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10/19/22, 11:52 PM Assignment #1: Company Sustainability Assessment https://schulich

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10/19/22, 11:52 PM Assignment #1: Company Sustainability Assessment https://schulich.instructure.com/courses/7872/assignments/76201 1/3 Assignment #1: Company Sustainability Assessment Due Sunday by 12p.m. Points 35 Submitting a file upload Start Assignment Company Sustainability Assessment (35%) For this assignment, students are expected to evaluate a company’s sustainability performance. This assignment, done by all students individually, is a prelude to the final group project where students will provide consultant advice on how a small company (in the same industry as the company they are examining in this assignment) can succeed using an embedded and transformational strategy. With this goal in mind, this first assignment is meant to ensure that students are aware of the social, ecological, and economic issues relevant to an industry, the existing sustainability performance of a company in the industry and those forces that make sustainability very difficult to adopt. Students will have the opportunity to sign up for a company from the list below in Table 1 early in the semester. The breakdown of the assignment is as follows: 1. Social/environmental Issues (20%): Students must identify three highly relevant sustainability issues associated with the industry their chosen firm is in. They must explain why these issues pit the interests of businesses operating in this industry against the interests of society. This will require some reflection. Taking a look at the company's website, company CSR/sustainability reports (if available) and other publicly available information will be important in identifying these issues. Ultimately, you want to ask: “what are the top negative externalities that this industry is known to create”? Are they all ecological? Are they a mix of social and ecological? Economic? Whatever you choose, students should provide a justification for why these are particularly relevant and important because of the tension between societal and business interests. At 20% of the assignment grade, you should be relatively brief here. Identify the three and explain why they are relevant. 2. Performance (40%): Students must then assess the performance of their chosen company using the four criteria in Module 5 (purpose, metrics, targets, and legitimacy). Specifically, they must assess the company’s response to the three issues identified in part 1. A key resource for you will be the company's website (some companies will have a CSR or Sustainability report). From this analysis, students are expected to identify the company's sustainability strategy discussed in Module 3. 3. Institutional Forces (30%): Drawing on Module 4, students must then identify the institutional forces that make it difficult for companies in the industry to adopt more progressive sustainability strategies. Specifically, I. Students must identify any cognitive, normative, and regulatory forces that explain why companies in the industry resort to a denial, defense or, at best, an isolated strategy. II. To a lesser degree, students must also identify how their chosen company contributes to these forces (e.g. through the influence on government, marketing, setting industry standards, etc.). 4. Report presentation (10%): This includes quality of writing (e.g. grammar, sentence structure) and proper use of citations (note that I'm indifferent on the citation format - APA, Chicago, etc.). Reports should be presented in single spaced When designing your report take the role of an analyst tasked with 10/19/22, 11:52 PM Assignment #1: Company Sustainability Assessment https://schulich.instructure.com/courses/7872/assignments/76201 2/3 presented in single spaced. When designing your report, take the role of an analyst tasked with conducting an assessment of the company's sustainability performance. The audience reading the report would include consumers, shareholders, and other stakeholders. The Bronfman library has put together a video to assist in your research for this assignment. The video can be found here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmA4nTZIu6s) . The first assignment is due by 12pm on Sunday, October 23rd must be submitted via Canvas. Students will be penalized one grade point for each three-day period that the assignment is late. The assignment should be no longer than 2000 words (not including references). Students are encouraged to use tables to summarize their analysis (e.g. summarize 3 institutional forces in a table) and use the text to highlight key points or takeaways in the tables. The grading rubric for this assignment can be found further below. Industry Individual Assignment #1 Companies 1 Automotive Hyundai, Kia, Honda, Ford, Chrysler, Volvo 2 Grocery Retailers Loblaw, Metro, Sobey’s, Tesco, Costco, WalMart 3 Meat Production Tyson Foods, Cargill, Smithfield Foods, Maple Leaf Foods, Perdue Farms 4 Home Building Retail Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Home Hardware, RONA, Lowe’s 5 Coffee Shops Tim Hortons, Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Second Cup, Timothy’s 6 Toy Manufacturers Lego, Mattel, Hasbro, Melissa and Doug, Hape 7 Energy Royal Dutch Shell, Total S.A., Exxon, Beyond Petroleum, Suncor Energy, Chevron 8 Hospitality Marriot International, Hilton Hotels, Intercontinental Hotel Group, Wyndham Hotel Group, Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Group 9 Food and Beverage Nestle, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Mars, Kraft/Heinz 10 Fast Food McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway, 10/19/22, 11:52 PM Assignment #1: Company Sustainability Assessment https://schulich.instructure.com/courses/7872/assignments/76201 3/3 10 Fast Food Pizza Pizza, YUM! Assignment #1 Grading Rubric C to B Grade B+ to A+ Grade Issues identified did not seem relevant to industry and/or they missed the key negative externality of the industry and there was poor or no explanation of the tension between business and society. Issues tend to be too broad and the student is trying to cover too much (e.g. environmental impact). Excellent justificatio tension between bu in depth analysis. Regarding the assessment of company performance: Student tends to be more of an advoctate/cheerleader of company activities. Student describes what they are doing and tends to list random initiatives. Student presents the raw data but with little analysis of said data. Students relied only on what was reported. In the absence of reported information by the company, the student fails to disclose what they were expecting to see reported. Regarding the asse strong analytical and activities. Analysis missing from the rep should see, using ex Claims made on company performance in sustainability and the company’s sustainability strategy were unconvincing to the reader. Claims made on com were consistent with Weak application of institutional forces (e.g. stuck at the firm/industry level only). Little or no reflection and discussion on how company influences institutional forces. Strong application o behaviours). Strong Very poor application of course concepts where students did not apply the correct concepts or applied them poorly with little demonstration of understanding how this assignment relates to the first 6 modules Overall, there was a connecting this anal strengthen analysis In terms of presentation, relatively poor grammar and sentence structure, formatting unprofessional and no use of tables when there were clear opportunities to benefit from said tables. Improper citations or lack thereof. In terms of presenta errors, excellent form Proper citation form