Assessment of Social Impact of Cricket Australia

This report evaluates the social and environmental impact of Cricket Australia's business operations and provides recommendations for improvement. The report analyzes the social impact of Cricket Australia through the SDG compass and The B Impact Assessment. The report concludes that firms must ensure proper reporting standards and address major social issues such as gender pay gap to have a positive social impact.

Assessment of a
Formal Business
Report

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Background................................................................................................................................1
Evaluation of social impact.......................................................................................................2
Areas of success and improvement..........................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
The social and environmental changes which is being experienced by modern society in terms of
the mass implications of large scale business concerns has become quite complex lately. It has
become very important for businesses to ensure that they take the social and environmental
impact of their operations into account and ensure that no major damage is being done to the
local community and the natural resources in both short and long term (Martí, 2018). This report
will highlight the social and environmental operations and impact of Cricket Australia and there
will be a critical analysis of the area of the firm’s social impact along with justified
recommendations for Cricket Australia to improve in this department.
MAIN BODY
Background
Cricket is one of the most popular sports which has a major following in Australia and the
primary body which is responsible for administrating and presiding over the major developments
of this sport is Cricket Australia which is a major sports body of the nation. Cricket Australia is
responsible for all the major developmental activities when it comes to Cricket and is fully
responsible for both the men and women cricket spectrums. The body is responsible for proper
development, formation, talent scouting and fitness and routine operation developments of the
cricket professionals of Australia. The body is also responsible for fixing both national and
international tours between cricket playing nations and planning various national and
international cricket matches involving Australia such as T20 internationals, One Day
Internationals and Test Matches between Australia and other countries or domestic tournaments
like BBL or international level challenges such as the World Cup (Islam, 2020).
The social impact of Cricket Australia’s business operations is quite widespread as the sport is
followed quite widely by the Australian public which can be foreseen from the fact that even
during pandemic enforced restriction, 848,465 people were in regular viewership attendance for
Cricket. The growth of Cricket has become a mainstream affair in Australia and the average
growth of 1.1 million viewers has been achieved by the sport in terms of consistent viewership.
The major social impact of Cricket is related mainly to enforce proper discipline in the sport and
ensure proper code of conduct is in place during matches and between the members of the
1

playing team. Since Cricket records one of the highest footfall of average viewers in Australia,
unethical practices are observed and scrutinized in a major manner. Another major social impact
which is related to the operations and sporting functions of Cricket Australia is addressing the
rampant gender divide and women discrimination in the post as unlike sports like Basketball and
Football, women are yet to get their due recognition in Cricket. The way in which Cricket
Australia enforces disciplinary actions and rules upon its team, the way it addresses the women’s
cricket teams and handles critical aspects such as diversity, inclusion and gender pay gaps are all
containing crucial social impact for Australian society (Brukner, Gara and Fortington, 2018).
Evaluation of social impact
One of the major aspects in which businesses have to improve to remain modernized and
in sync with the needs of the current business environment is to have a positive social impact and
to remain sustainable. In order to properly measure the social impact of Cricket Australia, there
are many tools available for ease of application, two of which have been selected and applied
below.
Figure 1 The SDG Compass
2

 SDG compass - This is one of the best frameworks available for measuring the asocial
impact of companies and is related to the 17 sustainable development goals which companies
and global governments are adhering to in order to make the world a better place. Through
this compass, companies can measure their social impact through 5 major steps which
involve understanding SDG’s, defining business priorities, setting SDG goals, integrating
them and then properly reporting them to the public and stakeholders. Upon the close
inspection of the company’s annual reporting, it can be seen that the business body is
excelling at measuring and reporting their social impact as the company has been posting
accurate data regarding the prioritization and integration of the current state of women’s
cricket and the inclusion of minorities in Cricket such as indigenous people and Torres Strait
Islanders. The overall progress that Cricket Australia has made has been quite remarkable
(Fowlie, Eime and Griffiths, 2021).
Figure 2 The B Impact Assessment
 The B Impact Assessment – This is one of the most comprehensive tools which have
been used by the companies in order to take up a comprehensive analysis of the way in
which the business operation impacts various stakeholders socially. This model divides
3

the social paradigm of a business into various layers such as governance, workers,
community, environment and customers. It has been researched and found that Cricket
Australia has run into major governance problems in the past and some of the workers
have complained regarding pay and although women cricketers pay has increased
recently, much improvement is desired (Dharmadasa and Perera, 2021).
Areas of success and improvement
Through the application of the chosen models, it has been found that Cricket Australia’s
work has gone beyond the bottom line efforts aimed to sustain the local community and major
visible progress has been made in the department of diversity and gender pay gap. The salary of
women cricketers and the inclusion of minorities in Australian Cricket and prioritization of
diversity are major positive steps forward. However major improvements are needed in the
reporting standards as the environmental quotient of Cricket Australia has not been reported
properly.
CONCLUSION
The above report went into detail regarding the measurement and analysis of a firm’s social
impact and the ways in which they aim to achieve sustainability through major models such as
the SDG compass and The B Impact Assessment. It was concluded from this assignment that in
order to have a positive social impact, firms must ensure proper reporting standards and
addressing major social issues such as gender pay gap.
4

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Brukner, P., Gara, T.J. and Fortington, L.V., 2018. Traumatic cricket‐related fatalities in
Australia: a historical review of media reports. Medical journal of Australia, 208(6),
pp.261-264.
Dharmadasa, H.R. and Perera, H.P.N., 2021. Facility Gaps for Players at International Cricket
Stadiums in Sri Lanka vs. Australia. International Journal of Human Movement and
Sports Sciences, 9(3), pp.590-594.
Fowlie, J., Eime, R.M. and Griffiths, K., 2021. Barriers to adolescent female participation in
cricket. Annals of leisure research, 24(4), pp.513-531.
Islam, S.M., 2020. Towards an integrative definition of scaling social impact in social
enterprises. Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 13, p.e00164.
Martí, I., 2018. Transformational business models, grand challenges, and social impact. Journal
of Business Ethics, 152(4), pp.965-976.
5