BFA758 - Organisational Social Responsibilities Assignment

Assignment Task

You have been appointed as the Manager of Wilderness Explorations Tasmania (WET), a fast-growing organisation that runs walking tours throughout various trails across Tasmania. WET’s head office is in Launceston. WET has several strong competitors in a high growth industry.

The tours range in duration from two days to seven days. Some tours cater specifically for experienced walkers and cover challenging terrains, whereas other tours are aimed at walkers with limited hiking experience and moderate fitness. A number of the walks include areas of significant wilderness and biodiversity which are important to embrace for both current and future generations. A number of these walks have brought criticism from a growing number of people who are concerned that important aspects of biodiversity might be threatened, particularly as the number of walkers increases.  These criticisms have come from Indigenous Peoples, Local Conservation Groups and general members of the public.

Accommodation on the tours is provided at designated camping sites on the trails and food, beverages and water are dropped – by either helicopter or four-wheel drive vehicles - at each of the designated sites prior to the participants’ arrival. The organisation employs mainly local people and, where possible, sources its products from local suppliers. The participant walkers – which in the last year amounted to over 12,000 people - are mainly from interstate, although there a number of regular visitors from within Tasmania and overseas. Any waste is removed from sites at the same time the food drops occur – this has raised concern in terms of the timing between food drop and usage of the site.

Your role is to embed sustainable business practices within the organisation. Previously, this was an area of operations that was informally addressed by the organisation; however, the organisation understands that it needs to increase its focus on sustainability-related matters and needs to develop and implement well designed sustainability-related policies and practices.  This has been strongly motivated by the concerns raised and a desire to be able to continue this business opportunity which is also an educational experience for participants.

You have been asked to provide a report to the company’s Board of Directors that addresses the following issues:

1. What process should the organisation undertake to determine what aspects of social and environmental performance to prioritise and concentrate upon? This will require a consideration of the responsibilities of the organisation, and to whom these responsibilities are owed.
2. Given the nature of this organisation, list some aspects of social and environmental performance than would likely need to be prioritised and managed, and explain why, and how, these aspects of performance were selected. In doing so, you should also identify five important ‘costs’ that need to be carefully managed being clear about why these particular costs were identified and are relevant to this organisation.
3. Once it has been determined what aspects of social and environmental performance to prioritise (point 2 above), provide some advice as to how these aspects of performance might be determined and/or measured.
4. With the above answers in mind, identify some key performance indicators that might be useful for assessing the actual social and environmental performance of the organisation.
5. Advise whether some of these key performance indicators, identified above, should be used to assess and reward senior managers within the organisation? If so, please also advise how would this be done.
6. Identify some other corporate governance-related policies (other than management remuneration plans addressed in point 5 above) that need to be considered to assist the organisation to become more sustainable. You are to identify five corporate governance policies/procedures that you think are particularly important.
7. Provide a list and description of some key ‘accounts’ that should be prepared by the organisation and identify to whom (the stakeholders) these accounts should be made available.
8. Put together a proposal for a cost-benefit analysis for the continuation of this business activity which embraces sustainability concerns and reflects on the continued financial viability of the entity (no dollar figures are requires).

The report you prepare should be very concise and not exceed words (not including your list of references). The report is to be completed for the Board of Directors by the due date in time for a Board meeting later that week.

Presentation of the assignment

The assignment should be prepared in a ‘report-style’ form. It should have a short Executive Summary’ of, say, no more than 250 words. There should then be a short ‘Introduction’, and then a separate section for each of the 8 issues to be addressed, before concluding with a short ‘Conclusions’ section. The assignment must reflect the material that we have been covering within BFA758.

This BFA758 - Arts and Humanities has been solved by our PhD Experts at My Uni Paper.