CSR and Sustainability Reporting

This assignment analyzes the CSR and sustainability reporting of Harvey Norman, an Australian company engaged in retail, fertilizers, coal mining, and industrial and safety products. The report discusses the components of CSR reporting, motivations of CSR reporting using legitimacy, stakeholders, and institutional theory, and evaluates the impact of CSR on the local community. Harvey Norman aims to create long-term value by playing a positive role in the communities it serves and achieving satisfactory returns for shareholders through CSR reporting.

Running Head: CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
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Executive Summary
The aim of this assignment is to do the analysis on the CSR and the sustainability reporting of
the Harvey Norman. It is the organization that is the Australian company that is engaged in
the business of retail, fertilizers, coal mining and the industrial and the safety products. Under
this report, discussion will be done on the components of the corporate social responsibility
reporting, motivations of CSR reporting of the company by using the legitimacy, stakeholders
and the institutional theory and evaluation of the components of CSR of the company that
impacts the local community. Therefore, it can be said that at the Harvey Norman, the
company believes in creation of the long-term value by playing the positive role towards the
communities it serves and it aims at achieving the satisfactory return to the shareholders by
CSR reporting.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Overview of the Company.....................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Handling of Components of CSR Reporting.........................................................................3
Motivations of CSR Reporting...............................................................................................5
Impact on the Local Community............................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
Reference....................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Corporate social responsibility is the important part of the company as it helps the
companies for managing the processes of the company for producing the overall positive
impacts on the society. The business organizations continues to commit for behaving
ethically as well as contributing to the economic development with improving the quality of
workforce’s life, their families and of local community as well as society at the large. Hence,
under this report discussion will be done on handling components of the corporate social
responsibility in Harvey Norman. Moreover, the analysis will be done on the motivations of
the company in the area by using the stakeholders, legitimacy and institutions theory. Lastly,
the evaluation will be done on the impact on the local community by the social reporting and
the environmental reporting (csrhub.com. 2019).
Overview of the Company
Harvey Norman is the leading Australian company listed in the Australian Stock
Exchange that is headquartered in the New South Wales, Australia. This company is engaged
in the business operations of multi-national drop shipping of computers, bedding, furniture,
communications as well as consumer electrical products. The company generally operates as
the franchise with the company’s main brand and all the company’s operated stores are
owned by the ASX listed company Harvey Norman Holdings Limited
(Harveynorman.com.au. 2019).
Discussion
Handling of Components of CSR Reporting
Corporate social responsibility is refereed as the set of the practices and policies of the
organizations that helps in the interlinking of the multiple stakeholders, which includes
communities and environment involved. It is the commitment of the business towards the

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sustainability as well as the sustainability in general. However, there are certain components
of CSR reporting that must be included in every reporting such as preservation of
environment, human rights, economic and organization growth, employee security,
participation of community and promoting the better standards of health (Grayson and
Hodges 2017).
The reporting of the corporate social responsibility is done by the Harvey Norman is
in the structured way. The CSR reporting of the company aims towards creating the value for
the shareholders, customers, employees as well as the communities that are done with the
help of different initiatives of sustainability and CSR. The CSR activities of Harvey Norman
is in the categories of community & philanthropy, product, human rights & supply chain,
compensation & benefits, diversity & labor rights, training, health & safety, energy & climate
change, environment policy & reporting, resource management, board, leadership ethics and
transparency & reporting. The company considers that the creation of the value is only
possible by the help of serving the environment as well as the community. The creation of the
long-term community is done by the company by playing the positive role in the serving
communities. The sustainability is believed as the opportunity for driving the strong as well
as long term shareholders return (Cheng, Ioannou, and Serafeim 2014). Harvey Norman is
strived towards looking for more of the opportunities for saving the energy and reducing the
carbon footprint. The effectiveness of the company is measured by the component of energy
& climate change that helps in addressing the climate change by the appropriate strategies
and policies, energy efficient operations, renewable energy development and the other
alternatives technologies of environment. They are proactive for the management of the risks
that are associated with the change in the climate because the responding will be helpful in
delivering the significant social, economic as well as the economic benefits for everyone
(csrhub.com. 2019). The company strives for improving the safety performance. They believe

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for providing the indigenous people with having greater opportunities for participating in the
sustainable employment that remains primary objective of the diversity policy of the
organization. The company identifies as well as does the effective management of the risk
that includes the calculation of the risk taking that is one of the essential part of the
company’s approach for the creation of the long-term value to their shareholders. The
company audits the supply chain for making sure about their ethical operations. The company
aims for reducing the uses of energy, water or materials for finding more efficient solutions
for improving the supply chain management. Moreover, the company builds the strong
business environment that is underpinned by the inclusive and cohesive community
environment (Tai and Chuang 2014).
Motivations of CSR Reporting
Legitimacy theory helps the organizations continuously that they continually attempts
for ensuring that they perceive and they functions within the norms and bond of the society
under which it operates. It implies that social contract that exists between the business
organization and the respective societies. For aligning with the theory of legitimacy, the
organization engages in the activities and reporting of CSR activities for retaining, gaining as
well as regaining their legitimacy. In case of the Harvey Norman, the company is committed
towards making of the positive social, economic and the environmental contribution towards
the society that are consistent with that of the principles of the respect, integrity, fairness and
honesty. The workplace practices and policies of the company covers fair as well as non-
discriminatory treatment of their employees and their diversify policies. It prohibits the
discrimination and forced and child labor and trafficked as well as they are committed
towards safe and the healthy working environment that includes collective bargaining and
right to freedom of the association (Hopkins 2016).

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Stakeholder’s theory is the relationship between the stakeholders and the
organization. This theory that suggests that management of the company are expected for
performing the accountability towards the stakeholders by undertaking the activities that are
deemed important by their stakeholders as well as by the reporting information. The
organization engages in the activities and reporting of CSR for discharging their
accountability towards their stakeholders; in the ethical perspective towards all the
stakeholders and towards the economically powerful stakeholders in managerial perspectives
(Di Giuli and Kostovetsky 2014). Hence, organizational CSR disclosure are driven by the
desires for managing their powerful stakeholders, and for the ethical branch, the motivation
of CSR disclosure are driven by desire for being accountable for all the stakeholders that are
irrespective of their economic power (csrhub.com. 2019). In the case of the Harvey Norman,
the company throughout the year continues for actively seeking the ways for collaborating
with the wide ranges of the stakeholders on the awareness of the community and the
initiatives of the sustainability. It includes closely working with the state as well as national
authorities for educating the communities on the locally relevant emergency preparation as
well as the measures of the disaster responses. The company aims for promoting and
achieving the effective communication with their stakeholders all the time (Ofori, S-Darko
and Nyuur 2014).
Institutional theory helps in examining the organizational forms as well as explaining
the reasons for having the homogeneous features or forming in the organizations, which are
within the same field of organization. There are different forces that influence the
organizations for adopting the CSR practices. In line with the institutional theory, the
predicted CSR motivation of the organization is the desire of becoming similar to the other
organization with the help of adopting those of the practices which is considered normal by
the society or the particularly powerful groups (Korschun, Bhattacharya and Swain 2014). In

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case of Harvey Norman, the company contributes to their partners and the majority of that are
the long-term commitment with the Australian based organizations as well as overseas
sourcing discloures. The company discloses and monitors the relationship of the company
with the respect of partnership with the other organizations (Belal 2016).
Impact on the Local Community
The components such as social reporting and environmental reporting in the Harvey
Norman impacts their local community. The company makes the positive contribution
towards the communities under which it operates by creating value for their stakeholders. The
component of the development of the community and philanthropy reflects the community
citizenship of the company through the goods donations, charitable giving as well as
volunteerism of the staff time. It also protect public health and manages social impacts of
their operation on the local communities (Belal 2016). This results in making the significant
impact on the economy of Australia. The company invests millions of the dollars in the
community programs by the different businesses. The company supports the number of
organization by philanthropically (Wang et al. 2016). The company makes sure that all the
consumer products that are supplies should be safe and should meet the guarantees under the
consumer laws of operating countries. Moreover, the company makes sure that the all the
products should comply with the mandatory standards that are relevant (Unit 2015). The
divisions of the company implement the recalls of product whenever there is possibility of
safety issues that has aroused. There was emergence of key material issue for the company
and their business during the year as the part of the materiality process of data privacy. The
company continues for implementing the number of the controls for minimizing the risk that
includes the enhanced monitoring as well as the vulnerability testing of their procedures and
systems (Jizi et al. 2014).

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Harvey Norman has the local footprint in the various communities. There are many
divisions of the company that has the major and long-term partnership at the national level.
Apart from the major partnership, the significant part of the investment of the community are
directed towards smaller as well as the not for profit organizations that are operating locally
(Chernev and Blair 2015). The company makes an effort for reducing the costs of
environment and creating the opportunities of the new market by the new sustainable
processes and technologies as well as producing the goods and services that helps in
enhancing the health and quality of life of consumers and community. Moreover, all the retail
businesses of the company support the local community groups by the gift cards provisions,
products or by facilitating the collection of the customer donations for the initiatives of local
fundraising. It is because of these localized driven activities, the significant number of the
community groups and the programs has received the support from the businesses that are
across the wide ranges of the areas (Lins, Servaes and Tamayo 2017).
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be said by analyzing the CSR reporting of Harvey Norman that it
aims for the creating the long-term values for the employees, communities, customers and the
stakeholders. The company does this by engaging with the local communities. Moreover, the
company will be able for creating the long-term value by taking the initiative for minimizing
the impact of the environment on their business. The motivation behind the CSR reporting of
the company is for achieving the satisfactory return for the shareholders by looking after the
employees of the organization and giving safe as well as fulfilling the working environment,
taking care of customers, looking towards suppliers, taking care of environmental by acting
ethically and making contributions towards communities for which it operates. Lastly, the
components of CSR of Harvey Norman impacts the local community by making positive
contribution towards the communities under which it operates.

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Reference
Belal, A.R., 2016. Corporate social responsibility reporting in developing countries: The case
of Bangladesh. Routledge.
Cheng, B., Ioannou, I. and Serafeim, G., 2014. Corporate social responsibility and access to
finance. Strategic management journal, 35(1), pp.1-23.
Chernev, A. and Blair, S., 2015. Doing well by doing good: The benevolent halo of corporate
social responsibility. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(6), pp.1412-1425.
csrhub.com . (2019) CSRHub - Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsiblity (CSR)
ratings on over 30,448 of the world’s largest public and private companies. CSR information
for Harvey Norman Holdings. [online] Available at:
https://www.csrhub.com/CSR_and_sustainability_information/Harvey-Norman-Holdings
[Accessed 1 Jul. 2019].
Di Giuli, A. and Kostovetsky, L., 2014. Are red or blue companies more likely to go green?
Politics and corporate social responsibility. Journal of Financial Economics, 111(1), pp.158-
180.
Grayson, D. and Hodges, A., 2017. Corporate social opportunity!: Seven steps to make
corporate social responsibility work for your business. Routledge.
Harveynorman.com.au. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.harveynorman.com.au/
[Accessed 1 Jul. 2019].
Hopkins, M., 2016. The planetary bargain: corporate social responsibility comes of age.
Springer.

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Jizi, M.I., Salama, A., Dixon, R. and Stratling, R., 2014. Corporate governance and corporate
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Korschun, D., Bhattacharya, C.B. and Swain, S.D., 2014. Corporate social responsibility,
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