Unethical Business Practices of McDonald's - Case Study Example

Unethical Business Practices of McDonald's Analysing the Business Decision or Problem McDonald’s Corporation (McDonald’s) is one of the most successful and renowned fast-food retail chains with an extensive growth of its business subsidiaries almost each part of the world. Unlikely to the higher value and strong presence in the global fast-food industry, McDonald’s has also undergone acute ethical issues both in the context of its products and/or services provided to its customers, and concerns associated with its corporate values as compared to its major rivals in this respective industry. Conversely, McDonald’s has also been recognised to face number of issues associated with offering severely unhealthy food items, low employee wage and discriminations, ignoring its impact on the environment and animal welfare along with marketing and promotional issues linked with its different fast-food items served across the world. The major ethical issue that would be discussed in this research study is the concern associated with the food products offered by McDonald’s to the global customers. In order to determine the ethical concern the study will be focused on complying with a formal structure of gathering data and evaluating them through real-world evidences regarding the same. In this regard, the study will critically focus on the primary research question and the objectives in order to determine the ethical issues that are associated with the business of McDonald’s. Research Questions The key research question of this study is to identify and critically evaluate the ethical issues that have been faced by McDonald’s from its range of fast-food items offered to the consumers across different nations. In this regard, the key research question of the study will be addressed with the following research objectives. Research Objectives The research objectives to determine the ethical issues in McDonald’s in the context of its offerings to then global customers have been listed below: Identifying the type of ethical issues that have been faced by the company in terms of its fast-food items to the global consumers Critical assessment of the impacts that are experienced by the consumers from the offerings of the company Identifying and assessing the role of the company to mitigate such type of ethical issues Providing relevant evidences from valuable secondary information in respond to food related ethical issues faced by the company 2. What is already known about the Decision or Problem The literatures in this section will be gathered from different academic books and reports, peer-reviewed journal along with different online research and news articles. Parallel to this case study analysis reports relevant to the key research question and the objectives will be evaluated to increase the relevance of the study. Literature Review The empirical study of Gibison (2006), the fast-food items offered by McDonald’s to its global consumers have major contribution towards extensive form of health issues irrespective of their age groups. In this regard, major obesity, heart diseases along with asthma and higher possibility of mad-cow diseases are the major cases that are evident to be caused directly and indirectly from the food items offered by the company to its consumers (Gibison, 2006). Correspondingly, Stony Brook University (1998) has critically explored the diet contents in each McDonald’s products includes major health issues for the consumers especially the young adults. In this regard, the research report states that the meals offered by the restaurant chains of McDonald’s contribute major amount of fat and the level of sodium that can negatively affect the consumers’ health (Gagnon & Freudenberg, 2012). For instance, the report has illustrated the example of its new Spanish omelette bagel, which deliberately contains 40 grams of fat along with 710 calories and 275mg of cholesterol that can severely deteriorate the health condition of consumers. In addition, the presence of 1,520 mg of sodium in the product can severely make the consumer face a critical health issue (Stony Brook University, 1998). In addition, the article published by Jourdan & Baertlein (2014) in Thompson Reuters critically illustrates about the scandals in the company’s food safety process. According to the issues identified in the article, the local meat suppliers of the company often gets involved in major scandals of maintaining safety of the raw materials. The supply of contaminated meat items by the suppliers has been critically identified in the article that can also be considered as major unethical practices of McDonald’s to ensure health and wellness of its consumers (Jourdan & Baertlein, 2014). 3. The Overall Research Design – Evaluating Options The research design of the study consists of few major areas that include selection of an appropriate research approach, data collection, data analysis along with results and findings of the research. In order to accumulate the desired outcome of the study, the research will be conducted through a qualitative approach, which will help the study to obtain wide-ranging data linked with the research topic. In order to obtain the primary aim and objectives of the research, the study would further focus on conducting a case study method by gathering relevant cases associated with the food product related issues faced by McDonald’s in the global market. In this regard, the cases will be gathered from different secondary sources including survey of real case examples illustrated in the context of the issue. Additionally, the data collection process of this proposed study will primarily focused on secondary data collection method to obtain an extensive data relating to the key question and aim of the research. An overall illustration of the research design to be undertaken in the proposed study has been represented hereunder. The data collection process of the research will include gathering of relevant facts and information from secondary data sources ranging from academic books, journal articles, web pages and news articles among others. In relation to the data analysis function, the gathered information fact and cases will be evaluated through a descriptive case-study analysis, which will help the study to obtain the formulated research goals and objectives. In this regard, the case examples and facts collected from the secondary sources will be considered as primary data, which would further help to maintain validity and relevance of the proposed research. In order to evaluate the consistency and relevance of the primary data, the research study will also provide real-life evidence about the impact of McDonald’s food items on the consumers’ health. Moreover, the selection of sources 4. What are the Key Variables, How will you Measure them and how the Project will contribute to the Workplace/Industry? The key variables in the research will be the major factors that would be determined from the literatures that have undertaken in the study. In this regard, the variables will be selected in the context of the food related scandals of McDonald’s that cause major health issue of the consumers. In this research, the key variable has been selected observing the major health issues that have been experienced by the consumers from the food items offered by McDonald’s through its extensively growing restaurant chains. In this regard, the discussion will be highly focused on the negative impacts that are often resulted from the food items offered by McDonald’s to its global consumers. In order to measure the impacts resulted from the McDonald’s food items, the case study method will provide a major insight in the research. The evaluation of the relevant results obtained from the cases along with their evidences will help the study to obtain its desired goals and objectives. 5. Sample Requirements & Sampling Options In order to obtain a justified and valid result from the evaluation, a random sampling technique will be implemented in the research in the form of selecting relevant case studies associated with the food related unethical practices of McDonald’s. In this regard, 10 case examples will be undertaken in the context of food related information and facts that are usually offered by McDonald is in its global fast-food industry. 6. Ethical Issues In the context of ethical issues of the research, the study will highly comply with a strong set of guiding principles in each stage including data collection, data evaluation along with analysing findings of the research. In relation to ethical consideration in data collection process, the research activities would highly focus on complying strong codes of conduct regarding various possible issues in the research. In addition, the provision of avoiding biasness in collecting and analysing secondary data has also facilitated the overall research work to meet the ethical codes of conduct successfully. 7. References and timeline References Gagnon, M. & Freudenberg, N. (2012). Slowing down fast food: A policy guide for healthier kids and families. Retrieved from https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/sites/default/files/resources/slowing_down_fast_food_corporateaccountabilityinternational.pdf Gibison, A. (2006). McDonald’s: A good image with bad ethics. Retrieved from http://www.neumann.edu/academics/divisions/business/journal/review_08/gibison.pdf Jourdan, A., & Baertlein, L. (2014). Yum, McDonald's apologize as new China food scandal hits. Retrieved from http://www.newseveryday.com/articles/2/20140721/yum-mcdonalds-apologize-as-new-china-food-scandal-hits.htm Stony Brook University (1998). The dangers of eating fast food. Retrieved from http://www.stonybrook.edu/heartlinks/fastfooddangers.pdf Timeline of the Research Works Read More