Innovation and Corporate Social Responsibility: Aveva and Bovis Homes

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of innovation at Aveva Plc and corporate social responsibility (CSR) at Bovis Homes Group Plc. The Aveva section explores the impact of innovation on the company's performance, emphasizing technological advancements, digital transformation, and the importance of research and development. It highlights how innovation has helped Aveva maintain a competitive advantage, reduce costs, and adapt to market challenges. The Bovis Homes section evaluates the company's corporate social performance, focusing on the directors' responsibilities towards stakeholders and corporate governance. It applies Archie Carroll's model to identify the four areas of CSR: economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic. The report examines Bovis Homes' CSR policies, its commitment to sustainable development, and its efforts to build relationships with stakeholders, manage environmental impact, and contribute to community development. The analysis offers insights into how both companies integrate innovation and CSR into their business strategies to achieve sustainable growth and positive impacts.

Running head: BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Business environment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Assessment task one:
Innovation is defined as the extra steps that are taken by the organization for the
development of new services and products that help in responding to any particular problem
or fulfillment of any unaddressed needs and technological innovation is regarded as the
extended concept of the innovation. It is the implementation of new marketing method or
process intended to make significant improvement in the products and new method of
organization in the business practices. Innovation is regarded as the basis of developing the
knowledge based economies that help in accelerating the rate of economic growth. This paper
focuses on determining the impact of innovation on Aveva Plc which is a multinational
information technology company headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom. The
company has an understanding of the trend of the impact of new advanced process control
that is considered as an effective tool for improving the operations by consistently capturing
the full process capabilities (Keeble and Wever 2016). They are the leading provider of
information management software and engineer design.
Innovation has been of great importance in improving the organizational growth and
creating competitive advantage. In order to audit the characteristics of technology and
innovation, it is essential to develop their sound understanding. Technological innovation is
the component of discipline of total innovation that has specific focus on technology and how
such innovation is embodies successfully in services, products and process (August 2018).
One of the important determinants of the economic progress is the innovation in the
technological progress and economic growth and technological advancement are interrelated
with each other. With the evolvement of country over the years, the innovation role is
considered critical to the economic development and clear statistical link has been found
between gains in the living standard and innovation. In highly industrialized economies of
OECD areas, technological innovation is regarded as the major force of economic growth

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
having distinctive features of innovation. Across the world, technological innovation is
regarded as one of the driving forces behind advances and productivity. However, when it
comes to United Kingdom, it is hard to make an argument that whether the technological
innovation or lack of technological innovation is an important factor in giving an explanation
of the vicissitudes for the last fifty years (Lyall 2017). The most tenuous connection of
unemployment in the country is associated with technological advancement. The large
fluctuation in the GDP per capita and large fluctuations in the productivity compared to other
countries have less to do with the technological innovation and such innovation have more to
do with the companies of UK utilizing the best method of practices (Cooke and Huggins
2018).
The understanding of the role of technological innovations in the economic growth
has been understood by economics historian. They have determined that the growth of
economies all over the world is strongly impacted by the technological change. Companies
all over the world are trying to make an improvement in technologies for making progress
and approximately 1/3rd of the economic growth is influenced by the technological change.
As a consequence of this, technological advancement, innovation are considered critical to
the survival of economies (Ghazzawi et al. 2016).
Innovation at Aveva Plc has helped in making the performance of company resilient
in the context of challenging conditions arising in the marine end and core gas and oil market.
The original mission of company to develop computer aided design techniques for the British
industry has been achieved and has helped in creating countless engineering assets by
providing design technology. The ingoing innovation of company is to develop and create
differentiated and mission critical products. Company is making continuous investment in
innovation that has helped them to deliver solid organic growth across the end market cycles
in the long term. Continuous focus in maintained by organization when it comes to delivering

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
innovation that seeks to eliminate entire business process steps and make transformation in
the activities that are undertaken (Aveva.com 2019).
Innovation is in DNA and lifeblood of Aveva which has helped in transformation of
technology and such transformation has always been on the top of strategic agenda of
company. Organization is also committed to deliver digital transformation to the customers
with a focus on digital twin and innovation (Dodgson 2018). The research and development
team offers unlimited possibilities to the company such as federal model that enable the
organization to act with startup urgency and focus highly on the main challenges of
customers. Aveva has made heavy investment in the human resources to provide leadership
development for future senior staffs and for developing existing staffs.
Innovation at Aveva implies that at every stage of the product life cycle, customers
can make confident and informed decisions using the approach of digital asset. They are also
provided with an opportunity to act smarter, work faster, save cost and reduce risk with every
asset of life cycle of assets. The objective of company is to deliver balanced and sustainable
growth by making continuous investment in assets with the objective to deliver profitable
growth with the expansion of business whilst maintaining strong balance sheet. Aveva has
produced industry leading software with their fifty years of innovation which allow the
customers to manage continual change by creation of digital assets with such change
experienced by them when building, designing and operating some of the most complicated
physical assets of the world (Aveva.com 2019).
Innovation in our products offering has resulted in gaining strong advantage over the
offerings from competitors. Such advantage has been achieved due because of the inherent
integration based on the technology of leading modeling of object that helps in lowering the
total ownership cost for customers along with reducing complexities. Significant productivity

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has been seen by most industries over the last two decades due to adoption of new
technology. With the help of engineering, procurement and construction 4.0, Aveva has been
able to reduce the total installed cost for capital by 10% by managing and executing capital
projects on a data centric platform. It is indicative of the fact that 1 billion project could cut
down the cost by $ 100 million (Huggins and Thompson 2015). Realization of cost savings
are done by mitigating the risk of capital investment at the stage of designing that would help
in further cutting down of the engineering man hours by 30% in reducing material hours and
plant design (Sw.aveva.com 2019). In addition to this, the enterprise software solutions of
company as against engineering and design tools involve a high degree of services which
consist of customization and implementation of such solution that are provided on material
and time basis. The long term strategy of organization is making continuous investment in
product innovation and the development of enterprise solutions by Aveva is positive as the
total number of customers added increased along with the extension of business within the
installed base that is growing. Furthermore, there has been enhancement in the delivery
capability throughout the year by working with partners and through organic growth. Aveva
over the years is expected to come out with a series of exciting and new innovations which
has been trailing and developed with the customers. The strategy of companies lies in
leveraging core strengths of business for maximization of sustainable growth. The company
is in strong position to deliver to make delivery against the strategy for making focused
investment to expand the business (Aveva.com 2019). From the analysis of the innovation
taking place at Aveva, it can be inferred that innovation creates many positive impacts on the
business performance. Innovation helps the business to perform in terms of reducing the total
cost of doing the business.

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Assessment task two:
The paper helps in evaluating the corporate social performance of chosen company
that is Bovis Home group Plc by discussing the director’s responsibilities towards stakeholder
and corporate governance as a whole. In addition to this, the practical application of Archie
Carroll model has been done by identifying the four areas of corporate social responsibility of
Bovis Homes group Plc. Bovis Homes group plc is a builder of traditional and high quality
homes in United Kingdom carrying out operations in seven regions with the objective of
creating sustainable new communities and focusing strategically on the south region. The
framework and policy of corporate social responsibility is managed by chief executive and
executive leadership team which includes comprised of directors from across the business
with functional and operational responsibilities. The ultimate responsibility of managing the
corporate social governance of company lies with the chief executive and board of Bovis
Homes group Plc. The policy and documents of corporate social responsibility covering
environment, health and safety, whistle blowing, code and conducts and ethics are reviewed
on an annual basis (Jankalova and Jankal 2017).
The policy of CSR of the group is intended to support the creation of sustainable
development that is designed for the purpose of social inclusion. The strategy concerning
CSR is amended on the basis of feedback received by employees, customers and other
stakeholders. A new company called ethos has been set out by Bovis to promote consistent
behavior with the values of quality, integrity and caring of the company with such values
underlining the positive behavior importance. In addition to this, the importance of climatic
change is increasingly recognized by the group and they have the collectively responsibility
to mitigate the impact created by such risks.
The objective of group concerning corporate social responsibility is to maintain and
develop long term relationship with the stakeholders that are based on the high performance,

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
trust and safety standards and thereby delivering in accordance with the agreed commitments
and providing mutual advantage. All the policies of corporate governance helps in ensuring
that the activities carried out by company do not compromise with the future generation’s
ability to meet the needs of future generations.
The responsibilities of the board of Bovis Home group Plc lies in ensuring that they
have adopted good corporate governance practices by discharging their duties in order for the
fulfillment of the same (Bovishomesgroup.co.uk 2019). In addition to this, they have the
responsibility of ensuring that there is effective flow of communication to the stakeholders
regarding the overall performance of business and developing an understanding of the major
investors view. The senior independence director is entrusted with the responsibility of
supporting effective communication with stakeholders. The highest standard of probity and
integrity should be held by constructive debate and promote effective decision making. In
addition to this, they have the responsibility of supporting highest standard of corporate
governance and seek whether the company’s reporting is complying with the code of UK
corporate governance wherever possible (Bovishomesgroup.co.uk 2019). They are required
to understand the major views of shareholders by supporting coherent leadership in the
company. When it comes to people, the board is entitled to improve the customer service
training, developing apprentice programs, improving employee engagement by reviewing and
embedment the core values across the organization. When it comes to manage the
responsibility towards communities, the board has the responsibility to develop strategic
offering for assisting them with the affordable housing along with making continuous effort
to build the relationship with the suppliers and sub contractors. When it comes to
environment, the board is responsible to reduce the active waste per home by developing
waste reduction strategy and setting target for such waste disposal along with GHG emission
reduction (Malecki 2018).

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
The corporate governance model of Archie Carroll is applied to identify the four areas
of corporate social responsibility of Bovis Homes Group Plc. The corporate social pyramid of
Carroll is a simple framework that provides an argument on why and how the organization
should meet their corporate social responsibilities. Features of such pyramid is that CSR is
built on the profit foundation and then the business should comply with the regulations and
rule and then the business should meet the ethical needs and thereafter considering the
options of philanthropy (Carroll 2016).
Economic responsibilities- Business have economic responsibility towards the
society that permitted them to sustain and create. The crucial and fundamental importance of
return on investment and profitability is the motivator for the success of business as attested
by the managers, CEO and entrepreneur. The business makes continuous investment in land
that helps in driving the returns over cycle which is brought by the growth in profit over time
(Amatulli et al. 2018). In addition to this, the gross profit and size of land bank is maintained
by the business and there is continuous growth in profits generated from land bank.
Furthermore, the strategic plan of the group has the objective of improving the level of

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
profits, building quality homes by making an improvement in operating practices and
prioritizing the future performance and long term perspective.
Legal responsibilities- The business is required to conduct and carry out its activities
in accordance with the minimal ground rules that are established by the society. Such ground
rules comprised of codified ethics, regulations and laws along with articulating the
fundamental fair business practices notion which are established by local, state and federal
level (Wu 2019). Therefore, it is required by Bovis Homes group plc for complying with the
regulations and laws as condition of operating. From the analysis of the sustainability report
prepared by the group, it has been found that the company carries out its operation solely in
UK and complies with all the relevant regulations and rules. In addition to this, reporting of
GHG emissions have been done in accordance with the company’s act 2006 and regulation of
2013 and the group is not responsible for any source of emission that is recorded in the
consolidated financial statements (Bovishomesgroup.co.uk 2019). It also complies with
safety and health regulation, market abuse regulations along with other regulatory and
governance developments.
Ethical responsibilities- It is expected that the business should operate and carry out
their operations in accordance with the normative expectations of society. Organizations
taking account of their ethical responsibilities helps in ensuring that they embraced the laws,
practice and regulations of conducting the business in an ethically responsible manner
(Ahmad 2018). Bovis Home group Plc is committed to high ethical standards along with all
the members to share with such commitment. Suppliers of company are required to ethical
conduct and anti bribery standards. In order to support the staffs and contracts, the company
has placed whistle blowing procedure in place. The business partners and engaged employees
of Bovis group are motivated to work ethically in a healthy and safe environment
(Bovishomesgroup.co.uk 2019).

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
Philanthropic responsibilities- The discretionary and all the voluntary activities of
business are embraced in the corporate philanthropy along with all forms of business giving.
Such activities are guided by the desire of organization to participate in the social activities
(Ballot et al. 2015). Bovis Homes group plc continue to engage in local sponsorship
opportunities and support events of fundraising. Each regional business helps in managing
the sponsorship and charitable donation for ensuring that priorities are given to charities and
local causes. Bovis Homes has made a donation of £300 to the playgroup community group
known as Moreton in Marsh. Contribution to such community group would help children to
tend to their allotment by contributing to their gardening efforts (Bovishomesgroup.co.uk
2019).

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
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