PART A: Describe the precise harms that are associated with your selected problem

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PART A: Describe the precise harms that are associated with your selected problem. Show the negative social and environmental consequences that it causes for people, communities, and/or the environment. 

Having chosen your social or environmental problem, the task in PART A is to explain it accurately and clearly. To do this you will need to draw on credible research: you will need to go beyond the links that we provide on the list of possible issues. Don't just tell us that it’s a problem: show us how big of a problem it is by drawing on relevant examples and evidence. Make sure that these come from credible and authoritative sources. Depending on the issue that you choose, you might draw on statistics from the Ministry for the Environment, or the International Labour Organisation, or on well-researched articles from credible news sites – not from some opinion piece in the paper, or a blog post. If your lecturer were doing this report, they would look at providing 5 or 6 references in this paragraph to fully support their contention that my chosen problem is important. 

PART B: Describe some of the business practices and some of the firms that are causing this problem. 

Having established that your chosen problem really is a problem, we now ask you to show how business organisations have been involved in creating this problem. We don’t want to go into too much detail here, because you’ll need to work this out for your own chosen problem. But the process you should follow is this: thinking about your chosen problem, what sort of business activity causes this problem? What industries and (therefore) what business organisations are involved in this sort of activity? Note that the wording for PART B refers to “business practices and some of the firms”. You need to do both: what are the actual business practices that cause the problems, and what are some of the actual firms involved in these practices that cause the problem? Make sure that the firms you talk about are ones that actually create a meaningful impact in terms of the problem you are writing about. This paragraph asks you, again, to do the sort of work that is going to require some research. We don’t have some magic number of references – it depends on the nature of your problem and how firms contribute to it, but I would be thinking of at least 3 or 4. 

PART C: Explain why the companies you discuss in PART B continue to act in ways that cause your selected problem. 

The problems that you have described in PART A, and the business activities that contribute to it (PART B) are quite well known. In PART C we ask you to explain why the companies that you discuss in PART B continue to act in ways that cause significant harm to people, communities, and the planet. Make sure that you draw on relevant course material as your explanation here is clear and comprehensive. 

PART D: Provide examples of how some companies around the world are acting to minimise or avoid the negative consequences that you described in PART A.  

In this report we want you to focus not just on the problem, but also (and especially) on something more positive: what firms can do to address this problem. Remember that an overriding question for this ERS paper is: how can business operate in a way that generates a positive social (or environmental) impact, rather than a negative impact? So, the task in PART D is to describe how "some companies around the world are acting so as to minimise or avoid the negative consequences that you described in PART A. Do you think these measures are effective? Briefly provide some reasons for your position” Please do not write about how charitable organisations have responded, or what government programmes are doing. We are interested in seeing how it is possible to conduct business in a way that solves our most pressing problems. Again, we don’t want to go into too much detail here – it's up to you to find examples of companies who are doing creative and constructive things to address your chosen problem. But you might start by looking at the slides for Weeks 7, 8, and 10 – there are many examples given of companies trying to address social and environmental problems while remaining viable and profitable businesses. Some of them may be relevant to your chosen issue. You will need to ensure that you choose companies that are making a significant positive difference (not just some minor or trivial difference) and you will need to be able to demonstrate that these firms really are doing the good things that you claim. 

NOTE:  Companies often like to say that they are doing good things for people and the planet, because that is good for their public reputation. It doesn’t always mean that they are as good as they say they are. So be careful if your only reference is to the company’s website or their sustainability report. Those things might be valid resources to draw on. But please don’t rely simply on what companies say about themselves. Look also for reports or articles published by others, so that you can report with confidence on what these companies are doing.

Please ensure you include in-text references for any cited sources as well as including the full source reference in your reference list. Both your in-text referencing and reference list should follow APA 7th ed. Failure to do this will result in marking penalties.