Telstra Board Structure: Ethical and Governance Evaluation

This presentation provides an in-depth analysis of Telstra's board structure, examining its composition and evolution over time. It delves into the company's mission, vision, and core values, highlighting its commitment to simplified and valued technology solutions. The presentation addresses Telstra's complaint management issues and explores the ethical challenges faced by the company, including violations related to privacy concerns and misleading advertisements. It further examines the roles of shareholders and stakeholders, including customers, employees, and government entities, and maps them according to Carroll's Philanthropic Pyramid. The analysis also incorporates the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) guidelines relevant to Telstra, emphasizing principles related to board structure, ethical conduct, and stakeholder rights.

Telstra

Board Structure

The Board of Directors

About the Board
• Over the years the structure of the board has
not seen much change apart from change in
the board member from time to time.
• Matters of composition are taken care of by
the Board and the Nomination Committee in
accordance with the set framework in the
Nomination Committee Charter.

About
• The company under consideration is one of
Australia's largest telecommunications and media
company, Telstra Corporation Limited. It is involved
with the building and operation of
telecommunications networks. In Australia they
provide 16 million mobile services, 7.5 million fixed
voice services and 3 million retail fixed broadband
services. (Telstra.com.au. 2018)

Contd.
• Telstra is a for-profit organization
• Telstra currently has 31,931 employees
• Telstra's total revenue as of 2014 is $26.3 billion
• Telstra’s total Assets amount adds up to A$39.36
billion
• Telstra is a Australian based organization so not
a multinational organization
• Telstra is listed on the stock exchange as 5.68
per share.
• Telstra is listed up as a national Corporation.

Mission and Vision
Mission
• To build content and technology solutions
that would be simplified, valued and easy
to use. They strive to get to know and
serve their customers better.
Vision
• Telstra’s vision for the future is to provide
a fast and reliable internet connection and
mobile phone service.

Values Articulated
Telstra has 5 core values:
• Care
• Togetherness
• Trust
• Simplicity
• Courage

Complaint Management
• Telstra has had some bad publicity
over the past couple of months, such
as complaints from customers for
bad service.
• Telstra has obviously done something
to fix this issue, as the complaints
have decreased over the past few
years

Ethics
General challenges with international ethics:
• This theory is often based on individuals
• Different traditions (history, business, teaching, philosophy)
• Different judiciary structure
• Culture differences
• Religious differences (including factions)
• Communication challenges (media, definitions, language)
• Governance (ratification, enforcing, overseeing)

Ethical Evaluation
• Consequentialism
• Utilitarianism
• Egoism
• Non-consequentialism

Ethical Violation
• One of the biggest breach of ethical values made by
the company was when they were accused for
tracking the usage of internet of its service users and
sending the data history to a company in the United
States. This raised an issue of privacy concern
(Consequentialism) (ABC News 2018).
• It has been accused of misleading advertisements.
(Egoism)
• Unavailability of detailed costing information to
shareholders. (Egoism)