Evaluating EMA reporting under GRI standards in Australia

‘The GRI Reporting Framework is a generally-accepted framework for reporting on an organization’s performance in terms of economic, environmental and social impact. The G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and the GRI standards prescribe principles for defining the content of sustainability report and for ensuring the quality of data reported. This framework is widely used by organizations reporting voluntarily or in accordance with regulations, The G4 guidelines and GRI 101 Foundation Standard define four principles concerned with report content. First, stakeholder inclusiveness requires the report to identify its stakeholders and how it addresses their reasonable expectations and interest. Second, the organization should report its performance in regards to sustainability. Materiality is the third principle how the report treats aspects that (1) demonstrates the organization’s major economic, environmental and social impacts or (2) considerably influence the assessments and decision of stakeholders. Finally, the report should aim for completeness and cover material aspects and their boundaries to the extent that the report illustrates significant economic, environmental and social impacts, which should assess the organization’s performance in the reporting period.’ Mowen et. al. (2016), page 8651.

1 Mowen, MM, Hansen, DR, Heitger, D, Sands, J, Winata, L, Su, S 2016, Managerial Accounting, Asia-Pacific

2nd edition, Cengage Learning, Australia.

Requirements:

In the following table you are given the GRI sustainability framework:

Task 1: 

Download a 2018 annual report of one Australian listed company from any sector (i.e., manufacturing, retail, real estate, finance and banking etc.) and identify whether the company provide any general standard disclosure related to sustainability that apply the sector the company belongs to.

Task 2: 

(a) From the above indicators of the GRI framework, use the Environmental category only to identify what aspects of EMA information reported by your selected company in its annual report. [You must provide a copy of the relevant section from the annual report as evidence as appendix of your report].

(b) Based on you finding in (a) above, prepare a critical evaluation on the Completeness of the following environmental aspects covered:

i. does it report all environmental aspects under GRI? or 

ii. reported only selected aspects, if so what could be the underlying reasons?

iii. present your arguments on the relevance of the reported environmental aspects to the nature of business (or sector) and 

Task 3:

Using the Return of Asset ratio (ROA) comment on the company’s performance from previous year.

Task 4:

Based on your finding in task 1 and 2 prepare a summary report on the overall Quality of the company’s environmental sustainability report and provide recommendation for further improvement.