Triple Bottom Line Concept for Woodside Petroleum

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In order to carry out any business in a successful manner, it is extremely important to have a proper balance between all the factors that are affecting or likely to affect the business in terms of expenses and income. One of the most important factors is the evaluation of Triple Bottom Line that is considered a very significant parameter to describe the growth of an organization. The Triple Bottom Line of any company is a concept that is used to measure the balance between the Social Responsibility, Economic Worth and Impact on Environment of its operations. In this particular report, the evaluation for Triple Bottom Line for a company named Woodside Petroleum Limited has been done that shows the different factors that contribute towards the growth in the economy of this company as well as maintain the optimum level of social and environmental responsibilities.

The Woodside Petroleum Limited is a petroleum based public company that was established in 1954 in a very small town of Victoria named Woodside. The company is currently directed by Peter Coleman who happens to be the Chief Executive Officer of the organization and who commands about 3000 employees that help generating about AUD 4.5 billion every year. However, the profit earned by the firm is near about AUD 25 million every year. The headquarters are located at Perth city of West Australia. The sole owner of this organization is Royal Dutch Shell that currently holds approximately 13% shares of the company. The organization deals with extraction of Oil and Natural Gases and also to transport them at various locations. The main product that is refined at its plants is Petroleum based Liquefied Natural Gas or LNG (Woodside.com.au, 2017).

The Triple Bottom Line is a very widely used formula to calculate the degree of three very common factors that are to be maintained by a company namely Economic Value, Social Responsibility and Environmental Influence by the operations that are performed by the company. According to McWilliams et al. (2016), the measure of Triple Bottom Line is done on the profits that are earned by any organization. In addition to this, the main purpose of having the Triple Bottom Line is to maintain a sustainable balance between the three considered factors. As mentioned by Veiga et al. (2017), the description related to the concept of Triple Bottom Line or TBL consists of three factors depicted as three similar sized circles that are arranged in such a manner that they are overlapping each other by a certain value. The point at which all the three circles are overlapping with each other is known as the sustainability point. This is the point where all the factors operate in a proper balance.

Recommendations

In case of Woodside Petroleum, it can be said that the company has been able to maintain the sustainability factors in a balanced way. The company has earned a significant amount of profit by carrying out its operations in an manner that does not harms the environment on a major scale and has also taken care of its Corporate Social Responsibility. The Financial Bottom Line or the profit for Woodside Petroleum in the year 2016 has been AUD 830 million through programs related to productivity. However, it can be said that the company has spent an amount of AUD 12 million in the social work related activities in the areas of Timor-Leste (Woodside.com.au, 2017). This has been very beneficial for the company as it has enhanced the Corporate Image of the organization by a very huge margin. Following are the three main parameters based on which the Triple Bottom Line is decided and the associated figures related to the performance of Woodside Petroleum.

This is the margin that is earned by the company and is left after distributing all the salaries to their employees and management. As per Malik, Lenzen & Geschke (2016), the more the profit is there, the more the company is likely to invest more in its other operations as a part of its expansion program. The profit earned by Woodside Petroleum is significantly high if the distributions to all the employees are considered. The profit is the main area that decided the growth of a company and Woodside Petroleum has managed to show some very good level of profit since the last decade. As mentioned above the profit has been about AUD 830 million (Woodside.com.au, 2017). The Cash Flow in 2016 has been AUD 2.58 billion from the operating activities.

The Corporate Social Responsibility that is taken care of by an organization is the margin that plays a great role in making the corporate social Image of a company (Ozanne et al. 2016). This particular factor includes the social variables that usually deal with education, community, social resources and well being of people. The Human resources department of Woodside Petroleum has arranged many events where the employees have been made to get involved willing fully in the social works related to health and well being of poor people. In September 2016, the company was involved in providing proper health checkups to the needy people and children in Dakar located at Senegal. As stated by Longoni & Cagliano (2016), these kind of activities generates trust between the companies and general population.

Conclusion

This factor is related to the Mother Nature and its preservation. The types of operations that are carried out by any company must be in accordance to the laws and legislations that have been made keeping in mind the importance of saving the nature (Wilcox et al. 2016). The Woodside Petroleum has ensured that its installations are free from any leakage or any other similar imperfection that can potentially cause some very adverse effect to the nature. As mentioned by Hussain, Rigoni & Orij (2016) in their journal, there have been cases when the leakage in a very small area has led to the release in oil over a huge area of sea that has further killed many fishes and other amphibious lives. Hence, in order to avoid any such consequences, the company has ensures that the oil refining plants are installed properly and regular maintenance are carried out to make sure that every module of operation starting from extraction to transportation is carried out safely.

The relationship between people or social factor and planet and environmental factor is known as bearable because the social works can be easily done without compromising with the protection of environment (Rodger & George, 2017).

The overlapping of environmental and economic factor is known to be as Viable as there are certain environmental constraints that are supposed to be followed while earning the profits and strengthening the organization’s economy (Comeau & McKay, 2017).

The relation that is shared by social and economic factors is said to be equitable as there is a lot of finance related calculations that needs to be done in this section. This is also important as it involves all the employees and other human resources of the company (Gou & Xie, 2017).

When all the three factors are in a balanced form, it is said that the company is performing sustainably (Álvarez, Bárcena & González, 2017). The performance of Woodside can be considered as a sustainable one.

Following are some of the recommendations that can be followed by the organization in order to enhance the profits by minimizing the adverse effects that are caused to the environment by its operations.

• The oil extraction installations must be made to operate by using some renewable sources of energy.
• The production of Liquefied Natural Gas from Karratha Gas Plant can be increased further to enhance the profit of the company.
• More funding needs to be put into the Karratha Life Extension Program as it can save more lives of the regional flora and fauna at the neighborhood area.
• Investments in International Gas Production from Canada are likely to catapult the operations on a bigger scale with almost negligible effects on the atmosphere.

Conclusion

After the completion of the study related to evaluation of Triple Bottom Line of Woodside Petroleum, it can be said very evidently that the operations carried out by Woodside Petroleum are on a large scale and are creating some issue with the environment. However, there are certain ways as discussed in the recommendations that are likely to reduce the emission of carbon and other harmful and toxic gases and substances in the atmosphere. The balance between profit, socio-cultural responsibility and environment has been still maintained in a manner that can be considered well within the sustainable limit. The report has included the different statistical figures related to the profit earned by the organization and also those that have been spent on different social work related activities and tasks. The three parameters that are Social, Environmental and Profit have been described explicitly in the report with some very important recommendation that have been given at the end.

Reference List

McWilliams, A., Parhankangas, A., Coupet, J., Welch, E., & Barnum, D. T. (2016). Strategic decision making for the triple bottom line. Business Strategy and the Environment, 25(3), 193-204.

Veiga, J. P. S., Malik, A., Lenzen, M., de Souza Ferreira Filho, J. B., & Romanelli, T. L. (2018). Triple-bottom-line assessment of São Paulo state’s sugarcane production based on a Brazilian multi-regional input-output matrix. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 82, 666-680.

Malik, A., Lenzen, M., & Geschke, A. (2016). Triple bottom line study of a lignocellulosic biofuel industry. Gcb Bioenergy, 8(1), 96-110.

Ozanne, L. K., Phipps, M., Weaver, T., Carrington, M., Luchs, M., Catlin, J., … & Williams, J. (2016). Managing the Tensions at the Intersection of the Triple Bottom Line: A Paradox Theory Approach to Sustainability Management. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 35(2), 249-261.

Longoni, A., & Cagliano, R. (2016). Sustainable innovativeness and the triple bottom line: The role of organizational time perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-24.

Wilcox, J., Nasiri, F., Bell, S., & Rahaman, M. S. (2016). Urban water reuse: A triple bottom line assessment framework and review. Sustainable Cities and Society, 27, 448-456.

Hussain, N., Rigoni, U., & Orij, R. P. (2016). Corporate governance and sustainability performance: Analysis of triple bottom line Performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-22.

Hunt, S. D. (2017). Strategic marketing, sustainability, the triple bottom line, and resource-advantage (RA) theory: Securing the foundations of strategic marketing theory and research. AMS Review, 1-15.

Rodger, J. A., & George, J. A. (2017). Triple bottom line accounting for optimizing natural gas sustainability: A statistical linear programming fuzzy ILOWA optimized sustainment model approach to reducing supply chain global cybersecurity vulnerability through information and communications technology. Journal of Cleaner Production, 142, 1931-1949.

Comeau, A., & McKay, P. (2017). City of Ottawa’s Strategic Infrastructure Management Plan: Development and Application of a Triple-Bottom-Line-“Plus” Risk-Assessment Framework for Collection Systems Criticality Assessment and Needs Prioritization. Proceedings of the Water Environment Federation, 2017(2), 775-788.

Gou, Z., & Xie, X. (2017). Evolving green building: triple bottom line or regenerative design?. Journal of Cleaner Production, 153, 600-607.

Álvarez, M. E. P., Bárcena, M. M., & González, F. A. (2017). On the sustainability of machining processes. Proposal for a unified framework through the triple bottom-line from an understanding review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 142, 3890-3904.