Business Communication Skills: Summary Report - 2019 Assessment

This report presents a summary of business communication skills, focusing on three key areas: fraud in financial institutions, greenwashing in marketing, and the importance of ethical environmental advertising. The report begins by highlighting the need for Australians to check their superannuation balances due to major fraud cases involving identity theft and financial losses. It then explores the issue of greenwashing, where companies make misleading environmental claims, and discusses the Federal Trade Commission's efforts to revise marketing guidelines. The report emphasizes the growing concerns of environmental and consumer groups regarding corporate greenwashing. It further discusses the challenges in promoting a greener environment and the need for organizations to maintain ethical corporate sustainability reporting. The summary also addresses the effectiveness of the Green Guides and the unified approach needed to overcome barriers in the context of greenwashing. The report draws on the work of Dahl (2010) to provide a comprehensive overview of these interconnected issues.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION SKILLS
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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A
It became important to check the super balances of Australians after major fraud
occurrences that removed millions from retirement, abducted consumer identities and biggest
sharebrokers of the nation were hacked (Dahl, 2010).
B
According to the government, growth in wages paved way to greater interest cuts
while an immediate improvement in cash-strapped houses was expected from combining the
rate cuts and tax cuts. The primary issue was related to the pressure generated from wages,
the growth of which tend to remain low including the customers becoming increasingly
concerned about the condition of economy (Dahl, 2010).
C
Organizations are more focusing on greenness in their promotions across the United
States due to climate change legislations and other related factors, which resulted in to follow
greenwashing, though it has been acclaimed critically. Greenwashing is an older term, used
for market growth by unwarranted claims of environment friendliness. Increased demand for
customers has ignited this, which resulted in a rise of 79% from the last two years. Increase
of greenwashing is increasing mainly due to absence of tight regulations regarding
environmental promotions.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) want to revise the marketing guidelines related
to environmental ethics. According to Singer, FTC needs to address third-party certifications
like abundance of green labels on the products. At present, there are more than 500 products
labelled as green, and are already taking actions against the violations of the Green Guides
that are already present. For example, they already have taken actions against four sellers,

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who sell clothes and other textiles with providing fake advertisements related with its
products. The entity already had sent letters to 78 more sellers of the same industry as a
warning.
Confusion among the public is one of the key results of greenwashing. According to
critics, greenwashing is creating more harms to the societies. For example, Malaysia Palm Oil
violated the rules and regulations related to commercial advertisements. Organizations like
the UK Advertising Standards Authority and Friends of the Earth, the advertisement had
breached the ethics in commercial advertisements. Another organization which mislead the
customers is Shell, the energy giant from The Netherlands. They all were performing fake
sustainability on environmental issues. though there are opportunities for the companies to
increase sales of green products, pressures are also there to maintain the ethics related to
environmental advertising.
Environmental and consumer groups started to watch corporate greenwashing due to
the absence of strong course of actions. Greenpeace was one of such entity to observe the
claimed advertisements. There is increase in the number of challenges which are getting
identified by many researchers and dignitaries from various institutes. According to them,
clean organizations can be the effective marketers of greener environment, if certain steps are
followed. Frameworks related to corporate sustainability reporting need to be maintained
ethically by the organizations. The experts are raising questions on the effectiveness of the
Green Guides on greenwashing, but rising demands of communities have forced the business
entities in America to follow the guidelines strictly. All are focused towards a unified
approach to face the barriers and solve them in the context of greenwashing (Dahl, 2010).

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References
Dahl, R. (2010). Green Washing. Environmental Health Perspectives, 118(6).