Business Society and the Planet - Assignment

Running head: BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
Business Society and the Planet
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

1
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
Table of Contents
Part A- Business values assessment report......................................................................................3
Identification of the two companies and core business activities....................................................3
Differences between two companies relating to the issues in social reports...................................4
Sustainable development goals........................................................................................................5
Quality of social accounting approach............................................................................................7
Organizational values of the two companies.................................................................................10
Reflection on group discussions....................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................13

2
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
Part A- Business values assessment report
Identification of the two companies and core business activities
The two companies selected here, as the case study are ANZ and Telstra bank. The
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited or ANZ is one of the largest banks in terms
of market capitalization in Australia, just after the Commonwealth bank and Westpac Banking
Corporation. The company provides specialized financial services and dominates the commercial
and retail banking sector. Not only does the company operates in Australia and New Zealand, but
also operates in over 34 nations all over the world. It was also named as one of the most
sustainable banks in Australia and has revenue of more than A$ 21.071 billion with over 50,152
employees. The major people associated with the bank are Shayne Elliott, who is the CEO of the
bank and the chairperson named David Gonski (anz.com.au, 2018). ANZ bank operates within
the banking industry whereas Telstra operates within the telecommunications industry in
Australia.
Telstra Corporation Ltd., also referred to as Telstra is one of the major
telecommunications and Media Company that manages delivery of telecommunications
networks, internet accessibility, mobiles, pay televisions and other entertainment services. It is
currently the largest telecommunications company in Australia that is managed by Andy Penn
(CEO) and John Mullen (chairperson). It has a revenue of more than A$27.1 billion and more
than 36, 165 employees working in the subsidiaries of the company too. It operates in countries
like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, etc (telstra.com.au, 2018).

3
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
Both the two companies are from different industries; still they hold a good position
within the competitive business environment. The Australian division of ANZ Bank includes the
retail and corporate & commercial banking business units. The institutional division provides
services for the global institutions and the customers across the various sets of products including
the transaction banking, loans and specialized finance and markets. ANZ bank manages various
approaches to support the strategic priorities and manages the external issues and relationships
by involving the civil society, regulators, Governmental bodies and NGOs. Being one of the
largest markets of ANZ Bank, the company has served both Retail and commercial customers by
managing networks across 686 branches, 28 business centers, 2337 ATMs and also the online
and mobile banking applications. Telstra manages digitization and made investments to deliver
the best quality services to ensure coverage, better speed, reliability and security (Carroll &
Buchholtz, 2014). The strategic investments of more than $3 billion facilitated the digitization of
systems and processes and developed a 2020 architecture to enhance the priority capacities and
drove the cultural shifts for providing better customers’ services.
Differences between two companies relating to the issues in social reports
Both the companies ANZ Bank and Telstra consider the various policies and principles
that are documented to outline the values, cultures and ways of dealing with issues in a
sustainable manner and maintaining the corporate social responsibilities. The CSR reports
present the social responsibilities and principles of business operations associated with it. There
was a major technical fault due to which, the customers of ANZ failed to checkout properly and
there were issues related to the withdrawal of money and process payrolls. It preventing banking
transactions made by the customers during internet banking and prevented the customers to take
cash at EFTPOS by clicking on the credit option. It was a technical disaster for ANZ Bank

4
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
because of the lack of accessibility to online and phone banking, which prevented paying money
and withdrawal properly too (Gray, Adams & Owen, 2014). There could be environmental and
social issues as well, which should create difficulty for the project finance transactions and even
generate issues while forming an appropriate culture and diverse workforce.
According to the corporate social responsibility or CSR report for Telstra, the company
utilized technologies for addressing the environmental challenges and allowed the suppliers,
communities and customers to focus on these challenges too. By assessing the challenges, it
could be easy for Telstra Telecommunications Company to reduce the environmental changes’
impact across the value chain and create better scopes and opportunities to sustain in the future
(Wilson & Post, 2014). One of the issues of Telstra was the series of network calamities that
deteriorated the business operations’ efficiency. There were difficulties in managing the complex
communication networks, which resulted in frequency related problems and thus the internet
connection was not much effective. The customers pay a good premium for signing to the
network products, services provided by Telstra. If the network is not reliable enough, then the
company might face issues in gaining the premium price for products and this could reduce the
customer base. Though the customers might not be lost, still due to the network disruptions, new
customers would not subscribe for the network products of Telstra, Australia. Andy Penn
focused on $250 million in capital expenditures for improving the network infrastructure and
maintained stability of the networks with ease and effectiveness (Lawrence & Weber, 2014).
Sustainable development goals
The sustainable development goals are achieved by enabling the organization to align the
business and sustainability program together. The SDGs are linked with the purpose of the

5
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
organization to deliver a bright future through delivery of best quality telecommunication
networks services for the customers all over Australia. The major sustainable development goals
are to achieve gender equality and empowering women and girls, developing a resilient
infrastructure by promoting sustainable industrialization and innovation, promote sustainable
growth in economy by maintaining a fully productive workforce and finally undertaking
immediate actions to control the changes in climatic conditions and reducing the negative
environmental impacts too (Doppelt, 2017). The organization is committed to maintain gender
equality through the implementation of wide range of policies, procedures and engagement
initiatives. The new recruitment procedure shortlists gender equality procedure by maintaining
the presence of 50 percent female individuals selected for the interview sessions. The Women’s
empowerment principles are maintained for providing equal scopes and opportunities to the
female workers just like the male employees (Muff et al., 2013). Telstra even developed ICT
solutions for reducing the environmental impact through reduction in harmful gases emissions.
The cloud calculator could also estimate the emissions of carbon and save a lot of time and cost.
A diverse and inclusive workforce allowed for the development of STEAM (science, technology,
engineering, arts and mathematics) for ensure innovations and solving problems with much ease
in the future (Bocken et al., 2014). One of the major goals of achieving sustainability could be
collaborating with the NT Government for developing a National Tele health connection service,
which helped in managing high quality video conferencing related to the medical care services
provided to people from some of the remote and rural communities in Australia. The Sustainable
development goals also included investing huge amount of money to deliver new mobile and
broadband services to the remote communities, bring sustainable industrialization, provide
education to all and foster innovation all throughout (Muff, 2013).

6
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
ANZ’s corporate social responsibility review focused on financing the agribusiness to
meet the social and environmental standards, furthermore create positive impact on the business.
The analysis of social and environmental factors helped in managing wastes and water
conservation during the process of manufacturing and production of products and services,
considering the interests of the stakeholders. The Water Sensitive sector policy was applied at
ANZ to grow the concept of stewardship across the water management cycle. The Sustainability
framework was utilized to support the business strategies of the company by aligning with the
bank’s purpose and shape the world where the people and communities thrive (Grey et al., 2013).
The sustainability framework has allowed ANZ to focus on three major areas including the
sustainable growth, social and economic participation and conducting fair and responsible
banking. To manage fair and responsible banking activities, the financial institution managed to
gain trust and loyalty by adjusting with the hanging demands of the stakeholders, which further
helped in maintaining good standards of conduct. This also provided enough scopes to
understand the feasibility of the social and environmental factors impacting the business, due to
which, ANZ bank remained committed to the sustainable development goals and achieved the
sustainability targets with ease (Mackey & Sisodia, 2014).
Quality of social accounting approach
According to Zadek et al. (1997), there were eight major quality standards applied to the
organizations for determining the efficiency of the social accounting approaches. It could help in
understanding whether the two companies had managed proper auditing and reported its
activities to the various business levels or not. The risks, pressures and stakeholders involved
with the business functions are considered within the social accounting approaches. From the
CSR reports of both ANZ bank and Telstra, it could be understood that both these companies had

7
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
focused on becoming socially responsible and even undertook approaches for creating a positive
impact on the environment. In terms of the quality standards, both these two companies were
found to be similar and their sustainable development goals focused (Dyllick, 2015). From the
CSR reports, Telstra focused on achieving gender equality and empowered women, sustainable
economic growth was promoted by creating more employment opportunities. The company was
found to be working towards socially acceptable accountability by undertaking necessary action
to control the changes in climatic conditions and its harmful impacts through use of Cloud
calculator tool and managing electronics’ reuse and recycling (Bocken et al., 2013). On the other
hand, ANZ Bank maintained a diversified workforce by providing equal opportunities and pay to
both male and female workers and built financial capability through implementation of
MoneyMinded program. ANZ Bank emphasized on the learning and development of people all
across the Asia Pacific regions, controlled the climatic changes by limiting the average global
temperature rise to not more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, while the online environmental
reporting system assessed the environmental impact of physical footprints and improve its
business performance (Coomer, 2016). The CSR report of the company further showed about the
linkage between the €750 million bond and SDGs to form green buildings, sustainability bond
markets, etc.

8
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
Figure: CSR approaches of Telstra (Coomer, 2016)

9
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
Figure: Sustainability framework (Burchell & Cook, 2013)
Organizational values of the two companies
At ANZ Bank, the values are all about doing the right things the right way. The
organizational values provided a shared understanding of what the organization strand for and its
compromises in the situations while interacting with the various stakeholders including
customers, shareholders or investors, community, customers, etc. The values maintained were
aligned with the Codes of conduct and ethics or guiding the behaviors and make effective
decisions to derive positive outcomes. The organizational values are integrity, collaboration,
accountability, respect and excellence. The integrity means doing the right things, collaboration
means working collaboratively with the customers and investors while managing accountability
has enabled ANZ bank to make the right decisions (Burchell & Cook, 2013). Everyone’s
responses and ideas were respected and the customers’ viewpoints were shed limelight on to
progress and achieve business success.

10
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
With the growth in telecommunications industry, the network traffic has also grown and
this has evolved the digital technologies and Telstra has grabbed this opportunity wholeheartedly
to connect everything to everyone. The values are aligned with the purpose of the organization to
ensure better connection between people through management of effective networks. The
organizational values maintained are to show that the company cared for its customers, work
together as an unit and create a sense of trust and loyalty (Mazutis & Slawinski, 2015). The
values also include making complex things simple and gaining courage and strength to handle
the roles and responsibilities properly, furthermore desire to learn and challenge each other to
foster innovation and creativity at the company.
Reflection on group discussions
There were few meetings arranged for involving the various stakeholders of ANZ bank. It
was found that the ANZ reports and audits were inconsistent with the management of
sustainability and many of the staffs were not much skilled and knowledgeable to carry out their
roles and responsibilities properly. The employees should be allowed to participate in the
training and developmental programs for enhancing their skills, knowledge and expertise and
make them focus on achieving the sustainable outcomes (anz.com.au, 2018). The company needs
to maintain a much better diverse workforce consisting of local employees as well as the
employees from all over the New Zealand, which can help to utilize each other’s knowledge and
ideas for ensuring better production, economic growth and higher revenue generation for ANZ
Bank, Australia. I communicated with few of the members of the organization and came to know
that Telstra being a major telecommunications company has strengthened its network structure
by remaining economically and socially sustainable. I even discussed about the various aspects
of sustainability that could contribute to the education and learning experiences of the remote

11
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
areas in Australia and improve the community welfare and benefit the organization as a whole
(telstra.com.au, 2018).
References
anz.com.au. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.anz.com.au

12
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
Bocken, N. M., Short, S. W., Rana, P., & Evans, S. (2014). A literature and practice review to
develop sustainable business model archetypes. Journal of cleaner production, 65, 42-56.
Bocken, N., Short, S., Rana, P., & Evans, S. (2013). A value mapping tool for sustainable
business modelling. Corporate Governance, 13(5), 482-497.
Burchell, J., & Cook, J. (2013). CSR, co-optation and resistance: The emergence of new
agonistic relations between business and civil society. Journal of business ethics, 115(4),
741-754.
Carroll, A., & Buchholtz, A. (2014). Business and society: Ethics, sustainability, and stakeholder
management. Nelson Education.
Coomer, J. C. (Ed.). (2016). Quest for a Sustainable Society: Pergamon Policy Studies on
Business and Economics. Elsevier.
Doppelt, B. (2017). Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for
business, government and civil society.
Dyllick, T. (2015). Responsible management education for a sustainable world: The challenges
for business schools. Journal of Management Development, 34(1), 16-33.
Gray, R., Adams, C., & Owen, D. (2014). Accountability, social responsibility and
sustainability: accounting for society and the environment. Pearson Higher Ed.
Grey, D., Garrick, D., Blackmore, D., Kelman, J., Muller, M., & Sadoff, C. (2013). Water
security in one blue planet: twenty-first century policy challenges for science. Phil.
Trans. R. Soc. A, 371(2002), 20120406.

13
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET
Lawrence, A. T., & Weber, J. (2014). Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy.
Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Mackey, J., & Sisodia, R. (2014). Conscious capitalism, with a new preface by the authors:
Liberating the heroic spirit of business. Harvard Business Review Press.
Mazutis, D. D., & Slawinski, N. (2015). Reconnecting business and society: Perceptions of
authenticity in corporate social responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 131(1), 137-
150.
Muff, K. (2013). Developing globally responsible leaders in business schools: A vision and
transformational practice for the journey ahead. Journal of Management
Development, 32(5), 487-507.
Muff, K., Dyllick, T., Drewell, M., North, J., Shrivastava, P., & Haertle, J. (2013). Management
education for the world: A vision for business schools serving people and the planet.
Edward Elgar Publishing.
telstra.com.au. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.telstra.com.au/
Wilson, F., & Post, J. E. (2013). Business models for people, planet (& profits): exploring the
phenomena of social business, a market-based approach to social value creation. Small
Business Economics, 40(3), 715-737.

14
BUSINESS SOCIETY AND THE PLANET