Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Environmental responsibility Australia'

This research investigated the boundaries of governance of social responsibility in three multinational mining organisations based in Perth, Western Australia. The mining industry has economic, environmental and social impacts, both positive and negative. While most of the attention of the media and supporters in government seems to focus on the positive impacts, a growing concern regarding the social implications of mining is clearly evident in public discourse and the academic literature. In response to public concern, the mining industry has adopted terms such as ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘social licence to operate’ and ‘social responsibility’. Such phrases are widely used in annual reports and public statements. It seems reasonable then to expect that organisations in the industry would be managing the social impacts of mining with the same diligence that is applied to economic and environmental impacts. However the governance of social impacts and the social responsibilities of mining organisations have historically been managed reactively, rather than proactively, or have not been addressed at all. This study used phenomenological research methods to examine the perceptions of the people who are at the forefront of decision making for social responsibility in the mining industry: the managers in mining companies. The findings detail different conceptions of social responsibility, and how these affected governance and boundaries. The term ‘boundaries’ is used here to express what participants perceived as the limits of their organisation’s social responsibility. The thesis explores whether boundary setting was formal or informal, how boundaries were defined and under what conditions they changed. The research confirmed that terms such as ‘sustainable development’ were used widely; however the meanings attributed to these often obscured the narrow conception of the terms. This interpretation aligned with an organisationally strategic approach to social responsibility that primarily aimed to benefit the organisation, while the provision of benefits to other parties was a secondary consideration. The research found that the perceived level of risk to the organisation was most influential in defining boundaries, and risk itself was in a constant state of flux based on changing economic and social circumstances and changing perceptions. The findings showed that the organisations governed social responsibility to reduce risk to the organisation, and construed their social responsibilities through narrow interpretations of sustainability and sustainable development that foregrounded the organisation, rather than as a way to effectively and systematically reduce the negative impacts of mining on society or to contribute to sustainability in a broader sense.

Bibliography: leaves 123-130. The literature search and the findings from the investigation have been used to provide recommendations for a sector specific cooperative approach using regulation, self-regulation, voluntary agreements, economic incentatives and educational/information strategies to promote and acheive cleaner production in the South Australian foundry industry.

Between 1974 and 1983 the Australian federal government, responding to the increasing demands of grassroots activists, passed a series of legislation that successfully altered the federal relationship in Australia by transferring political responsibility for the environment from the state governments to the federal government in Canberra. To better illustrate this process, this thesis will utilize Tasmania as an emblematic case study. The first part of this thesis is a social history that analyzes the development of environmental consciousness in Tasmania. This analysis spans from the cultural impact of the extinction of the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) on the island populace and culminates in the well-documented protests against the damming of the Serpentine and Franklin Rivers. This analysis will illustrate the failures of the state government to address public concerns and how this facilitated the transition of the focus of lobbying from the state to the federal level. The second part of this thesis is a legal history, looking at the legislation that was passed during this period that facilitated the transfer and explains the constitutional basis and effectiveness of the legislation. Through these two separate studies, this thesis will expand the existing Australian historiography, which has largely kept political and social analyses of the environmental movement separated, by integrating the two historical narratives. This thesis offers three contributions to Australian historiography. First, this research shows that the constitutional reformation that occurred under the governments of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, and Bob Hawke was driven not by government initiative but, rather, by grassroots demands, and illustrate a need to further integrate the studies of social and political history so as to better pursue the histoire totale of Australia. Second, this thesis also helps contribute to the still nascent study of extinction’s socio-cultural impact on human societies with its particular emphasis on the extinction of the thylacine as the genesis of Tasmanian environmentalism. Third, it offers a detailed legal dissection of the federal government’s early environmental legislation and the constitutional foundations for Canberra’s acquisition of this responsibility.
Graduate Studies, College of (Okanagan)
Graduate

Thesis (PhD) - Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology, 2007.
Submitted for the degree Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology - 2007. Typescript. Bibliography: p. 302-340.

Social controls influence the environmental performance of firms and require them to be more accountable for their environmental impacts. These controls include governmental interventions such as mandatory disclosure requirements, regulation and subsidisation, as well as less formal controls such as stakeholder opinion. This thesis examines the relative influence of environmental social controls on the acceptability of capital investment and provides insight into the perceptions of Australian managers concerning capital investment decision-making. An experiment is used to measure the relative influence of the four social control measures. This is supported by a survey to gauge firm size and industry influences and also a range of attributes of the controls on the capital investment decision. Experiment results suggest that the influence of stakeholder opinion on capital investment is very high and mandatory disclosure very low. The survey measured the influence of a range of indicators of each control and also firm size and industry effects. Firm size effects were weak while industry effects were much clearer and more consistent. A comparison of the influence of social control indicators and a range of financial and strategic indicators on the capital investment decision showed that the mainstream indicators had more influence.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study examines the incentives of Australian listed mineral mining companies within the stakeholder theoretical framework to disclose socially responsible information in their corporate annual report. The three dimensions of the stakeholder theory were empirically tested to explain the association of a social disclosure model comprising categories of social disclosure for environment, energy, product and services, human resources and community involvement, with nine firm-specific characteristics. The sample of 179 Australian listed mineral mining companies for the financial year ending 1994 was obtained by personal contact. The extent of social disclosure was measured by a dichotomous index against the social disclosure model. Results of multivariate tests provide evidence that Membership of the Australian Mining Industry Council (Stakeholder Power dimension), and company size (a Control Variable) which was jointly represented by three surrogates (total assets, total sales, and market capitalisation), to be the most significant variables associated with the social disclosure model. The presence of a social responsibility group (Strategic Posture dimension) was also significantly related to the extent of total disclosure and four categories of social disclosure (environment, product and services, human resources, and community involvement). Company age (a Control Variable) was significantly associated with energy related disclosure. Commercial production (a Control Variable) was significant to the total disclosure and two categories of social disclosure (environment, and human resources). Return on equity, and systematic risk (Economic Performance dimension) did not explain social disclosure. The research findings imply that economic performance measures derived from the financial statements of corporate annual reports do not seem to be reliable surrogates for evaluating voluntary social disclosure. To improve the extent of disclosure of socially responsible information, accounting regulators may need to consider issuing an accounting standard on corporate social responsibility disclosure.

[Truncated abstract] The application of reductionism, breaking down problems to simpler components that can be solved and then aggregating the results, is one of the bases of classical science. However, living organisms, ecosystems, social and economic structures are complex systems, characterised by non-linear interactions between their elements and exhibit emergent properties that are not directly traceable to their components. Sustainability assessment frameworks oversimplify system interactions, achieving limited predictive capacity and causing managerial behavior that may reduce system's ability to adapt to external disturbance. Intrigued by the importance of complexity, we explore the central theme of how complex thinking can influence the understanding and progress towards sustainability. The purpose is to conceptualize the relationship of key terms (such as sustainability, functionality and resilience), and consecutively develop new or adjust existing sustainability frameworks to take into account complex systems interactions. We aim at developing theory and frameworks that can be used to raise awareness of the pitfalls of the growth paradigm and direct towards modest positions when managing complex systems. We seek to define the structural elements that influence system adaptive capacity, allowing identification of early signs of system rigidity or vulnerability and the development of knowledge and techniques that can improve our predictive and managerial ability. The focus has been on a variety of system scales and dynamics. At the collective community level, a number of stakeholder engagement practices and frameworks are currently available. However, there is limited awareness of the complexity challenges among stakeholders, who are commonly directed to a triple bottom line analysis aiming at maximizing a combination of outputs. An attempt is conducted to measure the functionality of the processes underlying a standing stock, in contrast to sustainability measures that only assess the variations of the standing stock itself. We develop the Index of Sustainable Functionality (ISF), a framework for the assessment of complex systems interactions within a large-scale geographic domain and apply it to the State of Western Australia. '...' Finally, we focus on smaller systems scales and develop a methodology for the calculation of Product Ecological Footprint (PEF) including elements from the accounting method of activity based costing. We calculate PEF for three apple production systems and identify significant differences from first stage calculations within the same industry. Cross-industry application will provide a practical way to link individuals' consumption with their ecological impact, reduce misperceptions of products' ecological impacts and develop a market-driven approach to internalizing environmental externalities. At the firm level PEF can be compared with investment costs, resulting in the opportunity to optimize both functions of financial cost and ecological impact in decision making. We have developed methods for incorporating complexity in sustainability assessment frameworks. Further work is required in testing and validating these methodologies at multiple system scales and conditions. Integrating such tools in decision making mechanisms will enhance long-term management of socioecological systems performance.

This thesis draws on David Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by dispossession” and an international political economy (IPE) approach centred on the institutional arrangements and power structures that privilege certain actors and values, in order to critique current capitalist practices of primitive accumulation by the global corporate extractive industry. The thesis examines how accumulation by dispossession by the global extractive industry is facilitated by the “free entry” or “free mining” principle. It does so by focusing on Canada as a leader in the global extractive industry and the spread of this country’s mining laws to other countries – in other words, the transnationalisation of norms in the global extractive industry – so as to maintain a consistent and familiar operating environment for Canadian extractive companies. The transnationalisation of norms is further promoted by key international institutions such as the World Bank, which is also the world’s largest development lender and also plays a key role in shaping the regulations that govern natural resource extraction. The thesis briefly investigates some Canadian examples of resource extraction projects, in order to demonstrate the weaknesses of Canadian mining laws, particularly the lack of protection of landowners’ rights under the free entry system and the subsequent need for “free, prior and informed consent” (FPIC). The thesis also considers some of the challenges to the adoption and implementation of the right to FPIC. These challenges include embedded institutional structures like the free entry mining system, international political economy (IPE) as shaped by international institutions and powerful corporations, as well as concerns regarding ‘local’ power structures or the legitimacy of representatives of communities affected by extractive projects. The thesis concludes that in order for Canada to be truly recognized as a leader in the global extractive industry, it must establish legal norms domestically to ensure that Canadian mining companies and residents can be held accountable when there is evidence of environmental and/or human rights violations associated with the activities of Canadian mining companies abroad. The thesis also concludes that Canada needs to address underlying structural issues such as the free entry mining system and implement FPIC, in order to curb “accumulation by dispossession” by the extractive industry, both domestically and abroad.

Title page, table of contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University of Adelaide Library.
The objectives of this study were: to understand the process of environmental disclosures operating within a conservation organisation; to identify the nature of and rationales for particular environmental disclosures made by the organisation; and to observe the development of the environmental disclosure policy, media and content of the organisation as it underwent significant change. The investigative approach adopted in the study identified a level of complexity associated with the process of disclosure that would otherwise remained concealed.
http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1277152
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Commerce, 2007

The objectives of this study were: to understand the process of environmental disclosures operating within a conservation organisation; to identify the nature of and rationales for particular environmental disclosures made by the organisation; and to observe the development of the environmental disclosure policy, media and content of the organisation as it underwent significant change. The investigative approach adopted in the study identified a level of complexity associated with the process of disclosure that would otherwise remained concealed.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Commerce, 2007

Professional Doctorate - Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
During recent decades, the local, national, and global effects of human activities on the physical environment have increased immensely. Consequently, comprehensive policies have been developed and implemented to ensure that companies outlay a high level of social responsibility to the environment. Equally, research literature and international policies have subjected a full angle of interest in the provision that corporations should disclose their annual activities that have an impact on the wellbeing of the physical environment. According to research, companies have increased their environmental responsibility by providing voluntary yearly ecological reports that outlay the company’s financial and non-financial, quantitative and qualitative social activities on an annual base. For a long time, scholars have addressed environmental disclosure as a broad topic; it is seen as encompassing the evolution of the responsible nature of these companies. However, the study aims to identify the extent to which the annual report coincides with the actual responsibility that these companies deliver. Without a doubt, companies around the globe may provide clear and consistent environmental disclosures; however recent analytical interest in the area has suggested that these revelations are only delivered to suit the wellbeing of the company. For instance, mining companies are profoundly scrutinised and thus affected by the social environment, other primary, secondary and service industries are also under public social scrutiny. This is especially motivated by the fact that; mining companies form a substantial basis of the Australian economy. The study aims at performing content analysis on 75 annual reports on companies from different industry groups in the country. The purpose of the study is to identify whether environment disclosures serve as social or financial rehabilitation attempts by these companies, or they fulfil the required function. The study analyses the consequence of the environmental disclosure requirement in the corporate field of the country and will look to evaluate how companies have integrated the condition either as self-beneficial or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This research identified that all the publicly listed service companies are disclosing environmental issues in their annual reports. However, when a company’s operation is directly involved with environmental issue then they provide significant environmental disclosure in their annual report. According to the findings of this research, a key exception is revealed. Ironically universities who are not in-fact directly involved in activities that cause interaction with the natural environment they none the less overtly express their environmental concerns. They do this via environmental reports and by setting up courses and topics within discrete courses which analyse and investigate environmental issues. In this way, they educate and raise awareness through vigorous academic methodology, and importantly they set an exemplary standard and benchmark. This research found that companies are disclosing Environmental Disclosure (ED) due to CSR and Stakeholders pressure. However, they do have a legislative requirement to disclose this information in the annual report (Chuang and Huang, 2018). In Australia, companies are disclosing CSR information according to their business nature; when they are heavily involved with environmental issues, they do provide adequate disclosed information. In contrast, where companies are having less interaction with the environmental issue at that time due to legitimacy issues they provide ED to have better acceptance in the society.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Business.
This thesis investigates organisational enactment of sustainability. The problematic addressed is that despite strong evidence supporting human induced global ecological damage, organisational practices remain unchanged and continue to degrade ecological systems. The question addressed is what factors contribute to the inertia that inhibits change for ecological sustainability in organisations? The question is addressed from the perspectives of individuals who are stakeholders in organisations. The modern concept of sustainability arose during the 1970s and selected aspects of sustainability discourses, for example the concept of the triple bottom line (TBL), have since been integrated into the organising narratives of organisation and society. Despite such success, indicators such as human induced climate change, biodiversity loss and growing inequalities between rich and poor, suggest that mainstream institutions have not taken up change for sustainability. The proposition of this thesis is that alteration to our social imaginary (ies) is a necessary precursor to enactment of sustainability. The thesis presents findings from three case studies: Landcare, Corcon and Carepoint. These organisations were selected because they represented different sectors and each had initiated a formal sustainability change project: Corcon is an engineering organisation, Carepoint a community services not-for-profit organisation and Landcare an agricultural organisation. Landcare highlights the dialogue that nature has with individuals and organisations and how recognising this dialogue can lead to ecological solutions for sustainability. The Corcon case contributes the importance of boundaries defining inclusion and exclusion as moral constraints and enablers to developing sustainability solutions and the Carepoint case demonstrates that the multiplicity of competing sustainability discourses are understood by individuals who then make decisions based on the context of the dominant imaginary within which they are situated. These findings from the research highlight barriers concerned with meaning construction that view nature as an excluded other. I argue that the adoption of ecological sustainability by organisations and society needs new narratives to facilitate the emergence of meanings of ecological sustainability conducive to the inclusion of nature. The synthesis of these findings presents two possibilities for stimulating the creation of meaning construction that would facilitate an inclusive approach to nature. The first possibility is the Australian Aboriginal concept of Country, which offers a new source of logics upon which the development of a new socio-political sustainability imaginary may draw. The second possibility argues for the need to create a new social imaginary to support ecological sustainability. A contribution of this thesis is to provide the alternative frame of metabolic organisation to extant models of weak and strong sustainability to stimulate the creation of new ecological imaginaries. Metabolic organisation is defined as a systemic framework comprising three interdependent concepts: metabolism, values and enmeshment, and brings together three distinct strands of theory: social and biological metabolism, value theory and ecological theories.

This research project is predominantly aimed at improving our understanding of interest group behaviour. Assessments about 'group interest' and decisions about group engagement in the Australian greenhouse policy network provide a useful opportunity to pursue this research aim. As an empirical contribution to the study of interest groups and policy networks, this research is atypical in a few ways. First, while most of the literature concentrates on the role of interest groups and policy networks in explaining policy outcomes, this study focuses on understanding group behaviour. Second, while the literature concerns itself heavily with group-government relationships, the focus here is on group decision-making about network engagementrelationships with government are addressed only to the extent that they impact on these decisions. Third, while most interest group research assumes that groups know and pursue their interests, or that behaviour reveals group preferences, this research does neither. Instead there is a strong emphasis on what forces shape and change perceptions of group interest and no assumption that groups necessarily pursue those perceived interests. These differences necessarily mean that this work does not deal heavily with some of the main preoccupations in the literature-like why groups mobilise and whether they are good for society. Instead, light is shone on aspects of interest groups and policy networks which are acknowledged as important but receive relatively little attention. Alongside the primary objective--to make the empirical contribution to the literature-the aim here is also to contribute to a greater understanding of the history of greenhouse policy development in Australia. This is seen as being valuable in its own right and it addresses widespread curiosity about why business groups with an apparent interest in climate change policy have responded so differently in the Australian context The result is seven case studies which examine the greenhouse responses of a diverse range of business interest groups that have been active in, or judged relevant to the Australian greenhouse policy network. The case studies rely heavily on analysis of interviews conducted with 56 people drawn both from the case groups and from a broad cross-section of other important players in the greenhouse policy network. As a study of the wider policy network, this work is arguably unprecedented in scope. Those interviewed include party leaders, cabinet ministers, advisors and departmental secretaries spanning the Hawke, Keating and Howard federal governments. Past and present leaders of industry associations, think tanks, environmental organisations, along with academics, and journalists were also interviewed with all sides of the debate represented. The results presented here aim to make an commensurate contribution to our knowledge of both interest group behaviour and greenhouse policy development in Australia.

Despite its contribution to the economy, the resources sector faces growing pressure from stakeholders, including investors and regulators, for managing the environmental impacts of its operations. Being an environmentally sensitive sector, resource sector companies should provide disclosures of their environmental footprint in their annual and/or sustainability reports. However, it is claimed that, given that environmental disclosures in annual and sustainability reports are largely voluntary, the quality of those disclosures are questionable with respect to their relevance and faithful representation. Therefore, the overall objective of this thesis was to explore the quality of environmental disclosures by Australian resources sector companies. This was undertaken through an assessment of quality based on existing reporting frameworks and assessment of investors’ perspectives on the quality of disclosures. Thus, the aim of the project was twofold: first, to identify the extent to which corporate environmental disclosures align with the quality attributes suggested in established regulatory guidelines and frameworks; and second, to obtain investors’ perspectives regarding corporate environmental initiatives and environmental disclosures.

This study provides the first comprehensive quantitative assessment of Australia's pilot Hunter River Salinity Trading Scheme (PHRSTS). It casts new light on the relative merits of tradable permit system in terms of environmental and cost effectiveness under the PHRSTS, highlighting the potential benefits from an integrated regulatory instrument for management of natural resource and environmental quality. The PHRSTS was introduced by the New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority (NSW EPA) in 1995 to regulate the discharge of saline water from the coal mines and electric power generators into the Hunter River, which was affecting other uses of the River. It was made permanent in 2002, becoming the formalised HRSTS (FHRSTS). Allowing for the total permitted salt discharge to vary dynamically from day to day subject to river flow conditions, and for salt permits be traded among the mines and power generators, the Scheme is widely known as Australia's first active water quality trading program, and still appears to be the only dynamic tradable permits scheme operating in the world. The NSW EPA has claimed that the PHRSTS achieved significant environmental and economic benefits, but until now there has been no rigorous examination of its operational performance. To help fill this gap, this study investigates the origins, evolution and institutional arrangements of the PHRSTS, examines the performance of the salt credits trading market of the PHRSTS and the two credit auctions of the FHRSTS, and evaluates the environmental and economic effectiveness of the PHRSTS. In particular, this study finds that: (1) The credits trading market of the PHRSTS was active in terms of both volume of trading and number of participants, in spite of the high proportion of intra-company trading. The successful bidders in the credit auctions of the FHRSTS were a mix of sellers and buyers on the credit trading market of the PHRSTS. The low, narrowly-spread auction prices suggest that the firms did not value the credits highly and that the differentials in marginal cost of salt control across the participants are not large enough to yield significant savings from the credit trading. (2) The overall salinity objectives of the Hunter River were attained under the PHRSTS. However, the PHRSTS did not significantly improve the river salinity compared to the previous Trickle Discharge management system. The PHRSTS only generated trivial savings in social damage cost. (3) The PHRSTS generated measurable cost savings in the total control cost of saline water to its participants over its entire period. But this was minor in relation to the participants' sales revenues, and the tradability of the discharge permits accounted for only a very small proportion of the control cost savings. Dynamicism, instead oftradability, of the discharge permits was by far the main source of the cost savings. This study therefore concludes that neither the environmental effectiveness nor the economic effectiveness of the PHRSTS is as impressive as that claimed by the NSW EPA. Nevertheless, the valuable experience drawn from the experimental design and operation of the PHRSTS should prove useful for broader water quality management strategies in Australia and elsewhere.

Professional Doctorate - Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
Decisions to invest in green initiatives (green products and green innovations) are generally made after considerable discussion and market research by any organisation. Green initiatives cover a wide range of business activities which can result in positive and negative outcomes along the entire supply chain. Organisations are being encouraged by governments, societies and other stakeholders to conduct their business activities in a manner that minimises risk and damage to the environment, economy and society, while still pursuing improvements in product life cycle performances. Green initiatives are a management tool that can assist in meeting these demands with the rewards of delivering benefits back to the company through creating a competitive advantage and contributing to the firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility profile. The aim of this study is to explore the reasons why organisations initiate green strategies and the effectiveness of the introduced ‘green’ initiatives in the Australian marketplace. A positivism philosophy is adopted in this empirical research, which includes using a deductive research approach with a quantitative research instrument to collect and measure responses from 53 Australian green product manufacturers. The collected data is analysed using causal analysis to investigate the hypotheses developed to answer the research question. A quantitative approach is justified as the research is based on similar work conducted in the northern hemisphere. Environmental investment research has received considerable interest in the northern hemisphere in the domain of corporate ‘green’ initiatives. However, this research focuses on Australian organisations that have implemented ‘green’ initiatives to investigate if their investments are delivering the sought after benefits. The findings from the research support the research question that green product strategies can both deliver a competitive advantage and contribute to enhancing an organisation's corporate social responsibility profile. The research findings suggest that green strategy actions will indirectly increase financial improvements in the process of corporate social responsibility. In a similar fashion, green strategy actions will indirectly increase price premiums through having a competitive advantage. The analysis reveals that corporate social responsibility and competitive advantage are important mediators of the relationships between variables. Implications from the research are discussed and future research opportunities are presented, along with the limitations of the current work.