Responsible and Ethical Business Practices of Microsoft

Critically consider the position of your organisation/Industry in relation to sustainable and responsible business practice, in order to do this you will need to (1) critically evaluate and justify the need for responsible business; (2) explain the logic and underpinning theory associated with ethical decision making (normative, behavioural and management ethics), including the organisations approach to ethics and sustainability; and (3) explain how the various stakeholders are engaged with and impacted by this position. You should use real-world examples of current practice (including scandals or examples of innovative practice) to illustrate the position of your organisation. You may find it useful to compare and contrast the position of your organisation to others who operate in a similar field. Your task is to illustrate your understanding and appreciation of the ethical theory and how this is applied in practice to further the agenda of responsible and sustainable business behaviour and to consider recommendations to develop good practice within your selected organisation. Your recommendations should be in some depth rather than surface level solutions such as increased recycling or donating more money to charity etc.
Example Structure and Word Count
Context and Scenario (Guidance: 700 words)
Provide an overview of your chosen organisation and their approach to responsible business. Critically reflect responsible and ethical business approaches in line with relevant theory.
Ethical Underpinning (Guidance 700 words)
Critically evaluate the ethical, social, and environmental impacts of your organisation and consider how the organisation might become more ethical and sustainable. How might the organisation decide what kind of role it should take in contributing to the wider / macro environment? This should be underpinned with ethical theory and reasoning.
The Role of Stakeholders and Proposed Solution(s) (Guidance: 700 words)
Identify and evaluate the role of stakeholders in your strategy. What does the organisation expect from its stakeholders in its new responsible and ethical approach? To what extent is the organisation innovative relative to sustainability within its organisational context? You might include examples of past attempts by other organisations to become more ethical and sustainable . What steps might your organisation take in relation to various stakeholders to become a more sustainable and responsible business.
The Resolution (Guidance: 400 words)
Describe the issues linked to the situation you have identified. Reflect on this outcome and consider how your organisation might respond to these challenges in the future.
Please ensure you research these 6 theories, write down their meaning and answer the questions asked, in preparation for the Seminar discussions this week.
Thank you.
The theories covered in the pre-reading are:
¨Ethical Egoism
¨Utilitarianism (two extracts)
¨Kantian Ethics
¨Rights Theories
¨Theories of Social Justice
¨Virtues Ethics
As you read each of these extracts consider:
¨how would this method of decision making work in my organisation?
¨How would this method help us work out what is right?
¨What problems might there be in applying this method?
¨Which stakeholders might object to using this theory to guide our decision-making?