CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
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Executive Summary
The aim of this assignment is to do the analysis on the CSR and the sustainability reporting of the Harvey Norman. It is the organization that is the Australian company that is engaged in the business of retail, fertilizers, coal mining and the industrial and the safety products. Under this report, discussion will be done on the components of the corporate social responsibility reporting, motivations of CSR reporting of the company by using the legitimacy, stakeholders and the institutional theory and evaluation of the components of CSR of the company that impacts the local community. Therefore, it can be said that at the Harvey Norman, the company believes in creation of the long-term value by playing the positive role towards the communities it serves and it aims at achieving the satisfactory return to the shareholders by CSR reporting.
Table of Contents
Handling of Components of CSR Reporting 3
Motivations of CSR Reporting 5
Impact on the Local Community 7
Introduction
Corporate social responsibility is the important part of the company as it helps the companies for managing the processes of the company for producing the overall positive impacts on the society. The business organizations continues to commit for behaving ethically as well as contributing to the economic development with improving quality of the workforce’s life, their families and of local community as well as society at the large. Hence, under this report discussion will be done on handling components of the corporate social responsibility in Harvey Norman. Moreover, the analysis will be done on the motivations of the company in the area by using the stakeholders, legitimacy and institutions theory. Lastly, the evaluation will be done on the impact on the local community by the social reporting and the environmental reporting (csrhub.com. 2019).
Overview of the Company
Harvey Norman is the leading Australian company listed in the Australian Stock Exchange that is headquartered in the New South Wales, Australia. The company is engaged in the business operations of multi-national drop shipping of computers, bedding, furniture, communications as well as consumer electrical products. The company generally operates as the franchise with the company’s main brand and all the company’s operated stores are owned by the ASX listed company Harvey Norman Holdings Limited (Harveynorman.com.au. 2019).
Discussion
Handling of Components of CSR Reporting
Corporate social responsibility is the set of the practices and policies of the organizations that helps in interlinking the multiple stakeholders, which includes communities and environment involved. It is the commitment of the business towards the sustainability as well as the sustainability in general. However, there are certain components of CSR reporting that must be included in every reporting such as environmental preservation, human rights, economic and organization growth, employee security, community participation and promoting the better health standards (Grayson and Hodges 2017).
The reporting of the corporate social responsibility is done by the Harvey Norman is in the structured way. The CSR reporting of the company aims towards creating the value for the shareholders, customers, employees as well as the communities that are done with the help of different initiatives of sustainability and CSR. The CSR activities of the company is in the categories of community & philanthropy, product, human rights & supply chain, compensation & benefits, diversity & labor rights, training, health & safety, energy & climate change, environment policy & reporting, resource management, board, leadership ethics and transparency & reporting. The company considers that the creation of the value is only possible by the help of serving the environment as well as the community. The creation of the long-term community is done by the company by playing the positive role in the serving communities. The sustainability is believed as the opportunity for driving the strong as well as long term shareholders return (Cheng, Ioannou, and Serafeim 2014). Harvey Norman is strived towards looking for more of the opportunities for saving the energy and reducing the carbon footprint. The effectiveness of the company is measured by the component of energy & climate change that helps in addressing the climate change by the appropriate strategies and policies, energy efficient operations, renewable energy development and the other alternatives technologies of environment. They are proactive for the management of the risks that are associated with the change in the climate because the responding will be helpful in delivering the significant social, economic as well as the economic benefits for everyone (csrhub.com. 2019). The company strives for improving the safety performance. They believe for providing the indigenous people with having greater opportunities for participating in the sustainable employment that remains primary objective of the diversity policy of the organization. The company identifies as well as does the effective management of the risk that includes the calculation of the risk taking that is one of the essential part of the company’s approach for the creation of the long-term value to their shareholders. The company audits the supply chain for making sure about their ethical operations. The company aims for reducing the uses of energy, water or materials for finding more efficient solutions for improving the supply chain management. Moreover, the company builds the strong business environment that is underpinned by the inclusive and cohesive community environment (Tai and Chuang 2014).
Motivations of CSR Reporting
Legitimacy theory helps the organizations continuously that they continually attempts for ensuring that they perceive and they functions within the norms and bond of the society under which it operates. It implies that social contract that exists between the business organization and the respective societies. For aligning with the theory of legitimacy, the organization engages in the activities and reporting of CSR activities for retaining, gaining as well as regaining their legitimacy. In case of the Harvey Norman, the company is committed towards making of the positive social, economic and the environmental contribution towards the society that are consistent with that of the principles of the respect, integrity, fairness and honesty. The workplace practices and policies of the company covers fair as well as non-discriminatory treatment of their employees and their diversify policies. It prohibits the discrimination and forced and child labor and trafficked as well as they are committed towards safe and the healthy working environment that includes collective bargaining and right to freedom of the association (Hopkins 2016).
Stakeholder’s theory is the relationship between the stakeholders and the organization. This theory that suggests that management of the company are expected for performing the accountability towards the stakeholders by undertaking the activities that are deemed important by their stakeholders as well as by the reporting information. The organization engages in the activities and reporting of CSR for discharging their accountability towards their stakeholders; in ethical perspective towards all the stakeholders and towards the economically powerful stakeholders in managerial perspectives (Di Giuli and Kostovetsky 2014). Hence, organizational CSR disclosure are driven by the desire for managing their powerful stakeholders, and for the ethical branch, the motivation of CSR disclosure are driven by desire for being accountable for all the stakeholders that are irrespective of their economic power (csrhub.com. 2019). In the case of the Harvey Norman, the company throughout the year continues for actively seeking the ways for collaborating with the wide ranges of the stakeholders on the awareness of the community and the initiatives of the sustainability. It includes closely working with the state as well as national authorities for educating the communities on the locally relevant emergency preparation as well as the measures of the disaster responses. The company aims for promoting and achieving the effective communication with their stakeholders all the time (Ofori, S-Darko and Nyuur 2014).
Institutional theory helps in examining the organizational forms as well as explaining the reasons for having the homogeneous characteristics or forming in the organizations that are within the same organizational field. There are different forces that influence the organizations for adopting the CSR practices. In line with institutional theory, the predicted CSR motivation of the organization is the desire of becoming similar to the other organization with the help of adopting those of the practices which is considered normal by the society or the particularly powerful groups (Korschun, Bhattacharya and Swain 2014). In case of Harvey Norman, the company contributes to their partners and the majority of that are the long-term commitment with the Australian based organizations as well as overseas sourcing discloures. The company discloses and monitors the relationship of the company with the respect of partnership with the other organizations (Belal 2016).
Impact on the Local Community
The components such as social reporting and environmental reporting in the Harvey Norman impacts their local community. The company makes the positive contribution towards the communities under which it operates by creating value for their stakeholders. The component of the community development and philanthropy reflects the community citizenship of the company through the goods donations, charitable giving as well as volunteerism of the staff time. It also protect public health and manages social impacts of their operation on the local communities (Belal 2016). This results in making the significant impact on the economy of Australia. The company invests millions of dollars in the community programs by the different businesses. The company supports the number of organization by philanthropically (Wang et al. 2016). The company makes sure that all the consumer products that are supplies should be safe and should meet the guarantees under consumer laws of operating countries. Moreover, the company makes sure that the all the products should comply with the mandatory standards that are relevant (Unit 2015). The divisions of the company implement the recalls of product whenever there is possibility of safety issues that has aroused. There was emergence of key material issue for the company and their business during the year as the part of the materiality process of data privacy. The company continues for implementing the number of the controls for minimizing the risk that includes the enhanced monitoring as well as the vulnerability testing of their procedures and systems (Jizi et al. 2014).
Harvey Norman has the local footprint in the various communities. There are many divisions of the company that has the major and long-term partnership at the national level. Apart from the major partnership, the significant part of the investment of the community are directed towards smaller as well as the not for profit organizations that are operating locally (Chernev and Blair 2015). The company makes an effort for reducing the costs of environment and creating the new market opportunities by the new sustainable processes and technologies as well as producing the goods and services that helps in enhancing the health and quality of life of consumers and community. Moreover, all the retail businesses of the company support the local community groups by the gift cards provisions, products or by facilitating the collection of the customer donations for the initiatives of local fundraising. It is because of these localized driven activities, the significant number of the community groups and the programs has received the support from the businesses that are across the wide ranges of the areas (Lins, Servaes and Tamayo 2017).
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be said by analyzing the CSR reporting of Harvey Norman that it aims for the creating the long-term values for the employees, communities, customers and the stakeholders. The company does this by engaging with the local communities. Moreover, the company will be able for creating the long-term value by taking the initiative for minimizing the impact of the environment on their business. The motivation behind the CSR reporting of the company is for achieving the satisfactory return for the shareholders by looking after the employees of the organization and giving safe as well as fulfilling the working environment, taking care of customers, looking towards suppliers, taking care of environmental by acting ethically and making contributions towards communities for which it operates. Lastly, the components of CSR of Harvey Norman impacts the local community by making positive contribution towards the communities under which it operates.
Reference
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