ACCT5961 (Assessment 1) - 25%
Content Analysis of a
Sustainability Report (Individual)
Assessment Description
This essay aims for students to gain knowledge of information typically provided in
sustainability reports. A company will be allocated students in groups to perform a
content analysis of a sustainability report. As part of this assessment, students will
identify the company’s approach to sustainability, identify the company’s initiatives
with regards to social and environmental impacts of the company’s business
operations and then critically evaluate the company’s strategy and its societal
impact.
Assessment Length
2–3-page Content Analysis (Font 12 including references; cover page excluded)
Submission
Individual assignments must be submitted in pdf format through a submission link in
Moodle by 5pm in Week 4 (Friday, 28 June).
Each submission must be submitted with a cover sheet (excluded from page count).
The assignments will be checked using a plagiarism software, so it is the
responsibility of the student to ensure that no plagiarism occurs, and quoted text is
properly cited.
Penalties apply for late submissions (10% per day) and if plagiarism is detected.
Assessment information
Required:
1. Download from the Company’s website the annual corporate
report/sustainability report of your assigned company (or Company’s website).
Your assigned company will be the organisation assigned to your group. See
company allocated to your group below.
Group 1 Sanford Group 6 Suncorp
Group 2 AGL Group 7 Sunrice
Group 3 ASX Limited Group 8 GPT
Group 4 Transurban Group 9 Qantas
Group 5 Westpac Group 10 Bluescope
2. Peruse corporate annual/sustainability report of your assigned company and
understand the company’s business and identify its purpose, mission, business
strategy, vision, corporate values and culture, if disclosed.
3. Identify initiatives that address social and/or environmental issues that are
relevant and material to the organisation’s business and purpose. Quality of
discussion will be assessed in the ability of the student to identify what is
significant to the organisation. For example, energy companies will typically
reduce its environmental impact.
2
4. Submit a report addressing the following tasks:
a. Describe briefly the company’s business and discuss the company’s
purpose/mission/values. (2 Marks)
b. Discuss the process of stakeholder engagement applied by the company to
help them identify material social and environmental issues to include in a
sustainability report and describe how the stakeholders and issues are
prioritised. Critically evaluate the engagement process. For example, do all
the significant stakeholders participate in the process? Is the process
transparent? Is there a framework used to identify significant material issues.
(5 Marks)
c. Select two social and two environmental initiatives (i.e. total of 4 initiatives)
that are material to the core business of the organisation (i.e. not green
washing initiatives). Explain each initiative and justify why you chose this
initiative. You must argue why this initiative is materially significant/important
to the business. It would help to link this to your discussion in the stakeholder
engagement. (6 Marks)
d. For each of the initiative selected, evaluate the company’s performance on
this issue. For example, discuss the key performance indicators (KPIs)
reported or if not available, the qualitative disclosure provided by the
company on this initiative. Evaluate these initiatives and discuss how the
initiatives further the competitive advantage of the organisation (or not). (4
Marks)
e. Recommend points for improvement in the reporting of these initiatives and
support these by providing a comparison of reporting practices with another
company in the same sector/industry. (4 Marks)
f. Formatting and presentation (4 Marks)
• Report is well structured (with sub-headings), concise and cohesive.
• Report is within specified length (2-3 pages) excluding cover sheet.
• Report is well written (careful with use of grammar and no spelling errors)
and just copied from the sustainability report.
• Report is appropriately referenced usually using Harvard style or other
acceptable citation styles.