Background

A careful study and a logical analysis of the sustainability report of BHP clearly makes one conclude that the report has been prepared as per the guidelines laid down by the Global Reporting Initiative Standards comprehensive-level reporting (Belton, 2017).  The reporting approach followed by BHP is a comprehensive one, i.e. the assets, functions, achievements, marketing and supply; all have been reported for the group as a whole. The content of the report also involves as its backdrop an assessment of the materiality, done annually. This assessment is done by understanding the factors that triggers risk and by recognizing the potentiality of their strengths. Engaging with the stakeholders, both internal and external, forms the crux of the materiality analysis.

BHP has carved a separate name for itself when it comes to actually putting safety and human rights at priority. They are responsible towards the environment and concentrate a lot on the health and safety of its employees and workforce. There are appropriate committees at appropriate levels to ensure that the objective of sustainability is achieved. These committees have as their member people from different expertise areas and experience. Examples include the Sustainability Committee, Risk and Audit Committee, Remuneration Committee. In matters relating to sustainability, the company also takes the help of external sources or forums for obtaining expert advice (Farmer, 2018). This enables an intelligent decision making. The company has also clearly laid out in the sustainability report the targets that it wishes to achieve in the next four years.

Looking from the technical and cosmetic  aspect, the performance indicators are well highlighted so that the stakeholders have an idea about the achievements .These are expressed in brief and easy to understand terms, which leaves no room for ambiguity. Sustainability is all about social, economic and environmental factors and therefore it becomes utmost important to discuss how BHP has performed on these three parameters (Choy, 2018).

Social: 1 percent of their profits before tax goes towards the upliftment of the society and to community related initiatives. The figures for this investment in the year 2017 stood at an impressive 80.1 million US dollars. The potential hazards and workplace related exposures have decreased by 76 percent from their set baseline in the year 2012. This achievement is quite commendable given the short time period within which it has been achieved.  Total recordable injury frequency (TRIF) has improved every year and the entity is committed towards taking it further. They support local culture and extend their support, in the form of investments, to protect it.

BHP’s Sustainability Report

Environmental: The operations have reduced greenhouse gases emissions. 975,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide has been saved, annually. This has increased productivity thus resulting in economic gains and the development of the economy as a whole. Apart from this, the company has also used sonar technology, to the extent possible. The goal of rehabilitating 40,000 hectares of degraded land has been envisaged (Kim, Schmidgall, & Damitio, 2017).

Economic: 4.7 million US dollars paid in the form of taxes and royalties in the financial year 2017, thus contributing to the economy of the nation as a whole, and making it more powerful

BHP’s Sustainability report is excellent and it gives out all the necessary and material information.

The main question that the paper proposes to answer is whether mining is possible in manner that brings the environmental impacts to a minimum and at the same time be protective towards the livelihood of the local community. The author thinks that the question is important because most of the world’s mining related disasters owe their occurrence to the tailings storage facilities, or TSFs as they are generally called. The agreements that the author wishes to put forward is well illustrated with facts and figures (Arnott, Lizama, & Song, 2017). A detailed analysis of the three mines namely, Ok Tedi, McLaughlin and Mount Polley helps one to understand the issues associated with TSF. The study clearly helps one understand why the McLaughlin was a success and why the other two failed. In fact, in most of the cases around the world we see that the reasons behind such disasters are political and not technical. These disasters in turn lead to social disasters whose impact is long lasting and not easily quantifiable. Other factors that contribute to these mishaps include poor analysis of geotechnical factors, below standard design model of tailings beach and tailings dam, deviations from the design approved by the Ministry Of energy and Mines, and negligent and inefficient supervision and regulatory monitor. The paper also raises further question on the engineering aspects of the facilities projects. In other words, the author also explicitly expresses how scientific and innovative engineering techniques can bring down the social and environmental impacts of mining (Das, 2017).

While critically evaluating the paper “the case of tailing storage facilities”, the first thing that strikes us is the question that the author raises. Though there is nothing new about raising questions on the environmental impact of operations like mining, what is interesting here is the evidence and studies that forms the backbone of the paper. Unlike a lot of environmentalists, columnists and pseudo intellectuals, the author actually does the ground work rather than just preaching and providing lip service. The author, at some places, has also followed an aggressive approach, which we think is the need for the hour for matters effecting the environment and the society. The text is useful not just for the students of these fields, but also for the legislative and the regulatory parties, the companies and every other person who is somehow involved with the mining industry (Goldmann, 2016). The text is detailed and lucid. The evidences supported are also very extensive and strong.  These evidences have been quantified and assigned monetary values, to the greatest possible extent, which makes it all the more persuasive and conclusive. However the conclusions reached seems to be at a preliminary stage. There is a lot which is still left to be done so that concrete steps can be taken on the basis of these conclusions.

Technical and Cosmetics Aspects of the Report

This paper on “Corporate Social Responsibilities: Alternative Perspectives About the Need to Legislate” primarily raises the question whether corporate accountability or more importantly corporate social responsibility shall be developed and determined by the dynamic and varied forces operating in the market or shall there be a regulatory body to supervise the same. To reach a conclusion on the question, the article involves and explores the opinions of different people, organizations and communities with respect to the introduction of a new, separate and additional statute. It also talks about the existing legislations and provisions to facilitate a better understanding of what is already there and what needs to be there (Erik & Jan, 2017).

As expected, or as a wise person would interpret, different communities or sectors of the nation responded differently to it. Every stratum suggested the alternative that in their opinion would be the most beneficial to them and would protect their interests. While the business fraternity was in favour of an approach which does not involve any regulatory body or institution, the individuals and the social organizations were of the opinion that it should be highly and strictly regulated.

The importance of the topic becomes clear from the huge number of responses that were received by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services on the Inquiry. These responses came from a varied group of people including business houses, associations, professional bodies, Accounting firms, non-government organizations (NGOs),

consumer associations, employee groups, government organizations and individuals. In fact, out of the 130 submissions received, the highest number of responses came from individuals who feel the need of greater investor protection legislations. 36 submissions came from this group followed by the social and environmental organizations which made 30 submissions (Jefferson, 2017).

Judging from the technical aspect, the report is very well documented and articulated. The style of writing adopted is research based, where each of the submissions was read out. These submissions have further been summarized in tables for giving a quick view to the readers and for easy understanding of the sentiments of the different groups. The analysis of the responses with terms of references is very logical and scientific. It therefore leaves no space for misinterpretation or formation of a wrong opinion or unrealistic conclusion. The text matter has been divided into sections like research method, results, consistency and summary, each section catering to different aspects. The questions raised by the author have a very broad connotation.  The only thing that the report lacks is the conclusion part. It should also be noted here that since the paper is about alternative perspectives, it is not possible to reach a final conclusion. However, in my opinion, the text would be highly useful to students of the field and the novices who want to understand the concept of corporate responsibility to the core (Werner, 2017). Its use to other people like experts, business corporations, and nonprofit organizations would be very limited.

Papers Review

The main objective of this paper is to throw light on the use and execution of the legitimacy theory in making annual disclosures in the financial statements. It understands the link between the event that poses environmental threat, the decision taken by the company, and the tactic adopted to maintain, gain or repair the legitimacy (Trieu, 2017). The paper concludes that disclosures in annual report are one of the most widely used methods of monitoring and communicating the strategic response with the stakeholders, especially the researchers. Therefore organizations disclose their social and environmental data voluntarily, in the annual report, so as to keep the stakeholders well informed. The stakeholders become aware of such incidents, the entity’s response and also the impact. The importance for environmental information is so immense that a lot of entities in the corporate world have also initiated the task of preparation of standalone reports, focusing solely on the environmental disclosures. Having discussed varied perspectives, it is apparent that the need for disclosures depends on the intensity of the situation. While annual reports serve as an obvious place to make environmental disclosures, in matters requiring immediate action and widespread exposure, other unconventional means of communication like media release and advertisements shall be used.

Talking about the technical criteria, the text has tried to bring in a new topic of discussion. The relevance of discussing legitimacy theory is increasing day by day, given the pace of economic development and industrialization.  The link of legitimacy theory with other social theory like stakeholder theory, accountability theory and political economic theory makes the piece an interesting read. Has make good use of figures to explain the interplay of societal; expectations and the business entity’s actions. The author has quoted and refereed to a lot of different authors, making it more diverse. Sample tactics provide a real life response to the anticipated events or incidents. The method adopted to gather information about this research is not satisfactorily extensive. The research information was gathered by interviewing six senior managers, belonging to three large Australian companies, deemed suitable for this purpose. However, these interviews were in depth, involving a lot of questions, both open ended and close ended. The most striking feature of this paper is the data analysis [part, which was conducted in two different stages. The first stage focused on quantifiable analysis where the second one emphasized on qualitative analysis. This holistic approach of data analysis makes the report reliable and very informative. The rankling of disclosure approaches further added feathers to the cap.  The conclusions reached are not final as it opens a lot of other areas and theories where further research is required. The text definitely gives new answers to the old question (Sithole, Chandler, Abeysekera, & Paas, 2017).

Corporate Social Responsibilities: Alternative Perspectives About the Need to Legislate

The purpose of this paper is to discuss about the disclosure requirements of a company or organization in case of an environmental disaster or incident. In order to achieve the stated objectives, the author has taken the help of two case studies from Bangladesh, a developing nation.  The case specifically involves the analysis of two blowouts at a gas field owned by Niko Resources Limited, a Canadian Multinational company operating in the Oil and Gas sector. The author wanted to find out whether corporates make such disclosure out of public pressure or as part of their accountability, both moral and corporate (Alexander, 2016). An in-depth study of the paper enables the readers to reach a conclusion where it becomes clear that the disclosures made by Niko Resources Limited, in the form of standalone report, was out of public pressure and not out of moral obligations and accountability. The company anticipated that not addressing the issue would have a direct bearing on their survival. Resultantly, no information, in the nature of non-qualitative, was provided along with the annual report. Contingent liability was disclosed to the extent that they meet the regulatory requirements.

The question raised by the paper is the need of the hour.  In today’s times when a lot of big corporates, as part of their expansion strategies, open factories  or places of business in third world countries, their accountability and answerability for events occurring in those nations needs to be determined. The relevance and the newness of the question cannot be neglected.  The fact that this paper is one of the first that focuses on the behavior of international entities towards such incidents in local communities, talks a lot about its importance and its relevance.  The research approach adopted by the author majorly involves reading, assessing and reviewing the articles in the news and other media releases (Grenier, 2017). Apart from these, the annual report and the standalone social responsibility report has also been intensively studied. Further, the disclosures were bifurcated into financial and non-financial disclosures which facilitated the analysis of their respective behaviors. The approach is highly observant and critical. The text has been written very elaborately which gives valuable insight into the real matter. The tables that form part of the paper are self-explanatory.  Though the text raises a very important question, it fails to reach a final conclusion. This is because of the fact that the behavior of single multinational has been studied. There are definitely a lot of other entities who have made similar disclosures and their reasons of doing so cannot be generalize.

References

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Arnott, D., Lizama, F., & Song, Y. (2017). Patterns of business intelligence systems use in organizations. Decision Support Systems, 97, 58-68.

Belton, P. (2017). Competitive Strategy: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. London: Macat International ltd.

Choy, Y. K. (2018). Cost-benefit Analysis, Values, Wellbeing and Ethics: An Indigenous Worldview Analysis. Ecological Economics, 145. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.005

Das, P. (2017). Financing Pattern and Utilization of Fixed Assets – A Study. Asian Journal of Social Science Studies, 2(2), 10-17.

Erik, H., & Jan, B. (2017). Supply chain management and activity-based costing: Current status and directions for the future. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 47(8), 712-735.

Farmer, Y. (2018). Ethical Decision Making and Reputation Management in Public Relations. Journal of Media Ethics, 1-12.

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Jefferson, M. (2017). Energy, Complexity and Wealth Maximization, R. Ayres. Springer, Switzerland . Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 353-354.

Kim, M., Schmidgall, R., & Damitio, J. (2017). Key Managerial Accounting Skills for Lodging Industry Managers: The Third Phase of a Repeated Cross-Sectional Study. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, , 18(1), 23-40.

Sithole, S., Chandler, P., Abeysekera, I., & Paas, F. (2017). Benefits of guided self-management of attention on learning accounting. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(2), 220. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2016-21263-001

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