ACCT303 Strategic Management Accounting

Assignment Requirements:

Read oneof the following sustainability reports:

AGL Sustainability Report 2017

http://agl2017.reportonline.com.au/sites/agl2017.reportonline.com.au/files/sustainability_report_full_report_0.pdf

Westpac Group Sustainability Performance Report 2017

https://2017annualreport.westpacgroup.com.au/assets/Westpac_Sustainability_report_2017.pdf

Westfarmers Sustainability Report 2017

https://sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au/media/2222/2017-wesfarmers-sustainability-full-report.pdf 

Origin Energy Sustainability Report 2017

https://www.originenergy.com.au/content/dam/origin/about/investors-media/annual%20review%202017/FY2017%20Sustainability%20Report.pdf 

Stockland’s Annual Review 2017: reporting on financial, social and environmental performance: https://www.stockland.com.au/investor-centre/interactive-annual-review/downloads

Deakin University Sustainability Report 2017

http://www.deakin.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1352832/deakin_2017_sustainability_report_and_outlook.pdf

After reading your chosen company’s sustainability report, prepare a report covering the following points:

1. Discuss the level to which sustainability strategy is integrated into overall business strategy of the company.
2. Briefly explain the key stakeholders the company engages with.
3. A commentary on areas of strong sustainability performance of the company.
4. A commentary on areas of weak sustainability performance of the company.
5. Make an overall assessment of quality of the company’s sustainability report based on the following aspects:
   
   a.) Readability (eg: logical structure, uses a graphical presentation of the data, drawings, and explanations where required or uses other tools to help navigate through the document) 
6. b) Adoption of GRI principles or other frameworks.

Assignment Answer:

Introduction

Business organizations are increasingly emphasizing on developing and disclosing the information about their sustainability performance for achieving accountability and transparency within the operations. The sustainability information relates to the key measures and initiatives adopted by a company to improve its performance in the social, economic and environment aspects (Chen, 2015). In this context, this report has undertaken analysis into the key sustainability issues present within a selected company that is Origin Energy Limited. The company is involved in generation and retailing of energy products within Australia and therefore has diverse business operations that can negatively impact the society and environment. As such, the repent examines the various sustainability aspects of the company for ensuring that it is adopting adequate measures to protect the society and environment from any of the negative business operations. The report has examined the sustainability strategy, stakeholder engagement, strong and weak areas of sustainability performance and overall assessing the sustainability performance in terms of readability and application of GRI framework.

Part 1: Level of sustainability strategy integration into the overall business strategy

Integration of sustainability strategy into the business means recognizing the importance of incorporating social, environmental, and governance into the process of planning and operations of core businesses. Many of the business leaders have adopted the sustainable development plans into their business to provide proper response to the social and environmental issues related with the business operations (Brockett, 2012). Customers are more likely to loyal with those companies that adopt the sustainability strategies into their business operations. In this section, sustainability report of Origin Energy has been analyzed to report on level to which company has integrated the sustainability strategy into the overall business strategy. Some of the important information that provides information how Origin Energy has integrated sustainability strategies into their business:

Origin Energy has the clear sustainability objective

The objective to act sustainable in every aspect of company operations made Origin Energy a sustainable organization. Origin Energy has clear objective to act sustainable and engage with all sorts of sustainability criteria (Origin Sustainability Report, 2017). Origin Energy belongs to the energy sector which has main issue related with global emissions and steps taken to reduce them. In this context Origin Energy has clear sustainability objective to reduce the carbon emission generated through its business operations.

Engaging with the business partners

Origin Energy business strategy is to engage effectively with its suppliers, distributors, and other members of the value chain process for promoting the sustainability performance. Origin Energy has clear policy to select their business partners and they bind all their partners to follow the same. Origin Energy believes in effective collaboration with the business partners helps them to accelerate the sustainability across the company value chain. The collaboration with the business partners is so effective that it has helped the Origin Energy in reducing the impact of the organization and to introduce new and innovative processes and products.