- You are being asked to develop and demonstrate independent research skills – finding the information you need within BP’s reports, starting with BP’s reports (look on their website in the investors’ section, for specifically sustainability reports, look under their sustainability reporting but remember GRI covers the entire annual report), finding out how they align with GRI, the UN guidance on Human Rights and SDGS. If they do not report directly against SDGs, you will need to read their reports and see how what they do report on might align with the SDGs. You must think about this rather than just describing what they do. Research GRI, the Compact, and SDGs themselves – look on their websites and publications. Academically, you can search for articles that discuss them. Please use the seminar exercises on Inditex to guide where to find information and which information is relevant. If you cannot find some of the information we found in Inditex in BP, ask yourself why that is. Does BP’s provide the information in another format?
- You are being asked for a lot of information in this assignment. A diagram or illustration can be worth a thousand words! It is a very visual area of reporting – please use the appendices and include appropriate charts and diagrams in the text.
- Possible structures –
- There is no set structure for this assignment, but you need to demonstrate familiarity with GRI, the Compact and the SDGS and BP’s own reports.
- Please look at the good assignments that are now up in Moodle for ideas on structure but recognise that they are answering a different question – their assignment was to either a) examine how aligned Tata Motors reporting and management were with the UN Global Compact and the SDGs or b) examine the reports of Rio Tinto with an emphasis on how it prioritises topics on which to focus, how it complies with the GRI and whether and how it incorporates the UN Compact and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- A possible structure would be to
- Introduce CR reporting by explaining GRI, the Compact and the SDGs, history and current state – these might be covered in separate sections or together. You could use this section to consider potential problems with these frameworks.
- Introduce BP by putting it into context – history, what it does, how it reports and how that ties back into how it is managed. This will require wider reading about the company.
- Explain how BP’s reporting ties in with the GRI, the Compact and the SDGs – as above, it could be separate sections or together. Questions to consider here include how the company applies the frameworks and whether it fulfils all the criteria. If not, why not? Also, think about how the business operations and the reporting connect, the role of wider stakeholders and the way the company responds to their recommendations.
- Conclusion – There are no new arguments in the conclusions, just a wrap-up of what you have already demonstrated.
Within each section, you should explain and possibly take your analysis a bit further by looking at the broader context for each. More analysis and broader context means more marks. Please look at the marking criteria grid, part of the brief.
5. Number of references
- Make sure to read the second marking criteria related to use of literature and aim for ‘A’. We advise you to use at least five references for this essay. Some examples of the references you can use are the annual report of BP, sustainability frameworks (e.g. GRI, SDGs) and other resources available on slides/Moodle. We will not provide a reading list as we would like to see that you can find the required information independently. You are expected to follow Harvard referencing in your essay