Critique and Comparison: Two Corporate Sustainability Reports Analysis

This report presents a comparative analysis of the sustainability reports of Tata Steel and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). The introduction defines the purpose of the report, which is to critique and compare the two corporate sustainability reports, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. The report provides an overview of both companies, detailing their establishment, business operations, and sustainability initiatives. The analysis of Tata Steel's report focuses on its environmental excellence, healthcare community initiatives, and sustainable mining practices, while also evaluating its credibility and completeness. The CBA's report is assessed for its financial education programs, alignment with opportunity initiatives, and adherence to reporting standards. The critique section discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each report, including the completeness of data, clarity of information, and adherence to reporting guidelines (GRI). The report concludes with recommendations for improvement, particularly for CBA regarding data categorization, standardization, and incorporation of environmental, social, and governance matters. The report aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the sustainability reporting practices of both companies and identifies areas for improvement.

Running head: ENVIRONMENAL SUSTAINABILITY
ENVIRONMENAL SUSTAINABILITY
Name of the Student
Name of the Organization
Author Note

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Introduction
Tata Steel and Manufacturing Company
The Tata Steel and Company was established in Jamshedpur in the year 1907. The
company is known for taking the shape of the vision of Jamsetji N.Tata, the company is
presently a global business enterprise which has its products diversified in over more than 150
countries. Tata Steel and company is world’s second most geographically diversified steel
producer, which operates in more than 30 countries, commercially present in more than 50
countries, and it has its employees present across the five continents. Tata Steel is among the top
global steel companies, which has the annual record of crude steel productivity capacity of 27.5
MnTPA. It holds the record of a consolidated turnover of $1, 171, 420 dollars in the financial
year 2018.
The sustainability report aims to ensure the few areas of excellence, which are the
environmental excellence where the company is omitted to proactively address the issues, which
are related to the climate change with the most efficient use of the natural resources available.
The company is also dedicated in providing a healthcare community where the company ensures
in building and nurturing a safe and healthier environment for all its stakeholders and permanent
members of the organization. Health and safety measures which ensures the health and safety of
the employees at all the levels of workplace. Sustainable and responsible mining is fundamental
to their ethos. The company also invests in its innovations which consistently enhances its
efficiencies, improves its qualities and thereby achieves a better performance benchmarks in its

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areas of development.
Fig 1.Diagram represents the sustainability measures taken by Tata Steel
(Source - Self made)

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Task 1
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
The Commonwealth bank of Australia was established in the year 1911 as a bank for the
Australians. The bank has been providing various types of financial services for the people in
Australia. The bank is also known for employing, creating business in communities all across the
country. In the present day the bank has grown to a a leader in the financial institution, which has
the aim to provide retail, business, private and institutional banking and different types of wealth
management services to the citizens of the nation. It also provides its banking services to 11
countries all around the world. The vision of the bank is to excel at securing as well as enhancing
the financial wellbeing of the people, communities and business enterprises. The bank has
achieved the values of integrity, collaboration with other business enterprises, accountability and
services guides the company in achieving the company aims and goals. The bank is known to
offer insurance, superannuation, share trading funds and fund management to more than 16.6
millions of customers both in Australia and across the world (Yadava & Sinha, 2016).
The sustainability report aims in providing financial education by the bank to more than
500 schools with 568,000 students over the financial year of 2018. The bank is known as the
largest financial educator in the world. The educator program has reached a program of 568,000
students I the previous year. It has connected more than 3 million students since its inception. It

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has delivered 9,877 workshops and has worked more than 460 schools. The
Fig 2. Represents the sustainability measures taken by Commonwealth Bank of Australia
(Source – Self made)

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Task 2
The sustainability report of Tata steel is complete as because through its sustainability
report it aspires to provide the stakeholders an all-inclusive depiction of the organizations value
creation using both the financial and non-financial resources of the company. The sustainability
report is credible as because it also provides insights into the key strategies of the company. It
also focuses on the operating environment, the material issues which are emerging from the key
shareholders of the company. The report also puts its concerns the respective mitigation
strategies, the risks and opportunities that are faced by the company in the financial year 2018.
Therefore, it can be clearly depicted from its report that company has a better approach towards
the long-term sustainability (Gal, Akisik & Wooldridge 2018).
The sustainability report of Commonwealth bank of Australia is complete as it is aligned
with the opportunity initiatives, the organization’s plan to drive a positive change through the
education, better business practices and innovation. It also shows the work in progress for each
of the initiatives and targets set by the company. The report completes with the management
approach and highlights the material issues faced by the company. The sustainability report is
credible as because it presented in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative ( GRI ). The
data used in the report has been assured by the Price Waterhouse Coopers ( PWC ) which assures
the tax advisory and legal structures of the company.

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Task 3
Critique on the Strengths and weakness of Tata Steel Manufacturing Company and
Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
The Tata Steel Company
The sustainability report for Tata has been produced in two forms both electronically and in
printed form. The corporate sustainability report of the company contains the responsibility of
the management of the Tata Steel and Manufacturing Company. The sustainability report is
based on the assurance of the Price Waterhouse Coopers Private Limited. The strengths of the
report is that it has kept its objectives such as the sustainability – environmental, economic,
innovations and socio – cultural performance indicators of the company. These factors are
thoroughly reviewed by considering the key sustainability risks of Tata Steel. The report also has
highlighted the subsidiary companies of Tata Steel and has been able to identify those
sustainability indicators, which are most relevant to the shareholders and the management’s
decision-making process. The company has also reviewed the scope of the indicators, which was
further contingent in their experience of the sustainability reporting systems.
 Review of certain sets of data and statements, which are related with the company’s
operations and for the provision of the limited assurance in respect to the data and
statements used.
 Review of the selected on site data collection process, managing the data properly as well
as collating the data into various forms of pictographs and table formats. The company
has also checked the internal control system of the report which mainly includes the

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reporting and monitoring the procedures and pre checking whether those were planned to
reliably support the report (Aggarwal & Singh, 2018).
 The report also clearly provides a representation which is appropriate to the existing
policies which includes the criteria of supporting the areas of human resource,
community involvement, environment, health, safety and security measures which are
involved in the company.
The company can be seen has very effectively planned and performed out their work
in order to obtain all the decisions, information and explanations which were considered
necessary. This has helped the company in providing sufficient evidence to ascertain the
information in the report. The information was consistent with the activities in the areas of
the factory premises and in various plants of the company. The key strength of the
sustainability report was that it was acknowledged by the GRI guidelines 2017. Few
methods, which were considered in the planning of the sustainability report of the company,
are:
 Various interviews with the management responsible for the marketing, safety measures,
suppliers and partners, legal measures and human resource management, management
which is responsible for the environment and mining related issues.
 Examinations were conducted for the review of the external economic, social and
environmental issues which are faced by The Tata Iron and Steel Manufacturing
Company Limited.
 Understanding and assessing the systems of data generation, consolidation and reporting
in the websites, business unit diversion, collection and analysis of the chosen data.

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 Revised conclusion drawn from the sustainability report, which includes the opportunities
and threats of the reports (Feta, et al., 2018).
Parties which are involved and are responsible for the assurance engagement of the Report
 The multi disciplinary team which has requisite experience and skills.
 Dr P. Ram Babu who is the sustainability system expert in Pricewaterhouse Coopers
Private Limited, with an experience of 25 yeas in this field.
 Mr Surojit Bose also executed the engagement along with Dr. Muna Ali employed in
Pricewaterhouse Coopers Private Limited with an experience of more than 10 years
(Hodgson & Brooks, 2018).
It can be concluded that few units in the report failed to showcase the evidence of the
integrated electronic data management and communication system. The information system was
also less advanced in the system. Hence, the completeness of the data were found to be lacking
due to the unavailability of various units. Furthermore in case of the indicators information were
reported in gross basis rather than on unit basis.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia
The organization has used the non financial metrics which are the Environmental, .
Customer, Non financial and Social metrics for the sustainability report of 2018. Therefore this
limited the assurance of the engagement of the management in the report for the respective year.
The strength areas of the report are that the members of the organization has complied the report
with relevant ethical requirements, which are related to the assurance engagement. For the
auditing of the report, the firm has applied Auditing Standard ASQC 1 Quality Control for
deriving the financial information and other assurance engagement service record. It has also

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maintained a comprehensive system of quality control policies, which includes various
documented policies and procedures regarding the complicacy with ethical requirements and
regulatory requirements of the organization. The sustainability report of Commonwealth bank of
Australia has also engaged in aiming to obtain a limited assurance engagement is restricted
primarily to the analytical procedures and enquiries. Therefore it can be further derived that the
sustainability report is less detailed than it should have been undertaken for a limited assurance
engagement of the managerial departments of the organization. The report has been prepared
with the focus of providing a limited assurance on the metrics for the financial year of 2018
which is not suitable for any other purpose. The report has been prepared solely with the help of
the Directors and top management of the bank. The report has not been distributed by any other
third party organizations. The glossary sustainability report of the bank is explained with pretty
pictures rather than incorporating the environmental , social and governance matters should be
put in the mainstream of the annual reporting. Furthermore it can also be seen that the climate
change has led to a great impact in the financial part of the sustainability report. There is also a
lack of interconnectivity, that has been recognized. Willcocks & Reynolds (2015), also says that
there is also a need for some form of standardizing in the report. There are too much pictures
which are included in the report. Aulich, & Head (2018) says that photos cannot explain the
social licenses to operate. The stakeholder exception should be much greater than it is used in the
report. Therefore, the goals and outcome of the company needs to perfectly measureable and
quantifiable. It has also been found that the environmental issues are the dominating factors,
which should have been properly addressed. Corporate accountability and governance should be
a major focus in the report.

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The latest sustainability report of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has a lot of information
and graphics which are in a way of less visual and more of the content. This has led to less
amount of information to backup the relevant information and messages produced in the report.
Recommendation
Commonwealth Bank of Australia should categorize the future research collaborations by the
non – profit organizations and government and then release their data manually.
The company should encourage creating a department which will focus to create an Ethical
Research Funding Policy with inputs from the members of the organization. They should also
put forward the research funding that can come from the non – profit sources.
The top managerial team can also provide an outline space for the interdisciplinary sustainability
research as well as the publications before posting the reports. Employees should be promoted in
order to do conduct an audit of the company on a three-year cycle (Islam, Jain & Thomson,
2016).
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that a sustainability report builds the existing business
management tool and concepts and applies them in a broader context to build a highly interactive
social environment and economic environment. There are also considerable guidance an
expertise available who can help and guide the management in incorporating sustainable
practices in the organizations.

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