Tesco Case Study

Over the years Tesco has grown to become the UK’s largest supermarket chain with over 2000 stores operating around the world but at the same time it also became one of the most controversial and highly criticised company. Tesco is highly perceived as a company behaving unethically in public eyes. Business ethics wise Tesco’s is a gold mine and I have specifically chosen Tesco because it would be interesting to do research on a company that is so controversial and constantly under spotlight.

Some of the allegations towards Tesco are;

Corporate policy
Corporate policy caused Tesco a big headache specially the cases towards labour relations, trading relations and pricing and advertising. Repeated unethical behaviour towards suppliers and employee’s

Although Tesco is claiming they are not doing anything wrong they are making it very difficult individual shop owners and local convenience stores to survive. Some of the new store openings even became very violent due to extreme opposition in the past.
Financial affairs Tax Avoidance:
The guardian is claiming that Tesco has been avoid approximately 1 billion tax on profits from property sales by using taxation structure including off shore bank accounts in Cayman Islands. Guardian has been sued by Tesco twice over malicious tax allegations in the past.
Alleged Bribery:
Tesco was under spotlight again after one of the senior employees made sure one the contractors of Tesco’s to keep their contract rolling in exchange of a small “fee”
SFO Investigation:
SFO has investigated Tesco multiple times to look for irregularities and holes in accounting. In 2014 an investigation found overestimated amount of £118 million in the first half and £70 million in the second

Tesco is trying to reduce as much calories with projects such as “The Tesco Eat Happy Project” and track how much calories the goods are with “Healthy Little Differences Tracker” to help and encourage customers to buy healthier. The amount of criticism Tesco is getting from customers and media about their product health and safety issues is clearly not a good sign. Horse meat scandal, multiple cases of back labelling out of date product are some of the examples of how much Tesco is committed to this