Oxfam Australia Business Case Analysis: A Comprehensive Report

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Business case analysis
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Company Synopsis..........................................................................................................................4
(a).................................................................................................................................................5
(b).................................................................................................................................................6
(c).................................................................................................................................................7
(d).................................................................................................................................................8
(e).................................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11
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Introduction
This report demonstrates the Oxfam Australia which is not for profit organization operates in
Australia works for the welfare of the society. This report involves a discussion about the
business and governance structure of the company and the environmental factors which are
affecting the company for making important decisions. This report reflects the three risks faced
by the company and its impact on the processing of the company. There are various departments
in the Oxfam for performing the various activities, all those departments are briefly discussed in
this report which further helps in providing an overview of the company.
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Company Synopsis
Oxfam is a society based aid & the development company, it is affiliated from the Oxfam
international. Oxfam’s activities involves responding to emergencies, long term growth of the
projects, etc. This company is gets its funds with the help of the donations from the community,
its development and advocacy program uses 73% of the donated money, for promotion and the
fundraising 16% is used and the remaining 11% for the administration purposes. Whenever there
is a situation of the emergency call, directly 85% of the funds are used for those emergency
responses. In the year 2009, Oxfam's work reached to about 4.64 million people in the 28
countries this was made possible because of the help of the 310,000 campaigns and the donors
(Oxfam Australia, 2019).
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(a)
Business and governance structure
Oxfam is an independent not-for-profit organization that is funded by the community
donations and uses these donations for the benefit of the society. This company supports the
develi=opmenet projects in the 30 countries and these countries are divided into 5 regions.
The management teams lead the Oxfam Australia's work by engaging with the important
stakeholders in up the direction as well as harnessing the commitment and the passion of the
supporters and staff. The four executives and a chief executive form the management team of
Oxfam, Each executive head of the company is supported by the managers and staff of the
business unit. The activities and the function of the company are divided into the following areas
(Oxfam Australia, 2019):
 Retails and operations
 International programs
 Risk and finance
 Public engagement
The associate directors of the company support the management team who further helps in the
working of the management team in the higher priority spaces. They are together are the senior
leadership team. The associate directors involve various other roles such as the managing general
of Oxfam trading and chief information officer and the associate directors of the human resource
& development, international programs, program effectiveness & fundraising.
Roles and policies
The board of the company develops the policies that help in setting the organizational results that
the chief executive must achieve and actions and situations must be avoided. The board gives the
authority to the chief executives to make all the decisions and the operations and they are
performed according to the guidelines and the policies of the board (Oxfam Australia, 2019).
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(b)
There are various environmental factors which can affect the performance of the company:
Environmental policies
These are external factors that can affect the strategy of the company, as the organization must
follow the set of laws and regulations of the environmental policies, laws and other policies also.
Some of the policies can affect the performance of Oxfam because various laws can force the
company to change its procedures of the operations (Omerzel, 2013).
Climate change
Since Oxfam deals with providing aids to the people who are also affected because of the natural
disaster and bad weather, there are various situations when the company have to provide the aid
to the people during the condition of the bad weather such as during the time of heavy rains they
may have to provide the shelters to the people who are in need. So, in this situation, the
performance of the company is affected.
Green Agenda
There are various situations of the environment also affecting the market and the business
environment. The organizations have understood that for achieving the objective they must draft
environmental friendly policies. So, if the Oxfam must draw the policies according to the
environment so that later it may not affect the performance of the organization.
Availability of the natural resources
This is another external factor as without the natural resource and organization may not be able
to perform various activities for example in case of scarcity of water Oxfam may not be able to
supply the water to the people who are need or who are affected by the wars and ned to quench
their thirst (Omerzel, 2013).
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(c)
Three risks of the Oxfam
Unavailability of funds
There can be a situation or the chances that the company does not have sufficient funds to
support the needs of the people. In that case, without the funds, the organization may not able to
perform there activities or operations which can affect the objective of the organization. There
may be the chance the company may have taken debts from the other organization and when it
came under this situation of unavailability and are not able to return the money and may become
debt-ridden (Samuel, et. al., 2013).
Reputational risk
It refers to the chances of negative publicity, uncontrollable events or the public perception
which can deeply impact the company’s reputation and further affecting the performance of the
company. These are the risk which strikes without giving any warning. So, in the case of the
Oxfam if the opinions of the customers are affected then it can affect the reputation of the
company and the company may not be able to get funds.
Compliance risk
There is the exposure to the financial forfeiture, legal penalities and the material loss faced by a
company when it fails to work according to the laws and regulations of the industries. So, Oxfam
has to keep in mind about the regulations of the industries and should perform their activities
accordingly otherwise their functions and the activities can be affected if they do not follow the
regulations (Samuel, et. al., 2013).
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(d)
Business practices adopted
There are various business strategies, plans, and programs adopted by the Oxfam are as follows:
Indigenous Australia
Oxfam has worked to assist the Torres strait islanders and aboriginal peoples for more than 30
years which particularly focused on the peoples of Western Australia (Butler, 2015).
The pacific
In the 1960s Oxfam has also done its operational activities in the pacific regions for supporting
the various projects in these areas of education to the poor, independent media, training of
human rights, youth community theatre, and for the development of business skill in the women,
etc.
Southern Africa
In the southern part of Africa Oxfam worked in various countries such as Sudan, Malawi, South
Africa, and Zimbabwe. There is various work performed by them such as emergency relief,
ensuring sufficient food, providing clean water, issues related to gender, protecting from HIV
and AIDS as well as forgiving the debts.
There were also various campaigning by the Oxfam which is as follows:
Close the Gap
This campaign raises the awareness of disadvantages in Indigenous Australians. They have
publicized the life expectancy gap of the indigenous Australians who died at 20 years earlier
before the average age other than the non-indigenous Australian and this was a successful
campaign (Butler, 2015).
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Climate change
Oxfam knew that the poor societies in the big and growing countries would be the people who
are severly affected by the changes in the climate and who are unable to adapt these changes. For
tackling this situation Oxfam Australia suggested that the grown countries must reduce the
carbon emission and should provide the support and help to the people of developing countries.
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(e)
There are various functional departments of the Oxfam which are as follows:
 Development – They work along with the communities and the partners on the long
term programs to reduce the poverty and fight for justice.
 Emergencies – They provide faster life-saving facilities to the people who are affected
by conflicts and disaster from the nature and also the attacks of armed forces.
 Campaigning – This involves raising public awareness about the poverty cause and
motivating ordinary people to take corrective actions (Study moose, 2019).
 Advocacy – This involves forcing the government or the decision-makers to make
changes in the practices and the policies that reinforce injustice and poverty.
 Policy research – By doing the research and analysis and experiencing the partnership
with the various developing countries Oxfam has got a variety of the programs, policies
and research staffs whose knowledge involves public health, engineering, and the
lobbying international institutions.
 The senior management staff of Oxfam is responsible for ensuring about the
effectiveness, answerability and the quality of the Oxfam's portfolio of growth,
campaigning works and the compassionate across the world. Under the Oxfam
volunteers play an important role in achieving the main objective of the organization to
reduce the injustice and the poverty across the globe, they perform a variety of the role
and works through the all departments and these volunteers are the significant part of
the non-profit organization (Study moose, 2019).
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Conclusion
This report explained the business and governance structure of the Oxfam Australia which works
as a nonprofit organization for the welfare of the society. This report discussed the various
environmental factors which can affect the performance of the company such as environmental
policies, climate change, etc. The report also reflects the various risk involved in the organization
which can affect the performance such as Unavailability of funds, reputational risk, and the
compliance risk. The report demonstrated the various role and the programs performed by the
company and also the various functional areas through which the company achieve its objective.
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References
 Butler, R., & Wilson, D. C. (2015). Managing voluntary and non-profit organizations:
Strategy and structure. Routledge.
 Lee, S. Y. (2012). Corporate carbon strategies in responding to climate change. Business
Strategy and the Environment, 21(1), 33-48.
 Omerzel Gomezelj, D., & Kušce, I. (2013). The influence of personal and environmental
factors on entrepreneurs' performance. Kybernetes, 42(6), 906-927.
 Oxfam Australia, 2019. Donate to help our neighbors. [Online] Oxfam Australia.
Available at: https://www.oxfam.org.au/ [Accessed: 13 August 2019]
 Oxfam Australia, 2019. Our executive team. [Online] Oxfam Australia. Available at:
https://www.oxfam.org.au/what-we-do/about-us/our-people/our-executive-team/
[Accessed: 13 August 2019]
 Samuel, O., Wolf, P., & Schilling, A. (2013). Corporate volunteering: Benefits and
challenges for nonprofits. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 24(2), 163-179.
 Study moose, 2019. Functional areas of Oxfam. [Online] Study moose. Available at:
https://studymoose.com/functional-areas-in-tesco-and-oxfam-essay [Accessed: 13 August
2019]
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