Student use staff use

STUDENT USE		STAFF USE
Module Name	Business Ethics and Professional Standards	First Marker’s (acts as signature)
Lecturer Name	Dr. Victoria Levinskaya	Second Marker’s (acts as signature)
Student IDs	U010308	Agreed Mark
Deadline date	23.59 March 4, 2023,
Assignment Type	GroupIndividual

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
All student assignments should be done in written format and submitted to Turnitin for plagiarism check via Moodle. The assessment would be open for students at 9:00 AM on March 2^nd and closed at 23:59 on March 4^th, 2023. Late submission would get 40% deduction from the overall mark.
The presentation will be assessed in accordance to the Ethical Reasoning Rubric. Each student will be assessed separately and get an individual mark in points. 1% equals to 1 point.

MARKERS FEEDBACK (Continued on the next page)

Business Ethics and Professional Standards Midterm Project
Student: Olimjon Zafarov
Student ID: u010308
Word count: 1447
PART 1
Merck Pharmaceuticals
Merck is one of the significant transnational pharmaceutical companies based in America. It has a huge impact on people’s lives throughout the history. This paper analyzes Merck’s corporate social responsibility using triple-bottom line (3P) analysis and through virtue ethics approach.
MSD pharmaceuticals, also known as Merck in the US and Canada, is a global company which produces medicines, vaccines, biologic products, and animal care products. Operating more than 130 years, the company has been a huge benefit for humanity through development of significant vaccines and biological products. Mainly, company’s operations are divided into 2 segments which are pharmaceuticals and animal health. With production of six new drugs in 2020, the company earned more than $1 billion revenue from each, which included Keytruda and Gardasil, an innovative vaccine for cancer and HPV treatment. During coronavirus outbreak, the company with cooperation of Johnson & Johnson, created a COVID-19 vaccine, which was a significant step in fighting against devastating effects of this disease. As of 1 October 2022, the company had $58,974 million revenue and $15,260 profit. The market capitalization of the company in 2023 is $278,741 million, which makes the company one of the most valuable and successful in the healthcare industry. According to the abovementioned facts, company’s revenue, and market capitalization, it can be concluded that the company is highly likely to be financially stable and successful in the future. As there is always a significant demand for pharmaceutical products, reliable companies like Merck can gain more profit and develop healthcare industry in the world at the same time. The company will be regarded as higher competitive position in the global healthcare market.
Evaluating company’s CSR in terms of people, the social dimension of the company has a crucial impact on the people’s welfare, including their customers and employees. The company does not only aspire advancing through only their products, and new breakthrough technologies, it also tries to shape the community engagement. Particularly, the company supports society in the area of education, culture and health as well as provide help for those in need. The company has progressed and gained the trust of society over the decades. For instance, just in 2021, they have spent about $45 million on community and social engagement activities. The company constantly provides medicines for tropical diseases free of charge, which has been widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa. To support education, the company has created junior labs for students to carry out biological experiments independently so that they can learn more about STEM subjects. The company initiated 255 charity activities in more than 99 countries worldwide.
When it comes to a diversity and inclusivity of the company, the company has a mindset that the business can be succeeded when there are diverse people in the company. There are tons of statistics in terms of diversity of the company. To name a few, more than 60,000 of the employees in the company came from 66 countries in the world, the share of women in leadership roles contains 36%, share of underrepresented race and ethnical employees are 21%. Further analysis shows that the company has a strategy to advance inclusive culture with cooperation more than 40 employee resource groups all across the globe. Moreover, the company has been approved to launch Inclusive Leadership program as a mandatory process for all leaders in the company. The evaluation and analysis in terms of people and of virtue ethics approach have proved that Merck pharmaceuticals has strong social engagement, diversity and inclusivity initiatives which represents vigorous public relations strategy.
As other companies, Merck has also emissions and wastage during the production process. As resources are limited on Earth, reducing emissions and utilizing electricity from renewable sources are one of the key aspects of their climate mitigation efforts. By the end of 2040, Merck has a strategic plan to achieve climate neutrality. So far, they have achieved to reduce direct and indirect greenhouse emissions and not stopping to do so. By 2030, the company is planning to reduce it by whopping 50 percent. Since the last decade, the company has been supporting the circular economy and 69% of their waste has been recycled in 2021.
In conclusion, according to the sustainability report of the company, it has not only been focusing on their financial performance, it also tries to go beyond economic dimension. Their codes of conduct consider all aspects, including promotion of diversity and inclusivity, conservation of the environment, education, and public healthcare. The company’s societal and environmental efforts gave benefit to millions of people all around the world. Despite spending millions of dollars on these sustainability programs, the company is still profitable and reputable in the healthcare industry which can be a proof that the companies can be profitable by focusing on their CSR and financials at the same time.