Topic 6

How businesses affect society

Learning outcomes
After studying this topic, you will be able to:
■ explain what the term ‘ethics’ means in the context of business
conduct;
■ explain the impact of ethical and unethical business actions on society;
■ explain the consequences of ethical and unethical conduct on business
revenues.

Introduction
What do the following companies have in common? Take a few moments to
think.








 

The answer is that, in recent years, these companies have each been
accused of unethical behaviour. They have been accused of business
activities that are allegedly:
■ bad for the environment; or
■ bad for employees; or
■ bad for customers; or
■ bad for local communities; or
■ bad for the wider society.

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In this topic we look at what is meant by ethics, particularly business ethics,

and what kinds of behaviour are considered ethical and unethical. We then
consider how ethical and unethical business decisions, behaviours and
activities affect different groups of people and the global community,
before finally discussing how business ethics can impact on business
revenues and profitability.

6.1 What we mean by ‘ethics’

‘Ethics’ is a term used when we judge whether the actions of businesses
and individuals are good or bad, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable,
acceptable or unacceptable, responsible or irresponsible. So we can say:
ethical behaviour is doing what’s good, right, desirable, acceptable and
responsible; and
unethical behaviour is doing what’s bad, wrong, undesirable,
unacceptable and irresponsible.
These are judgements which depend on the moral values we hold, ie the
values that determine whether we think things are right or wrong, good or
bad. As we don’t all see things the same way, we won’t always agree on
what is and what is not ethical behaviour. This is proven by the fact that
different cultures have different values. Our values can be different to other
people’s depending on our:

      

  

   
 

Everyone can agree, however, that there is a simple principle at the heart
of ethical behaviour: do no harm. If all businesses made sure that none of
their activities or behaviours caused any harm or damage to anyone or
anything, they could all be classed as ethical businesses.
In practice, many businesses (and individuals within them) engage in
unethical behaviours that cause harm. In some cases this may be due to
ignorance or negligence – ie they are not aware of the damage being done
by their activities – but at other times, businesses may be aware that a
particular activity is causing harm but keep doing it anyway, in the hope
that no one will notice.

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Did you know?

In 2014, a New York chemical
plant was fined for the fourth
time in three years for releasing
poisonous gases and toxic waste
water into the local environment
(Times Union, 2014).
Closer to home, Thames Water
was fined a record £20.3 million in 2017 after huge leaks of
sewage into the Thames and on to land (Carrington, 2017).

The ethics of business activities and operations have become increasingly

important over the past fifty years or so, thanks largely to the activities of
scientists, environmentalists, human rights and civil rights lawyers,
journalists, campaigning pressure groups, charities and politicians. There
is now greater public awareness of the unethical practices of which some
businesses have been accused, and a stronger public belief that businesses
should demonstrate ethical behaviour. High-profile cases have helped to
make business ethics a topic that attracts media interest.

High-profile cases of unethical behaviour

In 2010, an explosion on an oil platform killed eleven people
and caused an oil spill
that lasted for 87 days,
with 4.9 million barrels of
oil leaking into the Gulf
of Mexico. The ‘BP oil
disaster’, as it came to be
known, was caused in
part by several com-
panies deciding to cut
costs and save time,
which led to a lack of
safety (EPA, 2020).
In 2007, The Guardian alleged that UK retailers including
Primark, Tesco, Asda, Mothercare and Marks & Spencer were
selling clothes that had been made in ‘sweatshop’ factories
in India. Workers in these factories were paid as little as 13p
an hour for a 48-hour working week (McVeigh, 2007).
In 2015, Volkswagen was found to have fitted devices to
millions of its cars that gave false readings on environment-
damaging exhaust emissions. The cars were being sold as
environmentally friendly when they were not (BBC News, 2015).

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The publicity surrounding ethics has led to businesses becoming more

aware of the ethical concerns and issues surrounding their operations and
activities, and taking steps to behave more ethically. Governments in the
UK, wider Europe and North America have introduced laws and regulations
to ensure that businesses behave ethically; otherwise, they may face
prosecution.
Other news stories regarding ethical concerns have also become topics of
public and political debate, including:
■ working conditions of low-paid workers;
■ unfair discrimination against women, ethnic minorities and people with
disabilities;
■ trading fairly;
■ transparency in sales;
■ the impact of products on diet and health;
■ environmental damage and sustainability, both local and global;
■ corporate tax avoidance.
Let’s consider these areas of concern, as we look at the impact of business
actions in more detail.

6.2 The societal impact of ethical and unethical behaviour

A ‘society’ is a collection of people living in the same country:


 
 
  

    

 

Everyone in a society is affected in some way by good and bad business

ethics. Let’s look at these effects in detail, using the areas of concern listed
above.

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6.2.1 Employees’ pay and conditions

Businesses spend a significant
amount of money on employees’
wages and salaries, and on ensuring
that working conditions are safe and
comfortable. Employment costs (in-
cluding employers’ National Insurance
and workplace-pension contributions)
are often the highest item in a
business’s total costs. All businesses
therefore try to control their em-
ployment costs because, if they don’t,
they will be forced either to accept
lower profits, or to increase their
prices in an attempt to keep profits
the same.
During the Industrial Revolution in
the 18th and 19th centuries, new
types of businesses emerged through-
out the UK and elsewhere. The first
priority of the owners of these new Ruthless employment practices used to
factories, coal mines and cotton mills include child labour
was to make as much profit as
possible. Many of the owners were ruthless in doing whatever they felt was
necessary to minimise labour costs – including paying poverty wages (ie
extremely low wages) and making employees work long hours in
dangerous, overcrowded and unhygienic conditions.
Using child labour was also a widespread practice in Victorian times. In
1821, nearly half of the UK workforce was comprised of children or
teenagers, and it took numerous new laws to gradually stamp out the
exploitation of children in UK factories.
Most of these Victorian practices have been eradicated over time, due to
social and political changes:
■ Campaigns by politicians, newspapers and pressure groups have helped
to create growing public awareness and disapproval of situations where
workers are exploited by ruthless employers.
■ National and international government action has introduced new laws
and regulations to protect workers, such as the UK’s Health and Safety
at Work etc Act 1974 and National Minimum Wage Act 1998.
■ Many businesses have recognised that providing decent pay and
conditions can help the business by increasing workers’ loyalty and
productivity.
■ It has become more and more important for businesses to build
reputations as good employers and socially responsible businesses;
otherwise, they risk losing custom to competitors with more ethical track
records.

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Although ethical employment policies are common in the UK and other

developed economies, companies in some countries around the world (such
as India, China and Vietnam) are still regularly exposed for operating
sweatshop factories, paying poverty wages, and ignoring basic safety
standards. A note was once found inside a pack of Tesco charity Christmas
cards, allegedly written as a ‘cry for help’ by prisoners in Shanghai forced
to work against their will (BBC News, 2019).

Discuss
Do you think businesses that have been criticised for paying
their staff low wages should increase the price of the goods
they sell so that they can pay higher wages?

6.2.2 Discrimination
Unfairly discriminating against certain groups of people is unethical and
illegal. For example, employers must not discriminate against women,
ethnic minorities or people with disabilities, by paying them lower wages,
offering fewer employee benefits (such as sick pay or pension
contributions), or limiting their chances of promotion. Ethical employment
practices, by contrast, try to ensure that:
■ every employee is treated fairly and equally;
■ all workers get the same pay for work of equal value; and
■ all employees have the same chance to get promoted.
In the UK, laws passed in the 1970s gave employers a legal obligation to
treat men and women fairly, equally and without discrimination. Other laws
extended this obligation to cover discrimination on the grounds of race or
religion. The Equality Act 2010 is an all-encompassing anti-discrimination
law, which replaced all previous individual laws covering this issue. The
2010 Act made it illegal to discriminate against anyone because of their:
■ gender;
■ age;
■ marital status;
■ being pregnant or having a dependent child;
■ physical or mental disability;
■ race, including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin;
■ religion, belief, or lack of religious belief;
■ sexual orientation.

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6.2.3 Trading fairly

Fair trading has several aspects. Some UK businesses with ethical
employment policies have been criticised for trading with companies
outside the UK that do not have ethical employment policies. Another issue
is how much farmers and other producers of foodstuffs, raw materials and
natural resources are paid by UK businesses for the produce and materials
they supply. Suppliers complain that big businesses in the UK and other
developed countries use their buying power to force suppliers to sell
produce at very low prices. As a result, those suppliers have to live on low
incomes.
Fair trading also concerns factories and workshops
(or ‘sweatshops’) in developing countries that
make clothes, shoes, furniture and other
products. These products are sold by
retailers in developed countries, but the
factories and workshops that make
them don’t comply with internationally
accepted minimum standards of
workers’ pay and conditions.
For UK businesses, then, trading
fairly (or trading ethically) means
two things:
1. paying a fair price for the
produce, raw materials and
products they buy from suppliers;
2. making every effort to ensure that
any company they do business with
is itself behaving ethically in its
employment practices and other
areas of operations.

6.2.3.1 Fairtrade
Fairtrade is a term used in relation to this area of
ethical behaviour. It refers to business operations that go
a step beyond trading fairly. You may have seen the Fairtrade logo
on a variety of products (for example on tea, coffee or clothes). Businesses
are authorised by the Fairtrade Foundation to display the logo on their
products if they meet certain standards of behaviour. Some of these standards
are shown in Figure 6.1.

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Figure 6.1 Fairtrade standards and commitments

Discuss
Some people argue that making companies in developing
countries pay fair wages and offer good working conditions
can put those companies out of business, because they can
no longer make a profit. It can be argued that workers in
those countries are better off having a job – even if pay and
conditions are very poor – than not having a job at all.
What are the arguments for and against this point of view?

6.2.4 Transparency in sales

The principle of transparency is that when a business sells a product or
service to a customer, the customer should be given full, clear information
about whatever they are buying.

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Transparent sales means that every customer

I sell a product to knows exactly what they are
buying, all of the costs involved (cash price,
all fees and one-off payments), and their
rights if something goes wrong.

A high-profile case involved the mis-selling of payment protection insurance

(PPI). Most of the UK’s big banks were found to have misled customers into
thinking they had to sign up for PPI when they took out a loan, or the banks
had automatically signed up customers without telling them. A lot of these
customers did not need PPI, and the banks had to pay out billions of pounds
in compensation.

6.2.5 Diet and health

Fast-food restaurants and supermarket chains have been criticised for
selling food and drink that have a negative impact on people’s health. In
the UK, the USA and many other developed countries, health campaigners
have highlighted the problems caused by obesity (ie being seriously
overweight) and alcohol abuse. These campaigners have accused
businesses in the food and drink industry of using price-cutting deals that
encourage consumers to eat more unhealthy, high-calorie food (ie high in
saturated fats, sugar and salt) and to drink more alcoholic drinks and sugary
soft drinks.

Did you know?

A 330ml can of Coca-Cola contains 35g of
sugar. That’s around ten normal-sized sugar
cubes.
Just half a can of regular Coke exceeds the
daily amount of sugar recommended by
some scientists – which is four cubes a day
(Parry, 2014).

Unhealthy food and drink have a wider societal impact, as the National
Health Service (NHS) spends money to treat patients whose illnesses have

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been caused by a bad diet or alcohol abuse. A cost to the economy is the
number of working days lost due to health problems caused by obesity or
alcohol abuse.

6.2.6 Environmental damage and sustainability

Harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are
created through our use of oil, coal and gas to
generate electricity and to power our cars,
lorries, trains and planes. Most scientists and
environmental experts believe that this sort of
human activity has contributed to a small but
very significant increase in the earth’s average
temperature, known as ‘global warming’. The
damaging effects of global warming include
melting icecaps and glaciers, which increases
sea levels and causes climate change, leading
to more storms, floods and other extreme
weather patterns.
Using up the remaining deposits of natural
resources such as fossil fuels (ie oil, gas and
coal) also causes ‘sustainability’ issues. As
social, economic and industrial activities have
grown steadily over the past two hundred years or more, the question arises
as to how long global economic growth can be sustained before the earth’s
natural resources start to run out. New ‘clean’ methods of generating
energy are being developed, such as wind power and wave power, but it
will be a long time before we stop using fossil fuels.
Businesses and individuals have to play their part in resolving these
problems by using less energy. Businesses that ignore these issues, and
that make no effort to reduce the amount of energy they use or to limit the
amount of CO2 their activities produce, can be accused of behaving
irresponsibly and unethically.

6.2.7 Impact on local areas

In addition to global environmental issues, businesses must consider the
effects of their activities on local areas and communities. Wherever
businesses decide to put a new out-of-town supermarket, office block,
factory, distribution warehouse, open-cast mine or even just a shop in a
high street or shopping centre, there will be an impact on the local
community and environment.
Effects on local communities can include job opportunities; for example, a
new supermarket may generate new jobs for local people. However, if
existing high-street shops are forced to close because they can’t compete
with supermarket prices, there can be more jobs lost than jobs created.
Local shops are also more likely to sell products produced by other local

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companies (such as farms and small-scale manufacturers). So if local shops

are forced out of business, there is a wider knock-on effect on the local
economy, which may force other businesses to close down as well.
Business activities may also have seriously damaging effects on the local
environment. All business activities generate waste materials – whether
waste paper from an office building, waste water or chemical waste from a
factory, waste gases released into the atmosphere, or tons of earth and mud
that has been dug out of a mine. Ethical businesses take appropriate action
to minimise the amount of waste produced, and ensure that any waste they
can’t eliminate is recycled or disposed of safely, so that the local
environment is not damaged by uncontrolled pollution.
The location of new business buildings, regardless of their function (ie
shops, offices), will also affect traffic congestion in the area, as employees,
suppliers and customers drive to and from the building.

Discuss
When a big supermarket chain
announces plans to build a new
out-of-town superstore, a local
protest group often launches a
campaign to stop the super-
market from getting planning
permission.
Why do the protesters not want
a new superstore in their area?
Would you join a protest group if a supermarket wanted to
open a new store near you?

6.2.8 Corporate tax avoidance

We saw in Topic 4 that businesses and individuals are entitled to reduce
the amount of income tax and corporation tax they pay by making use of
legal tax allowances, through tax planning. But we also saw that some
businesses and individuals engage in tax avoidance – exploiting
‘loopholes’ in the law to lower their tax liability – or illegal tax evasion.
Both may be seen as unethical behaviour, but cases of tax avoidance tend
to feature more in the media, as there is room for argument about whether
particular tax-avoidance schemes are legal or not.
Multinational businesses with factories, offices and sales centres in more
than one country have also been accused of avoiding paying tax. They
devise complex accounting procedures to legally reduce taxable profits –
in some cases so that they pay no tax at all, despite making millions of
pounds in profits. These schemes are not illegal, but they manipulate the

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system in a way that was not intended. Starbucks, Google and Amazon are
just three high-profile global companies to have been accused of not paying
the tax they should on their UK profits.

UK tax paid by major companies

Starbucks had sales of £400 million in the UK in 2013, but
paid no corporation tax at all. Google’s UK operation, with a
turnover of £395 million, paid just £6 million in UK tax in
2011. Amazon, with UK sales of £3.35 billion in 2011, paid
just £1.8 million in corporation tax that year. Compare this
to the tax paid by other major UK companies in 2012:

Table 6.1 Tax paid by major UK companies in 2012

Company UK tax paid

Shell £776 million
BT £639 million
Tesco £579 million
HSBC £533 million
GSK £483 million
Prudential £475 million
BP £366 million
Barclays £300 million

Even these bigger contributors to UK tax revenues have been

criticised for paying more tax in other countries than they
pay in the UK (Hawkes, 2013).
In 2020, Amazon’s sales increased by £1.89 billion but it
paid just £3.8 million more corporation tax (Butler, 2021).

Legal but unethical tax avoidance by businesses has a negative effect on

UK society. Due to the reduced revenue coming in from corporation tax,
the government is forced either to:
■ reduce spending on public services; or
■ increase income taxes on individuals.
In either case, these decisions are made necessary by businesses who do
not pay their fair share of the overall tax burden.

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6.2.9 The role of pressure groups

The news media has the power to build up or tear down a business’s
reputation. This has been recognised and exploited by many independent
pressure groups set up over the past 50 to 60 years.
Pressure groups are independent, voluntary organisations that campaign
for changes in governments’, businesses’ and individuals’ behaviour on
particular issues. Their concerns are many and varied, but lots of pressure
groups campaign against what they see as unethical behaviour of one kind
or another. Well-known pressure groups include the following.
■ Greenpeace promotes environmental protection, and campaigns on
issues such as global warming and eliminating nuclear weapons.
■ Friends of the Earth is an environmental pressure group whose
campaigns are also concerned with issues of social and economic
development. It campaigns for a more equal worldwide enjoyment of the
world’s natural resources, and it supports initiatives such as Fairtrade.
■ The Fairtrade Foundation is the founder and promoter of Fairtrade
(discussed in section 6.2.3.1).
■ Sustain campaigns for healthier, better-quality food, and supports
responsible, ethical farming in the UK.
■ Oxfam is a charity that provides immediate practical help when
communities are hit by famine and other natural disasters. It is also one
of the oldest pressure groups. Founded in Oxford in 1942, Oxfam
campaigns against world poverty and economic injustice, and also
provides long-term support for communities’ efforts to become
economically self-sufficient.
■ Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit journalism, research and campaign
group, which monitors the social and environmental impact of big
business corporations.
By researching and monitoring business behaviour, exposing examples of
unethical behaviour, and praising examples of good ethical practices, all of
these groups play an important part in raising awareness of ethical issues
and concerns. They ensure that politicians, business leaders and individuals
understand the importance of the issues, and they highlight the impact that
good and bad ethical behaviours have on national and international social
and economic well-being.

6.3 How business ethics affects revenue and profits

Businesses’ decisions to act ethically (or not) impact on their finances.

6.3.1 Cost implications

In considering business ethics, we have mentioned business costs several
times. For example, we learned about how businesses try to minimise their
costs in order to maximise their profits, and how this can lead businesses

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to behave unethically. Cutting costs might take the form of paying

employees low wages, or dumping toxic waste into a local river because it’s
cheaper than disposing of it safely.
Behaving ethically almost always has cost implications for a business.
Paying decent wages, making sure premises are safe and working
conditions are acceptable, dealing with waste materials properly, paying
fair prices to suppliers, meeting all tax liabilities – all of these ethical
practices increase businesses’ costs.
Increased costs have implications for businesses’ revenue and profitability.
Faced with higher costs, businesses have to decide whether to increase their
prices to try to maintain their existing level of profits, or to leave prices as
they are and accept reduced profit margins.

The effect of Fairtrade bananas on profits

A supermarket decides to
adopt an ethical trading policy,
and starts buying Fairtrade-
certified bananas. Fairtrade
bananas cost more than other
bananas, because the grower
is guaranteed a fair price for
their bananas.
The supermarket increases the
price of bananas to compensate for the increased costs, but
profits still fall. You can see from Table 6.2 that putting up
the price of a bunch of bananas by 50 pence does not
succeed in protecting profits. It makes up for the 50-pence
cost increase in buying the bananas, but some people won’t
pay the higher price.

Table 6.2 Weekly banana sales – regular v Fairtrade

Regular Fairtrade
Unit price (per bunch of six bananas) £1.00 £1.50
Number sold (demand) 500 300
Total revenue (number sold x unit price) £500 £450
Unit cost (per bunch) £0.50 £1.00
Total cost (number sold x unit cost) £250 £300
Profit (total revenue – total costs) £250 £150

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6.3.2 Ethics, reputation and the media

There is another, more positive side to the effect of ethical behaviour on
revenues and profits. Growing numbers of consumers support the principle
of fair trade to the extent that they are willing to pay higher prices for goods
they believe to have been made ethically, such as Fairtrade-certified
products. Some consumers also believe that products and services
produced by companies with good ethical credentials are likely to be better
quality than those bought from less ethical companies. This belief is based
on the idea that companies who don’t always look to ‘cut corners’ will
produce higher-quality goods.

Discuss
Are you prepared to pay extra for Fairtrade-certified
products? Why or why not?

Adopting high ethical standards can give a big boost to a business’s

reputation and brand image. Businesses adopting ethical policies
will make sure that potential customers know about their
ethics, through advertising and promotional activities.
This may be enough to allow a business to charge
higher prices than its competitors, while
maintaining or even increasing sales, revenues
and profits.
The positive reputational effect of ethical
business behaviour also works in reverse.
Reputational damage is common when
companies appear in news stories accused
of practices such as selling products
made using low-paid ‘sweatshop’ labour,
or using tax-avoidance schemes to reduce
their tax bill, or mis-selling financial
products, or polluting local rivers. The
companies we mentioned in the
introduction (Primark, BP, Nike, Apple,
H&M, Tesco, Gap) each had their
reputations damaged by unethical-practice
‘scandals’, which generated bad publicity.
These companies have all survived, but some
consumers will have stopped buying products or
services from them, which will have reduced their
revenue and profits.

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Summary
Finally, we can recap what we have learned in this topic.
We have learned that:
■ ethics is a set of moral values, which we use to judge whether business
activities are good or bad, right or wrong;
■ both ethical and unethical business actions can have a significant impact
(positive and negative) on people and society;
■ ethical and unethical conduct also has positive and negative
consequences for business revenues and profits.

Key terms
Business ethics – whether businesses make an effort to ‘do no harm’ in
their operations and activities.
Corporate tax avoidance – legal but unethical schemes that reduce a
business’s tax liability.
Ethics – moral values that determine whether we perceive business
activities to be acceptable or unacceptable.
Fairtrade – trading fairly to an agreed set of standards, and helping to
eliminate economic inequality and injustice around the world.
Global warming – the damaging increase in average global temperatures
caused by CO2 emissions.
Multinational company – a business that operates internationally, with
factories and offices, and data processing, online and telephone sales
centres in more than one country. Also known as a ‘transnational’
business.
Pressure group – an independent, not-for-profit organisation that
campaigns to influence government, business and individual behaviour
on specific issues.
Sustainability – the ability of the world economy to continue growing
without using up available natural resources or destroying the
environment.
Sweatshop factory – a factory where workers are made to work up to ten
hours a day in unpleasant and often unsafe conditions, for very low (ie
poverty) wages.
Trading fairly – paying fair prices for produce and products from the
people who grow or make them.
Transparency – making sure customers are fully informed of all the
terms and conditions of sale, and of all the costs they may have to pay,
when purchasing a product or service.

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Bibliography and further reading

BBC News (2015) Volkswagen: The scandal explained [online]. Available
at: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34324772
BBC News (2019) Tesco halts production at Chinese factory over alleged
‘forced’ labour [online]. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
50883161
Butler, S. (2021) Amazon UK arm pays £3.8m more corporation tax
despite £1.9bn sales rise. The Guardian [online], 7 September 2021.
Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/07/amazon-uk-arm-
pays-38m-more-corporation-tax-despite-19bn-sales-rise
Carrington, D. (2017) Thames Water hit with record £20m fine for huge
sewage leaks. The Guardian [online], 22 March 2017. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/22/thames-water-
hit-with-record-fine-for-huge-sewage-leaks
EPA (2020) Deepwater horizon – BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill [online].
Available at: https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/deepwater-horizon-bp-
gulf-mexico-oil-spill
Hawkes, A. (2013) The tax drain: Britain’s top firms pay billions – but six
pounds in every seven go abroad. This is Money [online], 20 April 2013.
Available at: www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2312195
McVeigh, K. (2007) The sweatshop high street – more brands under fire.
The Guardian [online], 3 September 2007. Available at:
www.theguardian.com/business/2007/sep/03/retail.supermarkets
Parry, L. (2014) Just HALF a can of Coke exceeds the new daily sugar
guidelines backed by scientists – who recommend just three cubes a day.
Mail Online [online], 16 September 2014. Available at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2757577/Just-HALF-Coke-
MORE-new-daily-sugar-guidelines-backed-scientists-recommend-just-three
-cubes-day.html
Sommerlad, N. (2015) Six firms including Google and Facebook made £14
billion last year but paid just 0.3% UK tax [online]. Available at:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/business/six-firms-including-google-
facebook-5081824
Times Union (2014) Rotterdam chemical plant hit with fourth pollution
fine [online]. Available at:
www.timesunion.com/business/article/Rotterdam-chemical-plant-hit-with-
fourth-5352341.php

Further information:
Business ethics – www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z9r4wmn/revision/1
Corporate tax avoidance –

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20580545
Discrimination –
www.gov.uk/discrimination-your-rights
Fairtrade – www.fairtrade.org.uk/What-is-Fairtrade
Global warming –
https://www.wwf.org.uk/what-we-do/climate-change-and-energy
International standards for ethical business practices –
www.ilo.org/declaration/lang--en/index.htm and
https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principles
Pressure groups –
https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/clips/zpfmpv4
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/zhxpvcw

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