Business Ethics Assignment: Education Support By Ricoh Group In India

Question

Task: The purpose of this business ethics assignment task is to:
- Analyse a case to ascertain the contention, and connection between the relevant concepts
- Apply ethical reasoning, the problems faced, symptoms and relationship to one another;
- The context and its relationship to various stakeholders;
- Recommend alternative solutions to address other SDGs using a similar or alternative approach based on reflective practice. -

The unit learning outcome(s) assessed is/are:
LO 3: Exemplify judgement in assessing alternative perspectives of corporate responsibility in the context of contemporary business issues;
LO 4: Evaluate the sustainability agenda and justify assessment of the implications for business; LO 5: Evaluate and debate the role of social movements and institutional changes that promote business model innovation;

Assessment Details
Session 1 and session 3 introduced both the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and the concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV).
Ricoh Group has prioritised strategies that incorporate CSV to address specific SDGs leveraging technology, products and services, human resources, and other resources to address social issues as well as to build new markets, attract new customers and introduce innovation.
This assessment task requires you to select one (1) of three cases and discuss how Ricoh has leveraged CSV to address specific SDGs. Your discussion should include issues and implications of ethics and sustainability, business and social value achieved, and alternate approaches by Ricoh to tackle other SDGs at scale.

Case 1: Education support in India
Case 2: Developing a platform for business opportunities that will also lead to solving social issues
Case 3: Food Safety & Efficiency

To complete this assessment, you are required to provide a problem-oriented case study format 1500 words in length.
1. Working individually, select ONE case study from the links provided.
2. Write a case analysis that highlights your insights and understanding of the issue or problem addressed in the case, 3. The business ethical considerations in targeting social objectives;
4. Identify strategic and operational/practice dimensions of CSV, and the SDGs achieved;
5. Identify the opportunities and challenges Ricoh might face in addressing other SDGs from an ethical or sustainability angle 6. You must apply relevant theory in support of your views.
7. Recommendations for action and/or alternative solutions should be presented
8. This case analysis has to be critiqued using academic peer-reviewed journals. You will need a minimum of 6 references from academic peer-reviewed journals in support of your critique ranging from 2012 – current. In addition, you can use older references.

There is no limit to this. 9. Use the Harvard referencing system. The reference section should list alphabetically each reference cited in the body of your essay. 10. Length is 1500 words +/- 10%.

Answer

Introduction
Organisations could bring back business and societal interventions together if they redefine their unique purposes through the creation of shared value that generates economic health as well as address the community needs. The study will highlight the creation of shared value practices of Ricoh group to provide education support in India in order to introduce innovative solutions for its social implication that follows.

Problem identification
India is one of those countries where the child population is extreme but half of those children are unable to join the school. Maximum children drop out of school due to the lack of public awareness or low quality of educational resources in addressing the educational needs of the students. According to a report, out of 440 million children in India, about eight million children have never visited inside the school premises and are unaware of the schooling activities (ricoh.com, 2022). Insufficient infrastructure and teaching materials also restrain the children to attend school and tend them to be unaware of the valuable lessons like growth, knowledge and development. The children especially in the poor or slum areas do not have the opportunity to learn about the different cultures and traditions that the world holds on a daily basis outside the pavilion. Some people think that children going to school does not fetch any money, so they engage them in various work from their childhood. There is a wide gender discrimination from sending girl child to school as many people in the society claim that if the girl student studies more, there will be a raise in the amount of dowry and so girls are forced to marry at an early age. Approximately 80 million students drop out from school without getting the basic preliminary schooling knowledge and learning (economictimes.indiatimes.com, 2014). As a result of these challenges, there is a mass illiteracy in India around the propelling educational needs that needs to be addressed by the local government and the public community services.

Analysis and connection between concepts
The ethical considerations that the business can run during societal objectives should be to support the education system of children in India through different societal interventions. It is increasingly important to foster honesty as one of the vital assets for students to adopt the best compliment for their career objective. The Ricoh group needs to compromise some crucial practices and routines to encompass the students near morality since their childhood to enact honesty. Based on the views of Adefila et al. (2020), the necessity of parental consent is crucial in cases of addressing the societal needs of children to engage in schooling practices. Implementation of Ethical theory needs to be practiced by the Ricoh group in order to deliver the moral philosophy behind the educational needs of the children. This theoretical approach can dwell confidentiality for a teacher when students frequently share in-depth personal information of them with the expectation that confidentiality will be maintained and conveys no such risks. As Ricoh group has donated printers to schools, NGOs and local governments, the ethical theory will be important to gain wide schooling resources. The ethical theory will also address the conflict of interest that can begin when the best interest of one student is not in the best internet of other students due to valid reasons, tending to infract the school policy deliberately (Refer to Appendix).

The sustainable development goals that Ricoh group supports in education is through projectors and digital teaching materials, the Ricoh group has shared CSV values around the environment to improve the educational quality (Remenick, 2019). In addition, providing training and curriculum development for the teachers for 4th and 5th grade at ten schools of Bihar, Delhi and Telangana has also been another sustainable development goal the group has achieved. They have served a unique proposition of shared values to the education support system of India through the provision of ICT based class learning models to foster better academic competencies. In addition, the Ricoh group have also achieved SDG in terms of the digital teaching materials that can expand the scope of target grades for the children as well as enhance education quality in India on a long-term basis.

Opportunities and challenges of Ricoh group for addressing the SDG
Opportunities
In terms of the ethical angle, the Ricoh group can eradicate poverty from the nation by increasing more learning scholars and their intricate supported system for community development practices. As a greater number of students engage with schooling activities, there will be an increase in the likelihood of basic resources that can be dwelled through the collaborative practices of knowledge learners (Ferguson and Sherrell, 2019). In addition, the Ricoh group can involve free or reduced meals in the schools that can let them gain an opportunity to remove the hunger crisis from the societies and support the education system strongly since the early ages of children. They can also foster shared value practices around the students to make them understand the implication of child mortality that can succinctly create the urgency of supporting the education system in India.

Challenges
While addressing the SDG practices for the children’s education support in India, the Ricoh group can confront significant implications in terms of the financial crisis that is due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The group had to stop the public from getting indulged in schooling activities since there is a complete surge of lockdown around the world, restraining students from sitting back home (McCarthy et al., 2018). On the other hand, the political turmoil of India can also be a challenging situation for the Ricoh group to provide well learning opportunities for the children especially in the locations of slum areas or poor family belongings.

Value creation
In order to develop sustainability practices around the societal development of the Ricoh group, they need to provide valuable propositions to the students through effective deliverables, communications and acknowledgement. Implementation of Shared Value Creation framework can be beneficial for the group to continuously address the societal needs and challenges of the education support system in India. It will encourage the Ricoh group to foster advanced learning opportunities for the students and let them gain a comprehensive insight of learning competencies for a secure future (Dicker et al. 2019). By reinforcing a strong solution for the poor children who are unable to learn in schools, the value creation framework can stimulate the learning practices of students as well as create economic prosperity through an indefinite scale of the business intervention. These will not only encourage the students to improve the quality of living through sustainability practices but also develop new markets and a new customer base across the competitive axis for business growth (Refer to Appendix). Recommendations Recommendation 1: Creating an integrated system of community partnership As all the children are unable to encompass material and social capital to gain high-quality learning environment and experiences, it is vital to create an integrated system for those students. Ricoh needs to incorporate additional support systems as a part of their sustainable development goals to boost a number of children who are under the threatening condition of poverty, learning obstacles, homelessness, lack of health care facility and food insecurity (Pinto and Leite, 2020). They need to build community school models to provide well-rounded support to the educational opportunities of students as well as ensure the children’ success through mentoring and academic support systems.

Recommendation 2: Developing social, emotional and academic competence
In order to increase the education support of students in India, Ricoh needs to pay attention to the inner ability of students by teaching them social-emotional skills. This will not only manage the stress of the students from their personal perspective but will also boost social developmental needs like collaboration and empathy. A greater awareness of oneself and others can likely be developed that can improve the student’s improvement and ensure a feeling of safety and belongingness at the school. In addition, the Ricoh group should also support education through peer learning and meditation practices that can teach students to indulge responsibility and cultivate a stronger community for addressing their academic competencies (Cavendish et al. 2020).

Recommendation 3: Fostering a supportive environment among students and teachers
By creating a positive cultural set among the students, there will likely be stronger relationships among the students and teachers that can provide a bedrock for learning. As a part of the shared values practices, Ricoh needs to promote a sense of community around the children by conducting a periodic parent-teacher-student conferences to understand the positivity of education support system in India. It is also important for the Ricoh group to strengthen the trust among the educators in order to build cultural competence around the students irrespective of the implicit or explicit biases (Stenhoff et al. 2020).

Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be stated that the shared value practices of the Ricoh group need to be administered effectively to support the education system for the students in India from an early age. The social needs of the students can be addressed through a supportive environment of community partnership and obtaining learning of social-emotional skills.

Reference list
Adefila, A., Broughan, C., Phimister, D. and Opie, J., (2020). Developing an autonomous-support culture in Higher Education for disabled students. Disability and health journal, 13(3), p.100890. Available on: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1936657420300054 [Accessed 15 January 2022]
Cavendish, W., Morris, C.T., Chapman, L.A., Ocasio-Stoutenburg, L. and Kibler, K., (2020). Teacher perceptions of implementation practices to support secondary students in special education. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 64(1), pp.19-27. Available on: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1045988X.2019.1628000 [Accessed 15 January 2022] Dicker, R., Garcia, M., Kelly, A. and Mulrooney, H., (2019). What does ‘quality’in higher education mean? Perceptions of staff, students and employers. Studies in Higher Education, 44(8), pp.1425-1441. Available on: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079.2018.1445987 [Accessed 14 January 2022]
economictimes.indiatimes.com, (2014). School dropout scenario in India 'extremely high': UNICEF The Economic Times Available on: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/school-dropout-scenario-in-india-extremely-high-unicef/articleshow/31846924.cmsutm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst [Accessed 15 January 2022] Ferguson, H. and Sherrell, H., (2019). Overseas students in Australian higher education: A quick guide. Business ethics assignment Canberra: Parliament of Australia. Available on: https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2019-06/apo-nid244896.pdf [Accessed 14 January 2022]
McCarthy, B., Trace, A., O’Donovan, M., Brady-Nevin, C., Murphy, M., O'Shea, M. and O'Regan, P., (2018). Nursing and midwifery students' stress and coping during their undergraduate education programmes: An integrative review. Nurse education today, 61, pp.197-209. Available on: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0260691717302897 [Accessed 14 January 2022] Pinto, M. and Leite, C., (2020). Digital technologies in support of students learning in Higher Education: literature review. Digital Education Review, (37), pp.343-360. Available on: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulocodigo=7615204 [Accessed 15 January 2022]
Remenick, L., (2019). Services and support for nontraditional students in higher education: A historical literature review. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, 25(1), pp.113-130. Available on: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1477971419842880 [Accessed 15 January 2022]
ricoh.com, (2022). Creating Shared Value (CSV)* RICOH Available on: https://www.ricoh.com/sustainability/society/value [Accessed 15 January 2022]
Stenhoff, D.M., Pennington, R.C. and Tapp, M.C., (2020). Distance education support for students with autism spectrum disorder and complex needs during covid-19 and school closures. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 39(4), pp.211-219. Available on: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/8756870520959658 [Accessed 15 January 2022]

Appendix