LUBS2970 Corporate Social Responsibility
Semester 1, 2024/2025
100% Assignment
Answer one of the following four questions:
1. “ESG as it stands — grounded in disclosures and voluntary market action — will not deliver the necessary [environmental] change.” (Hooper, 2024) What obligations do businesses have to prevent and mitigate harms to the natural environment, and is Hooper correct that these cannot be met through disclosure and voluntary action alone? Answer with reference to theory and evidence.
2. What responsibilities do Western businesses have when trading with businesses in the Global South? Should they seek to impose higher labour standards through their procurement policies?
3. In what ways (if any) should businesses be more responsive to the ethical concerns raised by contemporary social movements? Use theory and empirical evidence to answer.
4. “Corporate social responsibility is a hard-edged business decision. Not because it is a nice thing to do or because people are forcing us to do it... because it is good for our business” (Niall FitzGerald, speaking when CEO of Unilever). Critically evaluate FitzGerald’s argument drawing on theory and evidence.
.The marking criteria against which we will evaluate your essay can be found in the Assessment folder of the module Minvera pages
This assignment is categorised AMBER for use of GenAI: generative artificial Intelligence (GenAI) may only be used as in an assistive role, as specifically articulated in below, with acknowledgement. In the rest of this work, you must not use GenAI.
Specifically, in this assignment, you must write the content of all of the sections yourself, without GenAI assistance. This is because they test the learning outcomes and therefore, it’s important to demonstrate what you can do. The critical comment on the literature, research idea and design for investigating it, and the questions in the research instrument, must all be created by you, and reflect your own thinking and learning as described in the learning outcomes (LOs).
You are permitted to use GenAI (if you wish) for help with the elements of searching and reading the literature, and improving your expression in English. These tasks are necessary to complete the assignment, but are not specifically part of the marking or LOs. Past students have noted that the reading of long research papers, and/or expressing critical thinking in formal language, is onerous for some people but easier for others. If you would find it helpful, you may use GenAI to (1) summarise research papers, enabling you to target your full-length reading to the most relevant ones, and (2) polish or tidy up your English, after you have written the content [for example, write it in your own voice and then ask GenAI to render it into a more academic tone, or, ask it to check the grammar/spelling]. Note you may NOT ask GenAI to create content or write things for you, or for anything other than the two tasks specified above. Also remember to retain responsibility for what you hand in; GenAI is susceptible to errors, so always check over anything that you’ve used it on.
Finally, please note that these instructions are particular to this assignment. Other assignments will have different instructions for which parts you may and may not use GenAI for. Not all Amber assignments will behave the same.
Remember to reference your use of GenAI as well as your literature sources.
https://generative-ai.leeds.ac.uk/ai-and-assessments/acknowledging-use-of-ai/
Assignments should be a maximum of 2500 words in length.
All coursework assignments that contribute to the assessment of a module are subject to a word limit, as specified on the assessment brief. The word limit is an extremely important aspect of good academic practice, and must be adhered to. Unless stated otherwise in the relevant module handbook (if one has been provided), the word count includes EVERYTHING (i.e. all text in the main body of the assignment including summaries, subtitles, contents pages, tables, supportive material whether in footnotes or in-text references) except the main title, reference list and/or bibliography and any appendices. It is not acceptable to present matters of substance, which should be included in the main body of the text, in the appendices (“appendix abuse”). It is not acceptable to attempt to hide words in graphs and diagrams; only text which is strictly necessary should be included in graphs and diagrams.
You are required to adhere to the word limit specified and state an accurate word count on the cover page of your assignment brief. Your declared word count must be accurate, and should not mislead. Making a fraudulent statement concerning the work submitted for assessment could be considered academic malpractice and investigated as such. If the amount of work submitted is higher than that specified by the word limit or that declared on your word count, this may be reflected in the mark awarded and noted through individual feedback given to you.
The deadline date for this assignment is 12:00:00 noon on Monday 27th January 2025.
An electronic copy of the assignment must be submitted to the Assignment Submission area within the module resource on the Blackboard MINERVA website no later than 12:00:00 noon prompt on the deadline date.
Faxed, emailed or hard copies of the assignment will not be accepted.