Analyse the impact of the unethical behaviour outlined in the case study on at least 2 groups of stakeholders. Suggest steps that could be taken to address their concerns.

ASSIGNMENT QUESTION

Task: Write a report of 2000 words answering the question below. You should base your answer on one of the following case studies:

 If you are studying a degree related to Health and Social Care, you should base your report on the Gosport War Memorial Hospital case study.

 If you are studying a degree related to Hospitality, Tourism and Events, you should base your report on the Starbucks case study.

 If you are studying a degree related to Business or Law, you should base your report on the Volkswagen case study.

Question: Analyse the impact of the unethical behaviour outlined in the case study on at least 2 groups of stakeholders. Suggest steps that could be taken to address their concerns.

Starbucks Case Study In October 2012, Reuters news agency published a special report investigating major tax avoidance by Starbucks in the UK. The investigation was prompted by the company’s practice of telling those who invest in it that the business is profitable, while claiming that they are making losses in their financial reporting to the tax authorities. Since the company opened its first UK branch in 1998, it had earned more than £3 billion in sales of coffee. Yet, during these first 14 years of business, it paid only £8.6 million in taxes. In the three years leading up to the Reuters investigation, Starbucks did not report any profit and therefore paid no income tax on sales amounting to £1.2 billion. In contrast, a company, such as KFC, who achieved similar revenue of £1.1 billion, paid income tax of £36 million. At the same time, transcripts of investor phone calls over 12 years revealed that officials from the corporation regularly referred to their business as “profitable”. Although there has been no suggestion that such practices are illegal, Michael Meacher MP went on the record to declare that the practice “is certainly profoundly against the interests of the countries where they operate and is extremely unfair

Volkswagen Case Study In September 2015, the Volkswagen company publicly admitted that almost 600,000 cars made for the US market had been fitted with “defeat devices”, which are devices used in order to enable the vehicles to pass emissions tests. Soon after this, they announced that the same devices were fitted on some 11 million cars worldwide. The corporation’s Head of U.S. Operations, Michael Horn, went on to sit before a Congressional Committee to claim that the attempt to deceive the regulators was the work of “a couple of software engineers”.