CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY

Tesco Corporate Sustainability

Tesco Corporate Sustainability

Introduction

Many companies in UK consider corporate social responsibilities as an essential for their business to be successful. This practice is followed by many companies along with the largest food retailer, Tesco PLC. Social responsibility is not only concern with the outer environment of the business but also internal rules of conduct that encourages the ethical behaviour of the employees and helps in abstaining from all kinds of corruption.

Corporate Sustainability is a way through which a business enhances employee value and long term consumer by developing a green strategy focusing on the natural environment and with that considering every dimension of how business operates in the cultural, social and economic environment. This also includes forming strategies that will increase long term achievements and goals.

These days primary concern different businesses entities are giving to the corporate sustainability matters (Schmidheiny et.al, 1997, 56), however this report aims to discuss the various trends and practices that Tesco adopts in the present business environment, to perform their responsibility of corporate sustainability effectively. The purpose of the study is to investigate Tesco social responsibilities with the principle of corporate sustainability.

Initiating Corporate Sustainability

To gain a better understanding, it is important to highlight the significance of corporate sustainability. The modern corporate sustainability movement has its root back to the United Nations World Commission on Economic Development, which is often cited as first defining “corporate sustainable development (Schmidheiny, 1992, 78).” John Elkington contributed his work in relevance to standard business accounting that encompasses the three pillars of corporate sustainability: economics, society and environment.

In the late 20th century, the United Nations became increasingly aware of environmental issues, such as global pollution, pesticide bioaccumulation and depletion of ozone. The international community was also facing increasing industrialization among the developing nations of the world. One acknowledged that the path many nations had taken in their industrial development was not the best for the health of humans or the environment, and a more careful path to development would be essential.

In this era, investors are increasingly demanding that businesses should be ethical correct and act in sustainable manner. This has led to the rise of sustainability-based investment indexes. Moreover, the investors are demanding the companies to publicly disclose their performance with regard to sustainability. Today, many large companies are producing sustainability reports in an effort to be unceasingly transparent and accountable to the public. Companies, such as Tesco are truly committed to sustainable development (Tesco Report, 2011, p.2). They also use this data to drive internal initiatives to manage their social and environmental impacts. The following paper will discuss how Tesco incorporates social responsibility and works towards achieving the corporate sustainability.

Incorporating Corporate Sustainability in Tesco

Tesco is considered one of the world's biggest retailers as it operates in 13 countries and has a workforce of consisting of almost 500,000. It is trying to achieve world wide a zero carbon climate change strategy by 2050. Tesco have to take care of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in respect to ...