The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was created to respond to the then growing number of companies that were producing sustainability reports. The main purpose of GRI is to promote environmental and social sustainability, as well as provide ‘all organizations and companies with a detailed sustainability reporting framework which is broadly used around the globe”. Thus GRI has guidelines which help companies generate reports “which mater, entail useful information regarding the most critical sustainability-linked issues of the organization, and make such reporting standard practice”.
Apple remains committed to transparency and openness in its environmental, social and governance programs and policies. Apple shares its progress via a range of public reports which include on www.apple.com. Such reports entail Standard Disclosures from the GRI G4 sustainability guidelines. The GRI Standard Disclosures list help Apple address topic like economic (EC), environment (EN), human rights (HR), society (SO), labor practices (LA) alongside product responsibility (PR).
For instance, Apple’s comprehensive product environment reports give a description of every performance of its device as measured against climate change, resources and safer materials environmental priorities. The GRI also helps Apple disclose its supplier responsibility as a supply chain which empowers people as well as protect the planet. Apple also uses its GRI to showcase its open inclusion and diversity whereby the Company holds that humanity remains plural and never singular and hence the best way is to include everybody (Vigneau, Humphreys and Moon 2015).
The GRI reporting has a range of benefits. The GRI improves sustainability performance in Apple Inc. Also, it has improved risk management as well as investor communications. The GRI has also enabled Apple Company to effectively engage and improve its relation with stakeholders. Moreover, Apple uses the GRI to motivate as well as engage its employees. Apple has also been able to use GRI to build credibility as an effective and committed corporate citizen. GRI has also seen the company strengthen its internal data management as well as reporting systems. Improvement on sustainability strategy and selection of targets and indicators of performance have also been as a result of GRI framework in Apple. The GRI is also used by Apple to benchmark sustainability performance vis-à-vis self and other rival companies.
Apple’s GRI standard-based sustainability reports have been used in benchmarking its organizational performance in regards to laws, codes, norms and performance standards. The GRI Standards have also enabled the company to show the voluntary initiatives thereby demonstrating its organizational commitment to sustainable development; as well as compare organizational performance over time. The GRI framework has also been promoted and developed to stimulate demand for sustainability information thereby benefiting reporting Apple and its information users (Fernandez-Feijoo, Romero and Ruiz 2014.).
On negative side, the GRI-based report itself remains merely the tip of the iceberg. Questions like “who use the information and how do users use the information” remain integral but might remain unanswered by the GRI report. Moreover, question like “what do people want to know about and how can reporting support an organizational culture of openness and accountability, as well as enhance stakeholder’s engagement” are never answered by GRI (Fernandez-Feijoo, Romero and Ruiz 2014).
Apple uses the GRI framework to help understand and communicate the business impact on critical sustainability issues. The GRI helps Apple communicate the four elements effectively and thus convince people that it cares for them hence getting more clients to boost its profits. For example, Apple use GRI to disclose useful information to stakeholders like its impacts on environment and how it intends to pay for any externalities.
The main challenge in GRI as a tool for sustainability reporting is deciding who the user of the information would be as nearly everyone seems to be a stakeholder. Whereas there is a merit in using GRI framework, the end outcome of compliance with such might be extremely long and inaccessible reports (del Mar Alonso?Almeida, Llach and Marimon 2014). The lack of compliance with the “best practice” standards, however, can lead to “green washing’ or “spin” claims. The use of GRI is, therefore, a hard line to walk as compiling the GRI reports call for an enormous organizational commitment and effort to guarantee a valuable process. It is increasingly hard to use the GRI to develop an understanding within the organization to report the needs to be a balanced and detailed account of sustainability impacts as well as performance, thus GRI has been seen in terms of promotional document for the good deeds of a company (del Mar Alonso-Almeida et al. 2015).
Apple lacks the TBL in its CSR strategy which would has only made people to see it to be about profit maximization and addressing social and environmental issues so long as they do not make a substantial impact on its income (Onat, Kucukvar and Tatari 2014). Even though Apple claims that it promote one of the TBL element (people), its practices indicate that it is still really about profits (Hussain, Rigoni and Orij 2018). Thus, the use of TBL would have allowed Apple to be seen as more concerned about people and hence have better reputation (Ahi and Searcy 2015).
For example, currently, Apple has a progressive code of conduct in its supply chain, however, due to lack of TBL thinking, the company only allows its suppliers the slimmest of profits. This often result in supplies attempting to cut corners, substituting expensive chemicals with less expensive options, or even pushing their employees to work longer and faster (Tatari, Kucukva and Onat 2015). However, this strategy can also be short term. Therefore, Apple would benefit more if it were to use TBL and start thinking about people and the planet as seriously as it thinks about its profits.
TBL will help Apple establish that in the long run, no contradiction between people and profits. TBL will thus make Apple much proactive rather than the defective reactive GRI which makes it only think act when there is a complaint or even protest against it in hope to get back to concentrate on design and sale of great products. The negative impact of TBL is thus its leads to management conflict (Hussain, Rigoni and Orij 2018). This is because it is opposed to the traditional aim of return maximization to shareholders. It will create a conflict for a business as more shareholders are geared to short-term profits as opposed to long run results.
References
Ahi, P. and Searcy, C., 2015. Assessing sustainability in the supply chain: A triple bottom line approach. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 39(10-11), pp.2882-2896.
del Mar Alonso?Almeida, M., Llach, J. and Marimon, F., 2014. A closer look at the ‘Global Reporting Initiative’sustainability reporting as a tool to implement environmental and social policies: A worldwide sector analysis. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 21(6), pp.318-335.
del Mar Alonso-Almeida, M., Marimon, F., Casani, F. and Rodriguez-Pomeda, J., 2015. Diffusion of sustainability reporting in universities: current situation and future perspectives. Journal of cleaner production, 106, pp.144-154.
Fernandez-Feijoo, B., Romero, S. and Ruiz, S., 2014. Commitment to corporate social responsibility measured through global reporting initiative reporting: Factors affecting the behavior of companies. Journal of Cleaner Production, 81, pp.244-254.
Fernandez-Feijoo, B., Romero, S. and Ruiz, S., 2014. Effect of stakeholders’ pressure on transparency of sustainability reports within the GRI framework. Journal of business ethics, 122(1), pp.53-63.
Hussain, N., Rigoni, U. and Orij, R.P., 2018. Corporate governance and sustainability performance: Analysis of triple bottom line performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 149(2), pp.411-432.
Onat, N.C., Kucukvar, M. and Tatari, O., 2014. Integrating triple bottom line input–output analysis into life cycle sustainability assessment framework: the case for US buildings. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 19(8), pp.1488-1505.
Tatari, O., Kucukvar, M. and Onat, N.C., 2015, February. Towards a triple bottom line life cycle sustainability assessment of buildings. In Science for Sustainable Construction and Manufacturing Workshop (Vol. 1, p. 226).
Vigneau, L., Humphreys, M. and Moon, J., 2015. How do firms comply with international sustainability standards? Processes and consequences of adopting the global reporting initiative. Journal of Business Ethics, 131(2), pp.469-486.
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