Accounting for Sustainable Management - Case Study Assessment Answer

Accounting for Sustainable Management - Case Study Assessment Answer

Task:

Content requirements
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Veolia has noticed an emerging and increasing trend of discussion about sustainability from businesses and some of Veolia’s competitors are adopting various sustainability frameworks and practices. Although Veolia is currently adopting a sustainability framework the CEO feels that there may be a potential advantage for further advancement in sustainability. He has asked you to conduct research and provide a formal business report to him, addressing the following questions.
1. What is sustainability? Is the notion of sustainability relevant to business and accounting? Justify your answer.
2. Is the notion of sustainability relevant to the waste management industry in which Veolia operates? Justify your answer.
3. What are the specific (material) sustainability issues that Veolia is facing? Justify your answer. Further, develop a strategic materiality matrix for Veolia to illustrate your findings.
4. If sustainability is relevant to Veolia, how might Veolia embed sustainability in its operations and corporate activities? Justify your recommendations.

Assignment One requires you to conduct independent research on issues relating to sustainability and its relevance to a case company in Australia. To successfully complete this assignment, your readings should start with, but not limited to, the Component One materials (Topics 1-3) of the course. You need to search for materials that are outside of prescribed texts, and it is expected that these materials should form the basis of your assignment. While reading these materials, it is suggested that you apply your learning from the readings to this case study (in particular, the four questions that are asked by the CEO) – this will enhance the relevance of your reading and writing.
In terms of your writing, quality (how well you communicate your work and how well the arguments are formed) is more important than quantity (the number of words written) – this is particularly important for business report writing. The readers often are the senior managers, they have limited time to read the report. That is, your writing needs to be clear and straight to the point. Business reports are used to assist in decision-making and your report is used to persuade the readers to adopt your idea or a particular approach. To achieve this, you will need to collect relevant information,identify problems and most importantly, make suitable recommendations to solve these problems.
Your writing, in general, should always provide logical reasoning. You are expected to demonstrate professionalism by presenting a high quality written document and adhere to the referencing style that is detailed in the RMIT Business reference guide.

Particular expectations relating to each question:
1. What is sustainability? Is the notion of sustainability relevant to business and accounting? Justify your answer.
When defining sustainability and arguing the relevance of sustainability to business and accounting, your answer is expected to go beyond course materials - you are expected to draw from your research, and to explicitly link the importance of sustainability in business and accounting practices. You are expected to search for discussions from different parties (e.g., business leaders, international organisations, politicians, or various interest groups) as well as academic journals. Your discussion also needs to consider the changing and heightened social expectations on business operations. In doing so, you also need to discuss the relationships between accounting, accountability and sustainability.

2. Is the notion of sustainability relevant to the waste management industry in which Veolia operates? Justify your answer.
In this part, you are expected to link sustainability to the industry. This involves researching, identifying and analysing sustainability issues in the industry at the world level and in Australia, the expectations (in general) from the stakeholders, and the competitors of Veolia. You will need to look for evidence of what other business entities are doing as they pertain to sustainability (e.g., which competitors are currently adopting a particular framework and practice or producing sustainability reports). Particular industry initiatives or frameworks need to be addressed.

3. What are the specific (material) sustainability issues that Veolia is facing? Justify your answer. Further develop a strategic materiality matrix for Veolia to illustrate your findings.
In this part, you are expected to explicitly link sustainability to Veolia. This involves researching and analysing the current market position and sustainable practices of Veolia, particular issues that Veolia is facing, as well as the expectations from its stakeholders. You will need to analyse the strength as well as future opportunities or improvements for your entity.
This is followed by constructing a strategic materiality matrix. Please note that materiality matrix can be developed for strategic development or reporting purpose therefore the focus and contents can be different. In Assignment One we focus on the strategic materiality matrix to decide what Veolia need to prioritise in its strategy. (Avoid intensive use of GRI or IR materiality criteria as these two are for reporting purpose. Reporting materiality will be addressed in Assignment Two).
There are plenty of examples from websites on how to construct a strategic materiality matrix. When developing the matrix make sure it is customised for Veolia. One way, but not the only way, to construct the strategic materiality matrix is to present the issues that significant to stakeholders and those to Veolia, and plot them along the X-Axis (e.g., significance to Veolia) and Y-Axis (e.g., significance to stakeholders) according to the degree of significance, urgency or priority.

4. If sustainability is relevant to Veolia, how might Veolia embed sustainability in its operations and corporate activities? Justify your recommendations.
This part is the most important and valuable work of your business report. Your work on the first three questions is designed to build a solid foundation of research and analysis that logically lead to this part in which you will demonstrate your problem-solving skills. The reason that the CEO commission this business report is to receive recommendations that convincing and useful to the company. Your recommendations should be specific and in-depth. Avoid offering recommendations that are too general (e.g., ‘the company should embrace sustainability practices’ without further detail), less relevant to the case company, or not realistic to implement.Read carefully the marking rubric (next page), and understand how your work will be assessed.

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