Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting, Global Reporting Initiative and Sustainability - Case Study Example

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY By Location Corporate social responsibility Corporate social responsibility refers to a type of self-regulation that corporate usually integrate into their business models. Corporate social responsibility works just in the form of an inbuilt mechanism for self-regulation under which business organizations can track and make sure they actively comply with the ethical and legal standards. This includes the international norms. Under some business models, the implementation of corporate social responsibility is more than just mere compliance to these standards, but also engage in activities that are meant to benefit the society and not just their interests. The Corporate social responsibility process can, therefore, be said to be a process with the primary intention of enabling business organizations to take responsibility of their activities and encourage positive influence through activities that involves consumers, environment, employees, the stakeholders, and local communities. This paper aims at critically evaluating the corporate sustainability report 2012-13 of Tata Motors Limited against the Global Reporting Initiative 3.1. Guidelines, with particular emphasis on reporting to diverse stakeholder groups. Over the past few decades, there have been various initiatives on reporting CSR have developed. Business organizations have been moving from price centred competition to competing through winning market shares. There has also been an increased activism by stakeholder impelling business organizations to show their commitment to socially responsible activities. There has also been an increase in the nature of sophistication in the involvement of stakeholders. Over the past few years, corporate social responsibility has been shaped by an evident adjustment of corporate social accountability boundaries. Business organizations are, therefore, expected to be accountable for each activity that is included in the entire value chain (Horrigan 2010, p. 154). There has also been an increased demand for transparency of businesses by the public. Governments have also shown continually growing interest in business activities that affect the society. All these activities have led to an improvement in reporting, corporate social responsibility. The Global Reporting Initiative is a not-for-profit organization with the major goal of enhancing economic sustainability. This organization avails standards for sustainability report that are known to be among of the most prevalent globally. The Global Reporting Initiative can, therefore be said to be responsible for the provision of a framework against which business organizations of all types can monitor the social, environmental, and economic performance. This approach that is standardized enable high levels of accountability and transparency. It also enables business organizations globally to benchmark their performances against the performance of peer organizations and those of previous years. These reporting standards are also known as ecological footprint reporting, corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, environmental social governance (ESG) reporting, and triple bottom line (TBL) reporting (Dowu & Filho 2008, p. 172). Companies are expected to show their contribution as illustrated in the chart below. At Tata Motors Limited, there are various stakeholders who are involved in the sustainability reporting process. The stakeholders that were involved in the sustainability reporting process of Tata Motors Limited include: shareholders, investors, suppliers, customers, employees, dealers, local community, government, and other regulatory agencies. Dealers were involved in activities such as competitor data analysis, dealer meetings, special dealer training programs, dealer councils, and carrying out of company audits. These activities were either taken in annual or quarterly basis. The effectiveness of involvement of dealers in the process was gauged through dealer satisfaction surveys. Employees were involved in this process horizontal communication, sunrise and sunset meetings, horizontal deployment, human resource forums, monthly and weekly display of reviews improvements, and focus group discussions. The impact of this involvement was gauged by carrying out an employee satisfaction survey. The local communities were involved through meetings and public hearings. They were given information about action plans then feedback was sought from them. The government and other regulatory agencies were involved through one-on-one meetings and meetings in industry forums. In such incidences, the company made its action plan known to the government and regulatory agencies. Suppliers were involved in the process through supplier meetings, Kaizen events, joint programs, technology days, and competitor data analysis. The effectiveness of their involvement was gauged through supplier satisfaction surveys. Shareholders also got their chance of involvement through annual general meeting and quarterly communications. The customer got had chances of involvement through direct visits, customer meetings, feedback calls, training, forums, and costumer complaint line as shown in the figure below. Investors’ involvement came through investor meetings, investor calls, and road shows. The company’s action plans were communicated to them during these occasions. The guideline for suitability reporting given by the Global Reporting Initiative is divided into two primary parts. The first part describes the three major elements of the reporting process. This part of the guideline looks at the reporting principles of stakeholder inclusiveness, materiality, completeness, and sustainability context. These principles can help a business organization in determining what to report on. This part also has a brief testing of the above principles (Visser 2010, p. 84). The second part has the standard disclosures that are supposed to be part of the suitability report. The corporate sustainability report 2012-13 of Tata Motors Limited can be said to have taken into consideration the principle of materiality. This is evident in the way they only look into relevant indicators and topics. In the report, there is a topic: material issues which identify issues that are materially significant to the business organization and to their stakeholders. Furthermore, the report contains information that is likely to be of high significance to the business’ stakeholders (Perrini, Pogutz & Tencati 2006, p. 197). This enables the report to reflect the business organization’s important environmental, social, and economic impacts. The information that is presented by the corporate social responsibility report should also be of the type which can influence how the various stakeholders view the business organization. The diagram below shows the structure of the parties involved in the development of this report. The corporate sustainability report 2012-13 of Tata Motors Limited can be said to have taken into consideration the principle of stakeholder inclusiveness. This is evident in the way it involves the various stakeholders of the business organization. Additionally, it also explains the various ways in which it responds to the reasonable interests and expectations of the stakeholders (Schaltegger, Bennett & Burritt 2006, p. 157). For instance, the report shows various ways in which the business organization involved its stakeholders. It also shows how the company was able to gauge the level of satisfaction amongst their stakeholders. The report has various innovations that the company has made that had positive response from their customer. A good example of such would be the safari family vehicles which have reduced CO2 and noise production. This is good for the consumers, local communities, and the government. It is also good news to investors, suppliers, dealers, and employees because of the positive market response that these vehicles have been accorded. The corporate sustainability report 2012-13 of Tata Motors Limited can be said to have taken into consideration the principle of suitability context. This report presents Tata Motors Limited’s performance in the context of suitability. The report shows how Tata Motors Limited plans on contributing to the development or deterioration of environmental, economic, and social situations in the future. The report does this by showing and touching on the various things that the business organization has done to make sure that they improve their eco-efficiency (Idowu 2009, 117) For instance; the report has details on how Tata Motors Limited invested in green buildings. It also shows that the company emits Nitrogen Oxide, Particulate matter, and sulphur oxide. The report further gives details on actions that the business organization has taken to make sure that these harmful emissions are properly handled to reduce their impact on the environment. According to The guideline for suitability reporting given by the Global Reporting Initiative, suitability reports are supposed to be complete. This means that they are supposed to cover all material indicators and topics. In this way it should reflect significant environmental, economic, and social results of the company, therefore one can be able to carry out an assessment of the of the business organization during the reporting period (Mareș 2008, p. 87)). Looking at the corporate sustainability report 2012-13 of Tata Motors Limited, someone can notice that the choice of scope, time and boundary really contributes to the completeness of the sustainability report. The period that is included in the report is that in between 2010 and 2013. The report also covers all the environmental, social, and economic effects of the activities that the business organization is involved in. This makes the reports completely detailed with everything that anybody would want to find out about their activities. The corporate sustainability report 2012-13 of Tata Motors can also be said to be balanced. This means that it gives details on both the negative and positive aspects of the operations of the Tata Motors Limited. The report reveals the various innovations that they have made in the past which represent some of the positive aspects of the activities of this business organization (Mullerat & Brennan 2011, p. 101). The report also gives details on harmful by-products that are produced during the business organization’s production process. The company emits Nitrogen Oxide, Particulate matter, and sulphur oxide. These examples prove that the report not only focuses on the positive impacts of their activities but the negative ones too. This will help all the interested parties in getting unbiased information about the activities of Tata Motors Limited. This report can also be said to be of high compatibility. This is seen in the way it makes it easy for stakeholders to analyse the performance of the business organization. This nature of the report makes it easier for stakeholders compare the performance of the company currently to its previous performance. The stakeholders can also be able to compare the performance of Tata Motors Limited to the performance of their close competitors (Nourick 2001, p. 134). The corporate sustainability report 2012-13 of Tata Motors gives details on environmental, social, and economic performances during this period. For instance, it gives details on actions that have been taken by the company to make sure that their activities are more environmental friendly. The report also shows how the company has been performing in the market and the improvements that have been evident in their economic performance. All these details are arranged in a systematic way, making it easier for stakeholder to analyse and deduce relevant information from them. Information that is contained in the sustainability report by Tata Motors Limited also shows a high level of accuracy. The details that are given in the reports are backed by relevant operation records. This makes the report a reliable resource in assessing the performance of the company. The report is also timely. This is because it shows the performance of a period of one year after the previous report (Belal, 2008, p. 99). The fact that it comes at such a perfect timing makes the information held in this report very effective and relevant in the assessment. This also allows constant flow of information relating to the operations of the business organization to the various stakeholders. The report is of high clarity. It is proved by the manner in which the report is easily accessible and understandable hence makes it easy for the stakeholders to readily refer back to it. The report can be understood by stakeholders of different types or classes. Stakeholder, therefore, can get information from this report without necessarily have to strain. This report can also be said to be reliable. This is because of the process that was used to gather, compile, record, analyse and discloses the information contained in the report (Mullerat 2010, p. 201). The fact that all the stakeholders were involved in the process makes it even easier for them to have belief in the information contained in the sustainability report. It is clearly evident that the Corporate Sustainability Report 2012-13 of Tata Motors Limited was developed in compliance with the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. This can be proved by the way the report was able to consider aspects such as stakeholder inclusiveness, materiality, sustainability context, completeness, compatibility, balance, clarity, accuracy, timeliness, and reliability. These factors make the corporate sustainability report 2012-13 of Tata Motors more appreciated by all the stakeholders. The process of its development also proves just how much the entire stakeholders are likely to find the information in this suitability report satisfactory. This report also proves how important and fruitful following the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines can be to a business organization. Bibliography Barth, R., & Wolff, F 2009, Corporate social responsibility in Europe rhetoric and realities, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=433342. Belal, A. R 2008, Corporate social responsibility reporting in developing countries: the case of Bangladesh, Ashgate, Aldershot, Hampshire, England. Blowfield, M., & Murray, A 2011, Corporate responsibility, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Cramer, J., & Bergmans, F 2003, Learning about corporate social responsibility the Dutch experience, IOS Press, Amsterdam. http://ezproxy.usherbrooke.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&jid=YPM&site=ehost-live. Dowu, S. 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