Question :
Five case study is required to be written by covering given five themes i.e. ethical dilemmas, research skills, equality & diversity, criminal law, accounting models.
- Find and evaluate an ethical dilemma regarding business, law or accounting.
- Conduct market research for opening a new restaurant by using different methods.
- Study equality and diversity cases and make policies for new restaurant.
- Suggest appropriate legal solutions to a client who is involved in credit card fraud case.
- Apply accounting models on a struggling business.
Answer :
1. Assess an ethical dilemma that has occurred with the fields of business, law or accounting
An ethical dilemma also termed as ethical paradox is a problem related to decision-making to choose among 2 likely moral imperatives. This is basically due to the fact where neither of the 2 choices are explicitly satisfactory or preferable. The intricacy arises due to a situational battle in which following 1 could result in disobeying other (Santos, Pache and Birkholz, 2015). Ethics in businesses involves several numbers of areas where all business owners are required to understand the way in which the ethics related issues pertains to run a business. This is basically to ethically deal the workers as well as the community people. As per their work aspects, a best approach is to anticipate the issues related to business ethics. Before any ethics related violation, it is important for the business owners to effectively address the issues with quick decisions followed by prompt judgements.
This section is to demonstrate about the ethical dilemmas faced by the businesses in several areas that also involve accounting and law, etc. All of these issues are as specified below-
- Discrimination at the workplace- It is a foremost ethical dilemma of every business in Britain where each of their businesses must be aware of anti-discriminatory laws as well as legal regulations. This is for instance to discourse upon the norms of Disabilities act, in whose accordance, businesses can be claimed to pay fine for not having suitable doors having appropriate widths, fails to provide handicap parking and absence of handicap accessibility, etc. Also, the people who are complaining against it need not to be a handicap for receiving settlement of $4000 for each charge against violation.
- Unsafe conditions of work- This defines yet another right of the employees to work in safe and secured setting where the businesses are hereby required to follow the norms of Occupational safety and health administration (OSHA). This regulatory standard is known to govern the violations due to full exposures, respiratory protection as well as chemical exposure (Olson and Wu, 2017). It also involves proceedings with respect to the security of innate substances like the sign boards that spins at the corners of the street with a purpose of advertising.
- Accounting practices- It is in accordance to the legal requirements of businesses in Britain, one must maintain a correct practice of bookkeeping. One such example of breach is of a well-known oil giant named Enron who was exposed for misconstruing their earned profits. Such a dishonest act severely impacted upon the prices of stockholders where a large number of public shareholders also suffered losses due to such ethical violation. Lastly, the company also became insolvent where a legal act was framed in the year 2002 named Sarbanes- Oxley for protecting the public shareholders with stricter rules of financial reporting. Followed by this law, even the SME’s that were privately hold were obligated to maintain accurate fiscal records by paying suitable taxes.
2. Using appropriate methods, plan how to conduct market research for a new restaurant
Usually, a market research is composed of 2 main measures of data collection namely primary and secondary. In which, the primary data involves a feasible collection of data by directly gathering the responses from specifically chosen participants for the study. This can be done with assistance of interviews, questionnaires, surveys and focus group, etc., where the regular consumers who often visit restaurants can be interviewed as well (Thompson, 2017). Secondary data on another hand involves referring to some previously conducted studies on restaurants to acknowledge people’s choice or company reports, newspaper articles and past records of eateries in the selected location where a newly proposed restaurant will be launched, etc. Collecting secondary data is also evident to assist in acknowledging the contenders in the market.
Below are some steps that are opined to conduct a market research for launching a new restaurant-
- Obtaining the market statistics- It is a foremost requirement of carrying out a market research by firstly determining the factual market statistics in terms of acknowledging the type of customers and their other demographic information such as age and income, etc. This will in turn assist the newly launched restaurant to adopt an effective pricing strategy along with the segmentation tactic for targeting potential set of customers (Yanfei, Mengsha and Yu, 2017).
- Assessing potential locations- This is stated to be yet another prime requirement where deciding a preferable location will be the key to success for the newly proposed restaurant business to attract large number of customers.
- Reviewing the state of competition- This is basically to identify the existing state of competition in the market that will in turn assist the newly launched business to frame effective work related strategies in comparison to the existing rivals in the market (Zaidi, 2015). It will also help them to easily combat the competition and gain ample shares and revenues.
- Determining a suitable cost structure- It is yet another significant aspect for a newly structuring business to properly fund the business and invest into some viable areas to avoid any future concerns.
3. Examine equality cases and develop a policy for the new restaurant
Equality is aimed to assure that everybody has the access to similar opportunities with fair treatment. It thereby becomes a prime responsibility of the businesses with a special consideration of the employers to ensure the usage of unbiased measures at work. In whose accordance, no one at work should deal with any partial measures with a right of working in a non-discriminatory environment with no harassing practices (Thompson, 2016). For this, every businesses established in Britain are bound to follow the compliances related to Equality Act, 2010 that was proposed in UK with intent of eradicating any illegal discernment at work.