Bank, the profitability of the business is important but it is not everything to consider the economic stability of a business under this pillar. The profitability level of Tesco is high but, the other economic pillar activities like responsible leadership are one of the major issues that the company is presently experiencing. According to the statement of the Former Chief Executive that is Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco has lost the trust of its millions of customer’s dues to the failure of the leadership under Philip Clarke. Due to the lack of effective leadership, a war with L’Oreal is initiated by Tesco where the company demanded £1m as the disputed payment (Ahmed, 2015). L’Oreal threatened the company through a legal action due to which the reputation and also the financial status of Tesco has been negatively impacted. Even the company has lost the trust of millions of its customers.
One of the recommendations for improving the sustainable development program that is ‘No Time for Waste’ of Tesco is to upgrade the inventory system with the latest technology. The company must use the software capabilities for making scalable inventory systems such that the deliveries are customized and customers receive all the products that were demanded. In addition to this, if Tesco wants its ‘No Time for Waste’ campaign to be successful, it must not reveal the data of food wastage, in its place, it should donate the food in a charity such that poor people can also get the chance to consume the high-quality food.
Considering the lack of ineffective leadership in Tesco and the controversy that rose due to that, the company is recommended to initiate a system under which it can give and get feedback from the employees while taking important business decisions. In addition to this, the company must focus on strengthening the relationship with its suppliers in place of raising the issues with them, as it leads to diminishing the market value and reputation of the business. This could be done by initiative communication with the supplier regarding any issue before taking any big or harsh decision. Besides this, the company must arrange a regular get together parties and meeting with the suppliers in order to improve the relationship with them and discuss the points that are essential in order to be on the same path of success and growth (Rainey, 2010).
Corporate social responsibility is said to be a self-regulating model of business that supports the business to be socially responsible towards the public, stakeholders, and itself. By focusing on the CSR, which is also known as corporate citizenship, businesses could be aware of the kind of influence they have on every society aspect like environmental, social, and economic. CSR is considered to be a wide concept that could be converted into different forms based on the industry and company (Witkowska, 2016). Some of the important aspects of corporate social responsibility are social inclusion, poverty, inequalities, and gender.
Social Inclusion – The World Summit organized for the Social development in the year 1995 in Copenhagen determined the term inclusive society which is considered to be a society for all, where all the people, with responsibilities and rights, perform an active part to play. This type of an inclusive society is armed with instruments that include diversity and enable active participation of the people in their social, economic, and political lives. Social inclusion is the procedure through which efforts are exerted for ensuring equal opportunities – that every individual, irrespective of their family or background, can attain the complete potential in life (United Nations, 2019). The efforts that are included in this are actions and policies that endorse equal availability of the services and allow participation in the procedure of decision making that influence their living.
Poverty – Poverty is considered to be a state or situation in which an individual or community lacks in terms of financial resources and the basics that are needed to live a standard living. Poverty is all about the level of income from employment is very low due to which a person is unable to meet his or her basic needs (Jensen, 2010). People and families that lie in this category may live without an appropriate house, medical facilities, healthy food, and clean water. Business in today’s scenario is taking their interest in eliminating poverty from their country through different activities and meeting their corporate social responsibilities. Some of the efforts under this are a donation, offering employment, providing fair wages, etc.
Gender Inequality – Gender inequality discusses that women and men are not treated equally which eventually influences the living experience of an individual. These types of differences take place in society from discrepancies in cultural, biology, psychology, and cultural norms (Mencarini and Sironi, 2010). Few of these distinctions are empirically stranded whereas others seem to be socially made. Studies have reflected the diverse gender lived experience in different domains comprising personality, family life, political affiliations, education, interests, life expectancy, and careers. Gender inequality has been observed in different ways in different cultures. Gender inequality in today’s scenario has become a main topic of corporate social responsibilities. Businesses are contributing in reducing the gender inequality by offering equal growth opportunities and wages to all the genders.
Private Sector – IKEA is one of the well-known multinational groups of Europe that is involved in designing and selling ready-made furniture, home accessories, and kitchen appliances. The country was founded in 1943 in Sweden (IKEA, 2019). Besides selling furniture, the company is also involved in meeting its corporate social responsibilities in different ways. The company is supporting globally to the communities in crises by donating toys, offering access to clean drinking water, and building schools. Recently, the foundation of IKEA has contributed $2.3 million to produce clean electricity for one million people in East Africa and India (Payseno, 2018).
Public Sector – Unilever is a transnational company of consumer goods with headquarter in the United Kingdom (Unilever, 2019b). The sustainable living plan of Unilever Company is supporting the company to decouple its growth from the environmental perspective while augmenting its positive impact on society. The plan of the company is comprised of three huge objectives to be attained, reinforced by nine promises and targets covering its economic, environmental, and social performance all over its value chain. The company is continuously working with other parties to concentrate on the areas where the business can drive the huge change and provision of the Sustainable Development Goals of Unilever. The three huge goals are enhancing the well-being as well as health for around 1 billion people by 2020, decreasing the negative environmental impact by 2030, and improving the livelihoods for millions of people by 2020 (Unilever, 2019a).
Voluntary Sector – Habitat for Humanity is an international non-governmental as well as a non-profit organization that was established in the year 1976 by Millard and Linda Fuller (Habitat, 2019). This NGO has worked in collaboration with different organizations. One of the biggest examples of its collaboration for the development is with Procter & Gamble to collect the Costa Rica Cycle 564 tons of everyday plastic waste, for turning it into liveable homes. With the use of innovative technology both the companies used a new and innovative construction method depending on the recycled blocks of plastic, for building homes that are water as well as humidity-proof, anti-seismic, fireproof, and they do not require maintenance (P&G, 2019).
In the globalised market, companies are bringing new initiatives, policies and plans through which they are trying and putting efforts to become the market leader. The corporate organisations are trying to become the market leader which leads to the impact on poverty. The impact of the business on poverty can be positive or negative which means “Business as a cause of poverty or business as a solution”. In the research, this has been witnessed that poverty can lead to an adverse effect on the operations of the business. The poverty among the society is linked with the illiteracy that can affect the productivity of the company (Hart, Sharma and Halme, 2016). It has been witnessed that employees with poor literacy skills may struggle to fully understand workflow institutions. Every company in a competitive environment looks for the employees who have skills and can contribute to the high productivity of the company. However, it has been proved that employees who lack the skills generally make the work-related mistakes which leads to the loss of the business and also bring the decline in the confidence level of the customers. For corporate organisations, it is essential to maintain a connection with the community in the globalised atmosphere. Poverty leads to the impact on the community where the business operates and they are the root cause behind it (Wilson and Wilson, 2017).
The companies cannot meet their basic need of the fixed salary by offering them work to get indulge in the illegal activity to maintain their survival. However, this has been found that most of the companies think for the community and responsible leaders of the company take actions for the benefit of the community and poverty within the nation. The responsible leader of the company brings the initiatives for the poor people. Although, they can offer the salary to them because they are not equipped with skills which makes the situations worst. It has been found that there are areas with the rampant criminality that can render for the location unsuitable for the business that might affect the businesses to move to the safer areas, perpetuating the cycle of poverty as well as the crime present within the community. The major reason behind poverty is the lack of access to the markets as well as the resources. The companies can address this by offering the skills training as well as the financing options to disadvantaged people as well as the communities (Kraay and McKenzie, 2014). The training related to the skills will help the citizen to attain the abilities for quality jobs and this also offers the fixed payment in terms of salary to the people. This salary will lead to the major changes in the community as well as in the lifestyle of the person.
Also, many corporate companies are offering women with economic opportunities which are just another opportunity to support the alleviate poverty (Kareem, 2015). In the globalised world, the companies have the mind-set that the women are required to be independent so that they can do the work to become financially independent. This shows that there are businesses that are considered as the solution to poverty (Kopnina, 2017). However, there are some of the organisations who want to become in the leading position but they are not contributing towards it. It has been found that one of Tesco worker participated in 38 Degrees’ Campaigns By You Website and the employee was supported by the team at the ShareAction (Priestly, 2014). This involvement of the worker shows a message to Tesco that they should provide a wage that makes ends to meet for all their staff.
It has been found that 34,000 people joined this campaign showing Tesco that their clients as well as potential customer care about how they make the payment for their workers. Further, approx. 8000 members of the 38 Degrees then emailed him directly to ensure that they value the living wage of the employees (Priestly, 2014). Further, it is highlighted to Tesco that Living wage to their customers is important. The entire research shows that Tesco belongs to those leading company who is least concern about the community welfare in terms of poverty. On this Tesco, the company says that they provide the benefit packages that make up for the lower rates of pay and with this pension contribute in discount voucher on the home. After the incidence, it has been found that retail sector took the poverty pay on a serious note which allows them to take the steps through which they can pay to workers enough so that they can meet the costs of living. Tesco is among the several big companies of the UK like Sainsbury’s, Sports Direct, and Primark who don’t pay the fair amount (Priestly, 2014). This shows that Tesco being the leader in the globalised situation can’t contribute in controlling the poverty. On the other hand, Tesco is considered as one of the companies who cause poverty by not paying the fair amount and they don’t take any initiative to bring the improvement in the current poverty situation of the company.
Leadership is considered as the art of motivating the group of people to act towards attaining the common goal. In the business, leadership is referred to as direct workers as well as colleagues with the strategy to meet the needs of the company (Antonakis and Day, 2017). In the globalised world, the company might expand its operations in different countries across the world. Thus, organisations can be global as multi-cultural but each organisation prefers different approaches of leadership. In the dominant research about leadership, it has been found that different approaches can be adopted by global and multi-cultural companies. These approaches include behaviour approach, situational approach, trait approach and others.
The behaviour approach is related to the specific behaviour of the leader and this approach offers the real marketing potential as the behaviours can be conditioned in the manner that one can have a specific response. The major motive of the approach is that how leaders combine the behaviour of a leader with the goal. The global, as well as the multi-cultural organisations, implement the behaviour approach to achieve the goals. In the global market, leaders of the organisation adopt this approach which helps them to form the interpersonal relationship with the subordinates. The behaviour of the leaders towards the employee’s matters a lot in the global market because the company keeps the standardized services as well as benefits that they are offering (Carter, DeChurch, Braun and Contractor, 2015). At the global level, the leaders will find the employees present with different behaviours which are required to acknowledge by the companies. According to the behaviour of the employees, the leaders take the actions that can help in adhering to employee’s gaols as well as the organisation goals. For instance; Coca-cola global company perform their operations which makes them understand the needs of the employees and act accordingly. For motivating the employees, the company provide rewards and recognitions in terms of monetary aspects.
The global and multi-cultural leader’s uses this approach as it contributes in raising the morale builds up the confidence as well as the spirit among the team members with the lack of good behaviour will discard him as the leader (Grint, Jones, Holt and Storey, 2016). For example; Wal-Mart Company deals in the multi-cultural environment where they find a different culture where they operate the business. To understand the behaviour of the different employees presents within the company, Wal-Mart leader needs to adopt this approach.
Apart from this, another approach which is generally adopted by the leaders includes the situational approach. Leaders find different situations in which they bring changes in their practice or theories. The situations change due to which the leaders bring the changes in their leadership strategies which they want to adopt for a particular environment. It has been determined that global and multi-cultural companies deal in a competitive and dynamic environment due to which they deal with diverse situations (Schedlitzki and Edwards, 2017). The leaders are the one who determines the differences in every situation and accordingly they act. While performing the work, the situations make the leaders think for the distinct aspects of leadership style which include leader-member relations, the structure of task and the position power.
According to the above table, the leaders of the company makes the decisions which help them to ensure that they are deciding effectively after considering the situation. This approach of the leadership is majorly adopted by the companies because it assists them in conducting the teamwork which is possible with the proper collaboration among different members. Along with this, the benefits of the approach include flexible leadership practices and style. The situational approach of the leadership helps the leader to understand the maturity level among the employees as they are the one who needs to deal in the situation (Haque, Fernando and Caputi, 2019). For example; TESCO Company decides within the global environment according to the situation in which they need to delegate the leadership responsibility to any of the person which makes their work easy and flexible. Along with this, they will be able to combine all the employees who are working with the company.
Further, the trait approach to leadership is also applied by companies within the market. This approach is used by the leaders of the global and multi-culture organisation as it allows the leaders to look for the series of physical, mental as well as the personality traits that are possessed by the effective leaders. The leaders who deal in the global market requires the different set of traits which are used by them to make effective decisions as well as to resolve the conflicts that arise among the employees within the company. These conflicts can be related to communication, leading change, and lack of confidence, effective listening and many others. On the hand, the multi-culture organisation’s leaders adopt different traits as they are aware they need to deal with the employees with the different cultural backgrounds, believes and perception which is required to be handle leader. This is the way through which the leader will make the employees achieve the goals and objectives.
In the end, this can be concluded that it remains difficult for the company to perform the operations in a dynamic environment. Initially, the discussion related to sustainable development has been done which is required to be managed. The discussion related to the aspects of sustainable development has been done which include social and economic apart from the climate aspect which is considered an important element. The issue of Tesco Company has been highlighted that are food waste and leadership decisions that affect sustainable development within the organisation. Also, the major topics of Corporate Social Responsibility are covered which shows the aspects required to be taken care of by the company. Moreover, the globalised market has allowed the companies to attain the market leader position but the business also has an impact on poverty. The discussion on the statement “Business as a cause of poverty or business as a solution” has been made. The analysis of the different approach to leadership in the global and multi-cultural organisation include includes behavioural approach, traits approach and situational approach has been done.
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