Ethics, Corporate Governance, and Responsible Leadership (PDF)

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2023 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 78.3, University of Plymouth (School of Business), course: MBA Business Management, language: English, abstract: Tesco is a leading global company in the United Kingdom that deals in groceries and consumer products. Tesco was established in 1919 and has expanded to be among the biggest grocery stores worldwide, with over 7,000 outlets in 12 nations (Ogacheko Omale, 2015). Corporate failure within the framework refers to instances where a company's practices, policies, or behaviors contravene ethical values and standards, violate sound governance principles, and disregard the duties of its leaders towards stakeholders, leading to adverse effects on the company's viability, reputation, and societal and environmental impacts (OECD, 2015). The Tesco grocery chain is an excellent case study of an organization that collapsed due to a board-level connection to a significant accounting fraud. This study critically analyzes Tesco's organizational flaws that contributed to the accounting crisis from the angles of ethics and corporate governance, examining the origins and effects of the scandal while leveraging empirical literature as well as ethical and corporate governance frameworks. The study will further provide recommendations for Tesco's management to improve the organization's ethical and corporate governance practices and prevent similar failures in the future.

In September 2014, Tesco reported inflating its revenues by £250 million (Kukreja and Gupta, 2016). As a result of the occurrence, eight of the corporation's senior executives were given administrative leave, which caused the stock price to fall noticeably. A top executive in the accounting division noticed illegal practices among colleagues that were obviously harmful to the common good and decided to report them to protect the interests of investors and other shareholders. After an employee expressed reservations about the firm's accounting procedures, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched an inquiry that revealed the accounting scandal.