Does Sustainability Reporting Improve Corporate Behaviour?: Wrong Question? Right Time?

Melting glaciers, depleting water resources and decreasing air quality needs immediate attention. Everyone needs air and water to survive. Business started practicing sustainable accounting in mid-70. This practice discloses non-financial and financial information related to the business activities that has direct impact on society and its environment (air, water, people etc.). Companies use triple bottom line method to calculate the impact of business activities on society and based on these calculation companies makes policies which make its operation more ecologically and socially

Abstract Sustainability reporting in the United States is still a work in progress. While more countries around the world are requiring companies to report the effects of their business activities as part of their annual report, this practice is still voluntary in the US. Even though sustainability reporting is not required, companies generally disclose sustainable information on their websites or through social media. Being social responsible builds a certain type of bond that brings internal and external stakeholders together.

CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL MANAGEMENT Unit 46 Assignment Table of Contents Introduction............................................................................................................................ 2 I. The development of global, European and national policies relating to sustainability. 2 1. Changing attitudes of public, politicians and businesses to the environment since 1945 .................................................................................................................................... 2 2. Brundtland definition of ‘sustainable development’ .................................................. 4 3. The international and UK policies to sustainable development since Earth Summit of 1992

Contents Executive Summary 1 Introduction 2 Defining Sustainability 2 What Sustainability means to Woolworths 3 Corporate Stakeholders of Woolworths 3 Woolworths Drive for Change 5 Integrated Reporting 6 Why Integrated Reporting? 6 Woolworths Integrated Reporting 7 The Future of Integrated Reporting 7 Conclusion 8 Word Count: 1995 Executive Summary This report examines the new world of sustainability reporting, and the complex web of stakeholders. It focuses particularly on the demands for new kinds of transparency which serve the interests of the environment and society.

Originally, sustainability reports were written by small and medium-sized environmental companies; however, in the late 1980s large companies in the chemical industry start writing sustainability reports in hopes of improving their images. This trend has expanded in the past 20 years to more companies as a mean of improving internal

MONASH UNIVERSITY SEMSTER 1 – YEAR 2011 AFW 3040 – ACCOUNTING THEORY BY: SARAH WONG Assignment 2 – 1500-word Essay Topic: How social and environmental reporting practices undertaken by companies highlight the limitations of the conceptual framework.

Organisations such as the Global Reporting Initiative and AccountAbility have embraced and promoted the 3BL concept for use in the corporate world. And corporations are listening. Companies as significant as AT&T, Dow Chemical, Shell, and British Telecom, have used 3BL terminology in their press releases, annual reports and other documents. So have scores of smaller firms. Not surprisingly, most of the big accounting firms are now using the concept approvingly and offering services to help firms that want to measure, report or audit their two additional "bottom lines." Similarly, there is now a sizable portion of the investment industry devoted to screening companies on the basis of their social and environmental performance, and many of these explicitly use the language of 3BL.^ Governments, government departments and political parties (especially Green parties) are also well represented in the growing documentation of those advocating or accepting 3BL "principles." For many NGOs and activist organisations 3BL seems to be pretty much an article of faith. Given the rapid uptake by corporations, governments, and activist groups, the paucity of academic analysis is both surprising and worrisome. Our recent search of the principal academic databases turned up only about a dozen articles, mostly concentrated in journals catering to the intersection of management and environmentalism. One book beyond Elkington 's has been

Title: Study Report of David Jones Course code: LB5229 Course Name: Economics for a sustainable world Due Date: January 30th - Friday of week 10 by 5:00 p.m. AEST Weighting: 3,000 Words max. Students Name: Diana Pineda ID #12890593, Manan raj ID# 13087370 January 30, 2015 Mr Gregory Trotman Economics for a Sustainable World James Cook University Brisbane QLD 4000 Mr Gregory Trotman As requested, we has prepared an economic Study Report of David Jones analysing this company business operations and evaluating how their long-run business viability may be affected by the sustainability practice they adopt in their business operations.

Civic / Social Responsibility Defining Civic and Social Responsibility In a recent article concerning corporate social responsibility, it reveals; “a survey conducted by and BEYOND Communications Inc. shows big changes in how CEOs reported on corporate social responsibilities.” (Go figure - corporate social responsibility, (2005). The point of view is

Chapter 5 Reporting and Disclosure Discussion Questions 1. Transparent financial reporting means that timely and accurate disclosures are made on all important matters affecting a company’s financial position and performance. It implies openness, communication, and accountability. Transparent financial reporting protects investors because nothing is hidden from them. Investors

1.0 INTRODUCTION It is through the guidelines report that material disclosure of risk assessment and implications of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors is increasingly important, therefore companies need to raise awareness, management, and responsibility in offering more substantiated reporting. Investors willingly seek information that is relevant to “identify and manage

b) Access to capital Communicating sustainability efforts may signal general firm quality and help lower the firm’s cost of equity, particularly in competitive markets.

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110). Increasing amounts of social accounting is leading to concepts like CSR and SEA becoming an integral part of the profitability of a business. With this increase, Brown and Fraser (2006) indicate that these initiatives can be viewed as ideological weapons, but corporations are also susceptible to “the corporate strategy of weakening national and international environmental agreements while promoting voluntary measures” (Brown and Fraser, 2006, p. 111). This is known as deep greenwash, and those who follow this strategy are doing so strictly for business reasons. The goal is to attain some type of benefits that are only available through social accounting. Based on the three approaches, it is evident that CSR is a critical factor for businesses to consider if profitability is desired.

Transparency reports and reduction of carbon footprint Transparency report has become mandatory in Australia and United Kingdom regulated by the Depeartment for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (2013). This has catalyses many corporation, such as Facebook and Google, to produce an environmental report that includes waste management, greenhouse and carbon emmission and many other indicators. Global Reporting Initiative has produced a reporting framework that is widely used today.