Deakin University Finance: AGL Australia Sustainability Report 2017

This report provides an analysis of AGL Australia's 2017 sustainability report, evaluating the integration of sustainability into the company's overall business strategy. It identifies key stakeholders and assesses the company's sustainability performance, highlighting both strengths and weaknesses. The report also examines AGL's adherence to Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards and the presentation of its sustainability efforts, noting the clarity and user-friendliness of the report's design, including the use of charts and graphs. The analysis concludes that AGL has adopted basic elements of sustainability and presents its report effectively, enabling stakeholders to understand the company's performance and areas for improvement. The report emphasizes the importance of sustainability for businesses and stakeholders and is available for download.

Accounting
Assignment

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Background
To put an emphasis on the fact that sustainability is an important part of any business and
it is very important that management of the companies works in that regard. The various steps
that management takes to balance their financial resources and managing their non-financial
risks is reflected through the way they are sustainable to carter to the needs of all the
stakeholders that are dependent on them in some way or the other. In this case the sustainability
report of AGL Australia have been downloaded. For 2017 has been selected and analyzed to
state the overall strength and weakness in their performance and the way they have presented
their reports for external users of the organization.
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Table of Contents
Background..................................................................................................................................................1
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Question 1...................................................................................................................................................4
Question 2...................................................................................................................................................5
Question 3...................................................................................................................................................5
Question 4...................................................................................................................................................6
Question 5...................................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................11
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Introduction
Sustainability refers to the balance use of the resources of an organization in such a way
that all the social, economic and corporate governance needs of the organization are fulfilled. It
aims to carter to the needs of both the current and the future stakeholder of the companies. The
auditors need to state the same in their annual reports whether the management have maintained
a sustainable approach or not and what are the ways in which they can improve their
performance with respect to the company. To ensure that sustainability is very important for any
organization it is important that all the financial and non-financial risks related to the business
are identified. The investors can also study the sustainability reports and then decide whether
they want to invest in any company or not and whether the company would fulfill their long-term
needs or not. In this case the sustainability report of AGL Australia have been downloaded and
analyzed previous year the nature of sustainability was non-financial and thus organization never
paid much relevance to it but now in recent years the concept has become very important and
effective study and analysis of the same is done to make one better than their competitors in
areas that are needed.
Question 1.
Sustainability is an important part of the business in many ways of AGL. They have integrated
their business needs with that of the organization by aiming for sustainable use of energy in the
future by taking necessary actions to prosper in a carbon-constrained world and making the
business more customer-generic (Abdullah & Said, 2017). Thus, we see that they aim to use their
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resources in a generic manner so that their customers would be able to sustain a better use of the
same in the future. They have aimed for following steps for a sustainable use of resources in the
future-
 They are moving to be more customer specific by using better technology, smarter
solutions to empower their customers.
 They are moving from being operator of large generation assets to smaller generation
assets, so that consumption of energy is divided and regulated.
 They are aiming for lower-emission of energy technology, by investing heavily in non-
renewable energy resources.
Question 2
The major stakeholders of the company include: Shareholders and investors who are putting their
funds in the company aiming for good returns, the customers who are the main asset for any
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organization and AGL is aiming to become more customer centric in its approach (Webster,
2017). The other stakeholders include the government, the public and the society, the company is
involved in such a business that their activities can harm the environment a lot and can cause a
lot of pollution and thus using energy resources in a sustainable manner is very important for the
company from the view point of the stakeholders who are dependent on the company. They are
aiming for the best outcome for the company (Iggers, 2018).
Question 3.
In case of the AGL it can be said that the company has adopted a very sustainable approach with
respect to their customers and the environment in which the operate. Following highlights have
been presented from the annual report of the company-
 The company aims to develop an electrical market design and regulatory framework that
aims to provide safe, reliable, affordable, electrical supply from sources that are
centralized.
 It aims to work sustainably with the government by syncing their efforts with the policies
of the government (Kaufmann, 2017).
 It aims to adopt best practices of corporate governance for the companies.
 It aims to make the overall customer experience better and that is evident from the
increase in the Net Promoter Score compared to that in FY2016. It also aims to make the
overall distribution of energy better trough better channel and decentralized sources for
the companies.
 It aims to work with the community to develop mutually beneficial energy projects for
the companies (Grundy, et al., 2017).
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So, we that the approach of sustainability is strong and they have been able to achieve the targets
that they have set for themselves and have stated the same in their annual reports also. Thus, we
see that the company is performing in an excellent manner.
Question 4.
The weak sustainability performance of the company can be comprehended in ways that include
that even though they have working to adopt a sustainable approach there are certain areas where
they have failed to achieve the targets that they have set for themselves. Also given the fact that
the main business of the company is to deal in energy related distribution and given that energy
is a non-renewable resource, so even though they are working for better energy related activities
they still need to work to get the best results and reduce the amount of pollution that their
activities causes (Covaleski, et al., 2003). There are still some areas in which the management
needs to work for that includes material issues, change in climate, energy policies and
profitability, community engagement, health and safety, customer experience, renewable energy
etc. So, they need to put more efforts in certain areas so that better results can be forged out of
the same. But overall, they have put much efforts so that they get the best results which as of
now, is not satisfactory and more efforts are required for the company for attaining a level of
sustainability.
Question 5
a) The overall sustainability report of AGL has been written and presented in a very precise
and brief manner and all the major steps that the company has taken has been stated by
the company in a detailed manner. The company has also provided charts and graphs to
make the report more user friendly so that people can better analyze (Charles H, et al.,
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2015). They have presented their targets and their achievements in different sections so
that makes it easy to compare how much the company has been able to achieve and what
more is required from their end. The company has also stated the review procedures that
they have undertaken which includes identification of the challenges and stakeholders,
confirmation of the issues of the materiality, identification of the strong and the weak
stakeholders of the company, the way the review has been conducted and the
shareholders who are part of the same. They key elements of the sustainable report has
been stated separately to highlight it for the users. Thus, we see that the management of
the company has made the overall report very readable, user friendly, proper charts have
been given and all the points have been highlighted. The materiality chart from the same
is stated below:
b) The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an organization that have set guidelines and
rules that helps companies in presenting and communicating their social, ethical, and
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environmental impact to the stakeholders that includes the government, shareholders, and
other people. In this case also the company has presented its sustainability report with
respect to the GRI standards and have stated the same clearly in their report. An extract
from the same is attached (Boghossian, 2017).
The GRI standards aims to highlight the materiality angle of the steps that have been
taken by the companies and how is it affecting the stakeholders have also been stated. In
this case we see that the company has aligned with the GRI principles and have stated a
column in which they have mentioned their activities, the GRI standards and the chosen
disclosure and for each activity specific boundary has also been mentioned so we see this
helps the stakeholder in analyzing whether the company has been successful or not and
what are the areas in which they need to further work (Belton, 2017).
Conclusion
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Based on the overall report and analysis it can be said that the company has adopted the
basis element of sustainability and all their activities are in relation to the same. They have
worked and presented their report in an excellent manner that is very user friendly and the
investors can get a good knowledge which are the areas in which the management is lacking and
thus we see that the overall stand of the company is correct and they have been able to achieve
the sustainability needs of the society and the stakeholders.
The sustainability report of AGL can be accessed through the following URL.
http://agl2017.reportonline.com.au/sites/agl2017.reportonline.com.au/files/
sustainability_report_full_report_0.pdf\
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References
Abdullah, W. & Said, R., 2017. Religious, Educational Background and Corporate Crime Tolerance by
Accounting Professionals. State-of-the-Art Theories and Empirical Evidence, pp. 129-149.
Belton, P., 2017. Competitive Strategy: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. London: Macat
International ltd.
Boghossian, P., 2017. The Socratic method, defeasibility, and doxastic responsibility. Educational
Philosophy and Theory, 50(3), pp. 244-253.
Charles H, C., Giovanna, M., Dennis M, P. & Robin W, R., 2015. CSR disclosure: the more things
change…?. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 28(1), pp. 14-35.
Covaleski, M., Evans, J., Luft, J. & Shields, M., 2003. Budegting Research Three Theoretical Prespectives
and Criteria for selective Integration. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 15(3), pp. 3-49.
Grundy, Q., Held, F. & Bero, L., 2017. A Social Network Analysis of the Financial Links Backing Health and
Fitness Apps. American Journal of Public Health.
Iggers, J., 2018. Good News, Bad News: Journalism Ethics And The Public Interest. s.l.:s.n.
Kaufmann, W., 2017. The Problem of Regulatory Unreasonableness. First ed. New York: Routledge.
Webster, T., 2017. Successful Ethical Decision-Making Practices from the Professional Accountants'
Perspective. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
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