Coporate Governance and Business Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Coporate Governance and Business Ethics - Essay Example In short, 'all you ever wanted we have right here' kind of concept. The convenience division includes Sainsbury's Local stores, Bells Stores in North East England, Jacksons Stores across Yorkshire and the North Midlands, and JB Beaumont in the East Midlands (Company's corporate website). Sainsbury's Bank aims to make finance easier to understand and manage and has built a reputation for offering excellent value products with extra benefits, delivered in a simple and accessible way. The current product range includes: car insurance, life cover, home insurance, travel insurance, pet insurance, Visa credit cards, Child Trust Fund, internet savings account, instant access savings account, direct saver account, personal loans, and a car purchase scheme. Sainsbury's to You is the internet-based home delivery service. It covers around 77 per cent of the UK. Herein customers place orders online and freely choose time of delivery. The online service also has Sainsbury's Entertain You, which offers thousands of books, CDs, DVDs, videos and computer games and a DVD rental service with over 28,000 titles. Flowers, wine, gifts, kitchen appliances and electricals are also up for online buy. Sainsbury's had a wide network of 727 stores in the UK at the end of 2005. Its market shares in various regions were very impressive, ranging from a high of 18.3 % in London to a modest 3.6% in Scotland with an overall UK market share of 10.4 %( TNS data for 52 weeks to 17 July 2005). Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility to Stakeholders"Today's modern organization in many instances is the institutional centrepiece of a complex society made up of many people with a multitude of interests, expectations, and demands as to what organizations ought to provide. The social contract between organizations and various parties has continually changed. Organizations that have been able to survive and thrive have found ways to respond to ever-changing expectations" (Ronald, 2003). Sainsbury's approach to corporate responsibility is an exact recognition of the above fact. Sainsbury is a multiple activities company and has delineated its all possible immediate stakeholders in its customers, employees, communities, share holders, suppliers and the environment within its holistic corporate responsibility (CR) plan. Further Sainsbury recognizes another set of not so actively recognized stakeholders in government, politicians and regulators in the UK and Brussels, e.g. non-g overnment organizations (NGOs) etc.However, for the present, we would not cover this set of stakeholders in this paper as their link with the company tends to be tenuous and long. It is important to examine Sainsbury's views of the expectations of each of the above active groups of stake holders and efforts to meet them. Ethics is concerned about value judgements. Business ethics deals with such judgements encourse doing business. Sainsbury's business has set for itself a code of business ethics focussed around its active stake holders, as above. It is important to realize that the combined code for corporate governance contributes actively to business ethics in a compliable form. Ronald further suggests that if an organization institutionalises ethics, it is unlikely to find itself trying to recover from a fall or