Assessment 2 Part 1 Business Report
This assessment is an individually written business report that requires you to examine the business of the online fashion retail company, Shein, to identify issues that are ethically problematic and develop potential resolutions to these issues from the standpoint of responsible management. You will conduct an analysis, and report on the responsibility of business in the fast-fashion industry based on the concepts, theories, and frameworks discussed in class and in the readings in Weeks 4 – 8. The assessment will be explained to you at the Week 6 Workshop. Submission will be via Canvas on Sunday, Week 9 at 11:59 pm.
You will take the perspective of an Ethics Officer hired by the company to critically examine the business of fast-fashion. You must evaluate key issues that relate to business ethics, responsible management, and corporate social responsibility (CSR), develop conclusions about the company’s business practices, and offer recommendations on how the firm can (better) practice responsible management. You are expected to conduct secondary research on the company and the fast-fashion industry by gathering online information and publicly available data. You must analyse the information gathered using course concepts, theories, and frameworks.
The report must be well structured and concisely written. It must include essential information to enable the reader to understand the report findings, conclusions, and recommendations. The report must contain the following:
Provide a brief description of Shein and the fast-fashion business worldwide – How does Shein’s business model work? How much revenue does the company make? Where does Shein mostly manufacture its products? How many employees does the company employ? Who are Shein’s direct competitors? Who are its target customers? Why is Shein a highly profitable business?
Identify and describe ethical business issues (Week 4) pertaining to responsible management using the B Impact Assessment criteria (Week 5).
Identify key stakeholders involved in these issues and discuss their power and interests in the business (Week 6).
Evaluate the business based on Carroll’s model of corporate social responsibility (CSR), paying close attention to the link between ethical issues and key business stakeholders (Weeks 5, 6, 7 & 8).
Write your conclusions about the company’s practices – Do the company’s business practices reflect those of a responsible business?
Propose and justify at least two recommendations to address the ethical issues you have identified and to protect stakeholder interests according to the concept of business responsibility
Include citations using APA 7th edition where appropriate
Include a table of contents, a reference list in APA 7th format, and appendices
The report has a word limit of 1,500 (+/- 10%) – table of contents, references and appendices are not counted.
The suggested format is as follows:
Table of Contents
Introduction – introduce the topic and purpose of the report
Brief description of the business and the industry – provide only information relevant to the analysis
Discussion – discuss information relevant to the report’s objectives, analyse the information, and report your findings
Note: This is the longest section of the report. Use headings and subheadings to organise the topics therein.
Conclusion – synthesise the discussion and state the significance of your findings
Recommendations – make suggestions based on the findings/evaluation in the report
References
Appendices – relevant graphs, tables, images that support the analysis
