With respect to the first step, S&EA, each of the cases studied engaged in some form of internal S&ER. Internal S&ER ranged in frequency from “hourly [...] depending on what piece of data it is (Org B)”, “daily (Org E)” and “weekly (Org H)”, to “monthly (Org D)”, and “quarterly (Orgs B, D, F & G)”. Internal reporting ranged from being “very structured (Org B)”, and “very systematic (Org D)”, to “uncoordinated and very much ad hoc and piecemeal (Org A)”, whilst the interviewee from Org I noted “I wouldn’t go so far as to say we were as bad as ad hoc but I’d say we were immature (Org I)”. Internal reporting was predominantly bottom-up, and this bottom-up communication was predominantly through formal reporting, with only Orgs C and J noting feedback through communication from internal stakeholders. Furthermore, with the exceptions of Orgs E and H, which provided internal newsletters and magazines to employees, and Org I, which used their centralised environmental accounting system to provide reports to management teams, the annual social and environmental report was the main form of top-down communication regarding social and environmental performance.
Whilst each of the cases engaged in some form of internal S&ER, the systems implemented for the identification and measurement of social and environmental information varied. An important aspect of S&EA is the implementation and use of an integrated S&EMS, and of the ten cases studied three utilised ISO 14001 certified EMSs across all of their sites (Orgs D, G & H), whilst two had ISO certification across some, but not all, of their sites (Orgs B & C). The interviewee from Org H emphasised the benefits of using a corporate-wide certification system:
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“So, you know, using that system, everybody is certified all the time but at random, you have to pass audits, and if you fail, then you’re putting the whole corporate certification at risk. So it’s actually a very powerful way to encourage everybody to make sure they don’t be the one to fail.” An uncertified S&EMS was used by Org F, and Orgs A, E & J did not claim to use a social and/or environmental management system. Org I was unique in that the organisation did not claim to use an S&EMS, yet it was the only case studied that utilised a customised, fully integrated environmental accounting and reporting system:
“Yeah, what we did we used PeopleSoft, so I didn’t, early on when I started getting into the sustainability stuff we were doing something, a scheme called the greenhouse challenge plus. So, and I inherited the role or created a role just prior to some reporting and oh it was a nightmare and trying to get all this data that we’d never captured before and I can see that I was becoming the owner of the data and the responsibility for getting it and making sure it’s accurate and I thought well that’s not my role. The finance people already have processes for numbers and accounting and audit and they’re the ones buying all this energy, they should know what we’re buying. I would have thought that was a basic financial principle. You paid a million dollars, you should get a million widgets. But as it turned out we weren’t capturing most of the quantity stuff. So what we did with PeopleSoft, we changed it. Whenever we pay an invoice for any energy, we’ve changed it so certain general ledger accounts, so called ‘enviro accounts’ and for those accounts you can’t continue unless you put a quantity in. [...A]nd we put some rules and guidelines around what all that means and we have an internal business intelligence tool called TM1 and we suck the data out of PeopleSoft. We also put all the energy and greenhouse gas efficiency, emissions factors in PeopleSoft. So we store all that data there and now I can print my NGER reports using our TM1 tool, which is great. So we can now, and each month the financial accounts, when they sign off the monthly accounts, they sign off on the work which, or the quantities or the data. So each month they’re saying these quantities are correct, so we can track our, where our energy, waste and water are going each month. You know, with people who know numbers, who already have processes for accuracy, the audit teams will come and audit the
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numbers [and] they’ll sort of recognise when things don’t look right. So that’s been great. So, in the past it took weeks and weeks and weeks of individual accountant’s time across the whole company, so maybe six months in time if not more of just getting data. So now we’ve automated that and now we can go the next step of using it to help with carbon trading (Org I).”
With respect to the level of integration amongst the organisations that utilised certified EMSs, whilst the systems for the most part integrated health, safety and environment they were operated as stand-alone systems that drew upon, but were not integrated with aspects of the financial management systems. One of the interviewees from Org F noted that their social and environmental performance management system operated as a parallel system, and commented “what we’re doing increasingly is working to integrate those different systems (Org F, Interviewee 1)”.
As discussed in Chapter 3, whilst the specific characteristics of S&EMSs vary across organisations, every S&EMS involves the establishment of policies, undertaking internal assessments of the social and environmental impacts of the organisation, the creation of quantifiable goals, the provision of resources and workplace training, monitoring progress via methodical auditing to ensure goals are being met, rectifying deviations from the achievement of goals and undertaking management reviews. An organisation may not have a formalised S&EMS, yet may still be undertaking these activities. Therefore each of these areas was addressed specifically in the interviews.
With respect to policies, each of the cases studied had formal policies, position statements and model procedures with respect to aspects of their social and environmental performance, with the exception of Org A, with the interviewee noting that “we want to create a leading edge corporate social responsibility and sustainability policy (Org A)”. Internal assessment practices were largely devolved into the methodical monitoring and auditing practices, and ranged from being non-existent (Org A), to being audited by external regulators due to the nature of their pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities (Org C).
The interviews revealed some interesting perspectives regarding the creation of quantified goals and targets. The interviewee from Org A (who as noted previously was only just embarking on
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the production of their first social and environmental report), when asked if they intended to introduce quantified targets responded:
“I don’t know yet. We, up until now that’s been one of the reasons why I think we haven’t wanted to go down this route because there’s been reticence of the sensitivity around the market in setting targets and then not meeting them. So this is something that we’re going to have a serious discussion about internally. I mean a lot of organisations get around it by calling them aspirational targets. Which just means they’re not really targets, they’re just you know, sort of, yeah well if we get there we’re happy but it’s not really, you know, it’s something that we might wish that we could do at some point possibly in the future should the appropriate circumstances arise etc, etc, etc. (Org A).”
The interviewee from Org B, whilst acknowledging that their targets were “all corporate numbers (Org B)”, expressed a similar view:
“I have a funny affiliation with targets. I think they’re definitely necessary and people expect you to have them but at the end of the day if you do or you don’t make them, you can explain your way through. We did or didn’t achieve this target because of these reasons. We didn’t achieve our energy efficiency target because we produced more product that was energy intensive. Bang. Easily explained (Org B).”
The interviewee noted that their ambivalence towards targets partly stemmed from past conflict with respect to the selection of one of their environmental targets:
“No not happy about that decision, it got taken out of my hands. […] That was a senior management decision. […] I honestly don’t know that the people that made the decision understood what the impact, like what the difference was between the two. […T]hey didn’t understand the background behind the reason for choosing the one that I’d chosen and they just thought, oh well it means the same thing so that’s okay, we’ll just change it. […] I think that is what annoys me the most. That I am the expert in that field and so don’t go and change it without at least having a conversation with me (Org B)”.
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Orgs D, G, and H all noted that individual sites had developed specific targets “appropriate to each site (Org D)”. This approach was justified by the interviewee from Org G, who noted “you can’t, you know, the environmental performance of the whole organisation wrapped up into one number? You can’t do it, it’s not possible”. A sentiment echoed by the interviewee from Org H, who stated:
“It’s hard to find metrics that are relevant across the whole business. Even something that is relevant across the whole business, like energy usage or greenhouse gas emissions, becomes kind of non-sensical when at one point, say, you’re managing a power station for a client and say you were emitting half a million tonnes of C02 there then over here you’re maintaining houses for a public
housing department and you’re emitting 20 tonnes of C02, so setting yourself a
20% emissions reduction target for these guys means they’ve got to go from 20 to 16, for these guys means they’ve got to go from 500,000 tonnes to 400,000 tonnes. The whole thing is illogical nonsense. So, for the most part we encourage, apart from a relatively few broad corporate targets, we generally prefer to have targets set at contract level with agreement and buy in from our, the specific client, the things that are relevant to that situation ‘cause cookie cutter target setting is superficially attractive but is fairly non-sensical a lot of the time. And not only can it waste a lot of people’s time pursuing non-sensical targets but the other thing is, which is more insidious in my view, is that if it’s a bullshit target, people will know it’s a bullshit target and so a) they ignore it and secondly it destroys your credibility. And so, I guard my credibility fairly carefully. Non-renewable resource (Org H).”
Despite this, the interviewee did comment that “[w]e certainly set targets in safety for both lead and lag indicators. We have set ourselves a target for indigenous employment for example in Australia. We haven’t yet started setting ourselves quantitative targets in environment (Org H)”. In addition to Org A, the only other organisation that did not use any quantified targets was Org I, with the interviewee acknowledging:
“We have in the past. We’ve sort of gone on a journey of doing things and then, Org I has had a very interesting history in its short life. We, you know, the various
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companies have been around for a while but they’ve merged and demerged and at one point a couple of years ago, the company was pretty much bankrupt, you know, our share prices were very low and we cancelled newspapers, you know, a company this big. So, it’s made pushing sustainability very difficult because the company’s had other focus but the company is wealthy again and you know, things have changed and we can move on. So initially a number of years ago, four years ago, we had a target, a notional target around 10% energy reduction and just set that target but, you can have a target but if you don’t have the money to fund the initiatives, it’s a meaningless target. So the approach we went, well okay, we’re doing EEO compliance, [...s]o, okay let’s find what we find from that, what we’re prepared to fund and therefore set targets around that. […S]o, as we redevelop our strategy for sustainability and the reporting we’ll develop what those targets will be (Org I)”.
Whilst the majority of the cases studied did have quantified targets, the results suggest that the selection of these targets was somewhat subjective, and the interviewee from Org D noted “I won’t give you a target if I know I can’t meet it (Org D)”. This suggests that the setting of targets may be more for legitimation purposes than a genuine attempt to reduce social and environmental impacts.
With respect to the provision of resources and workplace training, both varied considerably amongst the cases studied. For example, within Org F “in terms of resources, it would actually be quite hard to quantify because it’s so well, it’s one of the few business I’ve seen where it’s so well integrated, you would be challenged, it would be a challenge to sort of say, well, you know, mapping it all because it sits in, it’s integrated into sort of operational roles (Org F, Interviewee 2)”. Also at the high end of the scale was Org H, with the interviewee being quite matter of fact in stating:
“In terms of the management stuff, the resources supplied are huge. Here in Australia, I’ve not tried to do it but, just in safety alone, safety as one discipline within a whole string, we’ve got a CEO who has safety as a major focus of his job, he has probably say four people reporting to him directly on safety. Then in the Australian business, each of those businesses will have a group general
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manager for safety. Each of them will have under them a number of industry safety managers and then most contracts will have at least one safety co- ordinator. So all of these are paid, 100% dedicated professionals. In our Australian business that would add up to at least 100 people just in that one discipline. QA has probably got 50 or 60 in it. Environment has probably got a dozen. Indigenous stuff has probably got a dozen. You know, there’s a lot of resources put into it (Org H)”.
Examples of those at the mid-range level were Orgs C and D, with the interviewees acknowledging “[t]hey’re adequate, they could be better, yes (Org C)”, and “I never have enough resources [...] but the resources are appropriate to the needs (Org D)”. The interviewee from Org C went on to note the greater emphasis placed upon financial performance: “[w]ell it’s not like any financial accounting, it’s not like the processes that we have in place for financial results (Org C)”. At the lowest end of the range was Org I, with the interviewee responding to the question with gentle laughter, and a single word: “Charm (Org I)”. The interviewee then went on to elaborate more seriously: “Not much and that’s an issue that I’ve been raising with the executive team. I’ve been saying, look, it’s good, we’ve been doing all these things but if we want to do more, well we can’t do any more. There’s only one of me and I need budget and resources. So we’re having that conversation internally (Org I)”.
The focus on the importance of workplace training also varied considerably. In the cases of Orgs C, E and G workplace training was emphasised as being a key aspect of ensuring compliance with policies, whilst the interviewee from Org B acknowledged that no formal training program existed and that “the businesses they look after that sort of training, yeah, on an individual level depending on what’s material for them (Org B)”. With the exception of Org F the remaining cases failed to mention training programs at all when discussing their social and environmental management practices.
The final aspects of an S&EMS include monitoring progress via methodical auditing to ensure goals are being met, rectifying deviations from the achievement of those goals and undertaking management reviews. Each of the cases undertook some or all of these activities, and in practice the activities often appear to be interrelated and complementary. An exception was Org I who, as noted previously, engaged in systematic monitoring and auditing through their integrated
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environmental accounting system however had not, at the time of the interview, set targets around social and environmental performance.
For example, Org A, whilst still being in the early stages of internal social and environmental management and reporting, had “already received independent third party customised [quality assurance] certification of our [external service provision] process (Org A)”. Within Org B targets are monitored “on a monthly basis and they get reported up to the Board on a monthly basis (Org B)”. In addition to the external regulatory audits noted above Org C has internal validation processes and “an environmental leadership group which tracks and measures performance against set targets that we’ve set for our operations here in Australia (Org C)”. However, neither organisation appeared to have a formal system for rectifying deviations from those targets, as indicated by Org B’s comments provided above, and by the interviewee from Org C’s comment that:
“[P]robably 80% of the KPIs that we report on are specifically reported on for corporate responsibility purposes only. The remaining 20% are KPIs that already exist within the business. They have their own mechanisms, they have their own purposes within the business for informing management decisions or business operations. So those KPIs would be rather, it would have, the processes behind those would be rather systematic whereas the others would be, I wouldn’t want to say ad hoc but they run on a yearly basis (Org C).”
In the case of Org D an internal audit of compliance against policy standards is conducted biannually, the results of which are reported to a Board committee “and if there’s areas that need