Fashion and Retail Essay

Submitted By janeyarwood
Words: 3231
Pages: 13

Task 1: 3. Briefly explain the difference between a business’s values and its goals.
Examine your selected business and identify in which business document you would find the business’s values and its goals. Summarise your selected business’s goals and then its values. Choose at least two goals and two values and discuss how the values of the business might conflict with its goals.
The business I have chosen to study for this assignment is Innocent. Their whole approach is about being ethical and in their words “want to leave things a little better than they find them.” Its values are mainly about helping people and the environment asb its workers claim to still care a lot about the values of the company even after 15 years of business. Their values are as follows;
• Innocent uses green electricity at its headquarters, Fruit Towers
• Innocent sources fruit from suppliers that look after their workers and the environment
• All of Innocent’s bananas come from Rainforest Alliance accredited farms
• Innocent donates 10 percent of all its profits each year to the innocent foundation, which funds NGOs in the countries from which it sources its fruit.

Task 1: 4. Professional ethics

a) Give a definition and then explain what is meant by Professional Ethics. Professional ethics has become increasingly more important over the years. As we become more specialized in our occupation, the issues become more complex. Professional bodies have increasingly been at work developing, revising and refining professional codes of ethics. Professionals themselves ask for more detailed codes so as to have greater guidance. The standards for professional conduct keep drifting higher, where safety and health are an issue, the regulators are under more pressure to act when professional groups do not act. Frankly, it is a sign of maturity, and of professional pride, when a professional group is operating under a code of ethics. What do we mean by professional ethics? Professional ethics helps a professional choose what to do when faced with a problem at work that raises a moral issue. One can certainly study what professionals do when faced with such problems, and confine the enquiry to the description.

b) The “culture” of the business is another way of saying the “values” of the business. Where would you find the values of the business and who creates these values?

The culture or values of a business is what distinguish them from similar businesses or companies of the same type. In management, business value is an informal term that includes all forms of value that determine the health and well-being of the firm in the long run. Business value expands concept of value of the firm beyond economic value (also known as economic profit, economic value added, and shareholder value) to include other forms of value such as employee value, customer value, supplier value, channel partner value, alliance partner value, managerial value, and societal value. Many of these forms of value are not directly measured in monetary terms.

Coca Cola has its values displayed on the website along with their mission and vision for the future. They call it ‘vision for 2020’. Their values are as follows;
• Leadership: The courage to shape a better future
• Collaboration: Leverage collective genius
• Integrity: Be real
• Accountability: If it is to be, it's up to me
• Passion: Committed in heart and mind
• Diversity: As inclusive as our brands
• Quality: What we do, we do well

c) What pressure do you think Mary is under? How do these pressures affect the way that she works? I think Mary is under pressure for 2 reasons
1 – The role is commission based only therefore if she doesn’t get the sale, she won’t get any salary.
2 – The culture of the business is to get the sale at whatever the cost without fully accessing whether the client actually needs the insurance. This really would put most people in a compromising