This assessment requires the student to analyse the social impact of the A2 milk company based on the concepts and theories discussed in class and featured in the readings in Weeks 1 – 4.
Students will take the perspective of a consultant, engaged by the firm to undertake an evaluation of the organisation’s business strategies, policies, and operations in order to identify key issues that pertain to its social impact. Students are expected to conduct secondary research on their chosen firm by gathering online information and publicly available data. Students must develop recommendations on how the firm may improve its social impact initiatives.
The report must be well structured and concisely written. It must include essential information to enable the reader to understand the report’s findings, conclusions, and recommendations. The report must engage with course concepts, theories, and frameworks to address the following:
• Provide a brief background on the chosen firm – a brief history, market, industry, products and services, organisation, etc. Include here some discussion of the positive and negative social impacts of your firm’s core business.
• Identify and describe key programmes, activities, business models, and/or strategies that the firm undertakes in order to positively impact society and/or the environment (e.g. Fonterra’s KickStart Breakfast programme, Fonterra’s policy to meet the World Organisation for Animal Health standards, Fonterra’s activities to limit its carbon footprint)
Guidance: Use Porter & Kramer’s (2011) shared value creation framework to guide the analysis
• Explain the social impact of the initiative/s on the firm’s stakeholders (if any)
Guidance:
* Choose one or two key initiatives (programmes, activities, business models, and/or strategies) and undertake a stakeholder assessment based on Laasch & Conaway’s (2014) model of Stakeholder Mapping
* Choose one of the above key initiatives and conduct a Corporate Social Performance (CSP) assessment based on Lasch & Conaway’s (2014) CSP framework
• Develop conclusions regarding the firm’s social impact initiatives
• Present and justify recommendations on how the firm could improve its social impact initiatives
• Use course readings to support your explanations and justifications
• Use APA 7th edition where appropriate
• Include a reference list
The report has a word limit of 2,000 (+/- 10%) The Executive Summary, References and Appendices are notincluded in your word count.
The suggested format for your Report is as follows:
I Executive Summary: An executive summary is a summary of the whole report on one page. It should summarise the Report’s Aims, Key Question, Methods, Main Findings / Conclusions, and Recommendations
II Introduction: Introduce the topic and purpose of the report (include some discussion of course concepts and ideas that will be relevant for your report)
III Analysis and Discussion: Brief background of the firm – provide information relevant to the analysis; present information relevant to the report’s objectives and analyse the data that has been gathered (include discussion here of the firm’s social impact activities, and how the firms’ stakeholders are impacted)
IV Conclusion: Summarise the body/discussion and state the significance of your findings/evaluation
V Recommendations: Make suggestions based on the findings/evaluation in the report
VI References
VII Appendices: Relevant graphs, tables, images that support the analysis