AMIR research proposal on CSR of Walmart UK PDF

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A Case Study on Wal-Mart, UK. “Does Corporate Social Responsibility Enhance Corporate Reputation?

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Table of Contents CHAPTER-1: INTRODUCTION................................................................................................3 1.1

Title...................................................................................................................................3

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Background.......................................................................................................................3

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Research rational...............................................................................................................4

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Research aims...................................................................................................................4

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................6 2.1 Research Philosophy..............................................................................................................6 2.2 Data collection method..........................................................................................................6 2.2.1 Primary data....................................................................................................................6 2.2.2 Secondary data................................................................................................................6 2.3 Data analysis method.............................................................................................................7 2.4 Population and sampling........................................................................................................7 2.5 Questionnaire design..............................................................................................................7 2.6 Research method limitations..................................................................................................8 2.7 Ethical considerations............................................................................................................8 CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION, FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS........................................8 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................9 CHAPTER 4: REFERENCES.......................................................................................................10

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CHAPTER-1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Title Wal-Mart UK is one of the most favorite and leading super market retailers which offer Apparel and footwear, electronics, superstore, e-commerce services to its consumers and it has been doing well in this sector from the very beginning of its journey. Wal-Mart UK tried to provide the better environment for the employee which ultimately leads to motivate the employees. Wal-Mart UK has considered the several elements which ultimately help it to increase its corporate reputation. The most important thing is corporate social responsibility and employee satisfaction. The employee works as a message sender which is auto word of mouth communication and whenever the corporate communication and employee satisfaction will be better, it will help to increase the corporate reputation. The most important things for the Wal-Mart UK to enhance corporate reputation are CSR activity of Wal-Mart as they have been contributing in different segments from the beginning of their voyage. The ultimate feedback from CSR will be to increase the reputation of the corporate and by this way the CSR activity helps the enhancement of corporate reputation of Wal-Mart UK. 1.2 Background In order to keep face with the competitive market, Wal-Mart UK should apply some competitive strategy within the organization for making the employees enthusiastic so that it can create some competitive benefit for delivering services towards its customers.. But corporate reputation is one of the most important things for the Wal-Mart UK that’s why they apply some strategy to increase its corporate reputation. The corporate social responsibility is one of the most vital elements for the Wal-Mart UK to increase its corporate reputation. That’s why from the very beginning different types of corporate social responsibility has been providing by the Wal-Mart UK which helps itself to enhance corporate reputation as well as which will help the firm to differentiate themselves in the competitive market and help to increase its profit (Webster, 1991). Many world class international organizations like Tesco, Unilever, Apple, MacDonald’s, etc. have been focusing on emphasis on the greater corporate social responsibility for their profitability and growth rate but the ultimate fact is corporate reputation building. 3

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The Wal-Mart UK tried to manage the employee needs and wants so that they become happy and motivated. Ultimately the better employee motivation helps to build better organizational culture which is known as inter- organizational relationship. Then it focuses on CSR strategy which differentiated &

innovative value for the external parties (Kotler, P. et al. 1999). That’s why we are going to analyze how CSR of Wal-Mart UK helps to enhance better organizational or corporate reputation. 1.3 Research rational Corporate social responsibility has great value to any organization because it’s the combination of different tools, understanding customer perceptions and strategy for knowing the market condition & contributing towards the society. Wal-Mart UK formulated CSR strategy and other compensation strategy for gaining advantage in the firms (Sekaran and Bougie, 2009). A lot of study has been conducted for Corporate social responsibility & how it create advantage as well as corporate reputation, how it works for the betterment of the organization, how it can be used as a potential tools for future betterment? This study has objective to analyze the corporate social responsibility of Wal-Mart UK and how it helps to increase the corporate reputation in the market. Here I will analyze the different CSR tools and strategies of organization and how it helps to make itself differentiated from others.

Here we can assume that the Wal-Mart UK has no enough resource so that it can conduct further research to the local customers in order to know whether their CSR is working better or not? 1.4 Research aims The research has some specific aim that has to be accomplished by the researchers. Research objectives: The objective of the study is to analyze CSR activity of Wal-Mart UK and it helps enhance better corporate reputation.  To know details about Wal-Mart UK CSR strategy & how it’s trying to increase its activities of CSR as its one of the leading organization in UK.  To know why Corporate social responsibility is needed & how it a benefits the organization (Doyle, 2008).

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 To recommend strategies for CSR to improve/sustain the present strategy so that it can build itself as a number one brand in the UK.  To know the relationship of CSR activity and corporate reputation of Wal-Mart UK. Research questions Whenever researchers wants to go for further study it needs to formulate the research question so that it help researches to find out the better outcome from the research.  How the company sets policy and implements its CSR level?  What role do CSR have Wal-Mart UK gaining or achieving the Corporate reputation? 

How better CSR strategy can benefit or reward the company with the best competitive benefit in organizational culture? (Self-creation)

 Is there any relationship with CSR of Wal-Mart UK and enhancing of corporate reputation? Research Hypotheses Some hypothesis should be considered for research so that the research outcome might be understandable and reliable.

 H1: “The improvement of organizational or corporate culture of Wal-Mart UK is not achieved through its CSR activities”.  H2: “There is no link between CSR of Wal-Mart UK and the organizational reputation” The above research hypotheses has been considered so that the outcome of the research must not bias, it might be reliable, comparable, relevance & accurate.

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research Philosophy There are basically two types of research like descriptive and exploratory research and here we are going to analyze both the research for the overall research process. Descriptive research is 5

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used when the information is abundance in the market and the data is available in the market but exploratory research requires when the data is not sufficient enough in the process (Sekaran and Bougie, 2009). The use of both process needed the specific situations to have the access of both types of data. In this research of Wal-Mart UK will use the descriptive research as there is abundance of information regarding the corporate social responsibility of Wal-Mart UK. 2.2 Data collection method There are several ways to collect data from the market and the researcher will use both primary and secondary data for the research purposes (Kumar, 2003). The both types of data are primary and secondary data which has influence in the overall process of the firms and the researchers gets the access of data from them. Both types of data have effect on the long term basis on firms. 2.2.1 Primary data

Primary data is known the data which will be gathered for the specific purpose of the research and some specific matters. The data will be collected from the field to know the exact situation from the market and here the researcher will use several strategies to get the data access from the market which are interviews, focus groups, Questionnaire design etc. to collect data from the market (Anon, 2009). For the purpose of this study a survey will be implemented to know the effect of CSR activity Wal-Mart UK. 2.2.2 Secondary data The secondary data is the data which has collected earlier for the betterment of the firms and which has used earlier for another purposes (Sekaran and Bougie, 2009). So for the purpose of secondary data the researcher will use the following process like by investigating Wal-Mart UK’s compensation report, articles, Customer data, government publications and statistics as well as books. Choosing several sources of information will help the researcher to find out the best output from the research and it will help to make wise decision for the researchers. 2.3 Data analysis method Here the researcher will use two types of data like primary and secondary data for the specific research purposes. Here, another term is vital to analyze the primary level data which are known as qualitative and quantitative data (Collis and hussy, 2009). The finding of the quantitative approach of the research is going to presented graphs, charts and percentage where primary data 6

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is the crucial element for the firms. The qualitative approach or findings will be presented in paragraph way or sentence. The distribution of the questionnaire to the employees of Wal-Mart UK will help the researchers to gain information regarding the topic. The combination of

qualitative and quantitative research will add extra value for the research process to gain better output from firms. 2.4 Population and sampling Sampling is about choosing a few numbers of components from the population (Hussey, 2009). For the sampling purpose of this research there we are going to analyze two types of population. It has chosen 100 customers among the customers of Wal-Mart UK for gaining better and effective result from the research. These 100 customers will give different results regarding the organization’s CSR activities. In terms of interview of the staffs researcher use population mean for gaining the exact information from the staffs of the organization. 2.5 Questionnaire design The questionnaire is sets of questions by which the researcher will collect the information from the market and get access from respondents. The researcher used this on the basis of his needs some researchers used to ask direct questions and some use to ask rating questions which is the modern system of the questionnaires. Here researchers use (1-5) rating to find out qualitative as well as quantitative information. Rating scale helps to get the best response from the respondent as it’s the easiest way to answer for the respondents. 2.6 Research method limitations In order to conduct the research of Wal-Mart UK, the primary and secondary data are the most vital data and the research but use of secondary data is better and simple than primary data. WalMart UK faces some of the incomplete information which is not helpful or effective for the

research. At times the secondary data might not work better because of its time limitation and other purposes. 2.7 Ethical considerations Research project have been conducted in a very ethical manner so that it might not harmful for any external parties or it might not had negative impact on the overall process. Any sort of authenticity of Wal-Mart UK is not used here and if anything happen in future will be removed. 7

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The information taken from the respondent will be used for the purpose of this research and the (Zinkmund, 2000). Employees of Wal-Mart UK will participate here freely they are advices to provide information regarding the strategy of the organization.

CHAPTER 3: DATA PRESENTATION, FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS Wal-Mart UK is one of the leading supermarket retail chain in the UK and it has been doing very well in its service i mean quality service to the consumers. Now it’s one of the top and successful business firms in UK which has already made them as a world-class brand in the market. There have been some variables which helps Wal-Mart UK to being one of the market leaders in this sector. One of the study shows that Among the CEO’s 83% believe that corporate social responsibility helps the organization to bring better output and make a strong brand image in the market. So we can easily find out the correlation for making brands and CSR activity. Here the CSR strategy, compensation strategy and other positioning strategy will helps the WalMart UK to make it differentiated from the competitors in the market. In most of the times, the CSR activity helps to focus on the firms and the present & potential customers get positive image towards the firms. It also helps to build brand awareness and brand equity in the market by making competitive advantage which is brand reputation. The top level management, employee good relationship and human relationship management also played a crucial role for creating better organizational culture within the firm ( Curwin and Slater, 2008).

Conclusion Corporate social responsibility has long term effect on the overall process of the organization for increasing or enhancing its corporate reputation. Here we have analyzed the CSR of Wal-MartUK Whether the CSR of Wal-Mart UK is good enough to capture the attention of the consumers as well as external parties will be considered through the survey process and how the CSR helps to increase brand reputation of the Wal-Mart UK. The data will be presented graphically, numerically as well as verbal way to show the best result of the research.

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CHAPTER 4: REFERENCES 1. Bansal, P., and Roth, R., (2000), Why Companies Go Green: A model of Ecological Responsiveness, The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 43(4): pp. 717–736. 2. Beauchamp, T. L., and Bowie, N. E. (1997), Ethical Theory of Business, Prentice Hall, Business and Economics 3. Beauchamp, T. L., and Bowie, N. E. (1997), Ethical Theory of Business, Prentice Hall, Business and Economics 4. Bhattacharya, C.B., Sen, S., and Korschun, D., (2008), Using Corporate Social Responsibility to Win the War for Talent, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 49 (2), pp. 37-44; 5. Buttle, F. (2009), “Customer Relationship Management”,1st Edition, Elsevier Limited. 6. Collis, J. and Hussey, R. (2009), Business research: a practical guide for undergraduate & postgraduate students. Palgrave Macmillan Press, Manchester.

7. Curwin, J. and Slater, R. (2008), “Quantitative Methods for Business Decisions”, 6th Edition Cengage Learning EMEA

8. Forbes.com,

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/csr/2012/02/21/six-reasons-companies-should-embrace-csr/ [Accessed 25 Dec. 2015]. 9. Grace, D., and Cohen, S., (2005), Business Ethics: Australian Problems and Cases, Oxford University Press. 10. McWilliams, A., Siegel, D., (2011), “Corporate social responsibility: A theory of the firm perspective. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 26: pp. 117–127. 11. Simpson, J. and Taylor, J. (2013), Corporate governance, ethics, and CSR, London: Kogan Page. 12. Werther, W. B., and Chandler, D., (2006), Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment, SAGE Publication, Business and Economics

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