THE EFFECT OF SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING IN THE PROFITABILITY OF BUSINESS ORGANIZATION



CHAPTER ONE

1.0        INTRODUCTION
1.01   GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The issue of sustainability reporting has been one of the most significant development in the investment community in recent years and corporate information on environmental, social and government. Issues has become an increasing essential information source for investment decision of capital market participate by the end of 2011, 30 trillion in assets under management by over 900 assests management firms and institutional investor backed the principles for responsible investment united nations. For a number of years, the investment community has had extensive discussions of quality of sustainability reporting which constitute a primary reasons for the community’s skeptism towards integrating into investment decision-making process.
This change in the result of greater awareness of corporate governance issue, which in turn leads to greater transparency. According to Kolk, (2008), a growing number of mandatory sustainability framework around the world moreover a number of sustainability initiative have found wide-spread adoption on a global scale. Neverless, the question of the reporting format for sustainability reporting has increasing arisen in research and practice.
According to Krzus, (2010) currently most companies issues standalone sustainability report, separate from and typically published later in the year than financial reports which fall under regularly and legislative directive. Thus, a spatial and temporal disconnection often occur between the availability of information on the one hand and that of financial information on the other hand, with the result that financial statement users are likely to assess the two kinds of information separately. An alternative to issuing standalone sustainability repotting is to bring together financial and information into an integrated report. Recently the rising discussion about integrated reporting has shifted the focus of reporting to a more holistic representation of the companies performance from an information economics perspective the question of whether the financial and sustainability reporting data are published in standalone reports or in an integrated report is irrelevant as long as the information content is identical.
          However, experimental studies regularly provide evidence that, owing to limited capabilities of information acquisition and processing, difference 1disclosure formats decision of financial statement uses. Prior research has shown that analyst anchor on their prior judgments when making new forecasts and therefore undertake to new information (Amir, Ganzach (2009). A particular concern about sustainability reports in those financial statement users may be biased in their assessment of information when they have already formed a judgment based on financial statement users to anchor on their financial value judgment, and therefore under react to information. In contract, an integrated report may serve as a debasing instrument with regard to their anchoring effects since an interpreted report lead to simultaneous assessment of both types of information.
          An experiment with 65 investment professionals, none whom had a specialization or functional focus on sustainability, subjected assessed either a case with good financial and bad performance or a case with bad financial and good performance. Participants either received information simultaneously in an integrated report or received information in a sustainability report only after receiving the financial information.
          These paper maker three primary contributions to the literature first: It expands the literature on sustainability reports. While previous investigation have shown that sustainability reports can help investors to infer information useful for living firms Dhaliwal et al (2011).
          Second it contributes to the literature on stock market reactions information. Prior studies show that announcement effects of information are asymmetric in that capital market reactions to positive news are similar than reactions to good news finally: It contributes is to our best knowledge the first paper to provide controlled empirical evidence that mainstream investment professional who are not specials in sustainability take data into account when valuing companies in different way and depending on the nature of the information provision.                  
1.02   THE HISTORY OF THE CASE STUDY
The story of mobile oil Nigeria PLC port-Harcourt date back to 1907 when Socony Vaccum Oil company began marketing operations in Nigeria, through the sale of sunflower kerosene. In 1978, the company become of publicly quoted company and assumed its current mane and status. Mobile oil Nigeria posts superiors return to its shareholders and continue to lead the oil industry in efficiency and brand image.         
Mobil oil Nigeria in one of the Six major petroleum product marketers in the country. It currently has over 200 retail outlets located in all 36 states of Nigeria. These include much state of the art outlet mobile oil Nigeria plc port-Harcourt in respected in the industry for its ethics and adherence to safety health and environment standards. It is also plays a leading roles in the promotion and sharing of best practices in the downstream sector of Nigeria oil and gas industry. Mobil oil Nigeria plc owns three plants located in Apapa, lagos state, that manufacture tubes, petroleum jelly, with a capacity of 450,00 barrels per annum is regarded as one of the most sophisticated in Africa.

1.03   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The link between sustainability reporting and financial performance has been studied on many occasions with varying result, where none of the studies show a significantly positive or negative relation between the two. Regarding reporting/disclosure studied have been performed to test voluntary disclosure the impact and web based performance disclosure on investor valuation and information showed idris (2000).
According to suliva (2011, p.15), he states the problems as the following:
1.     Reports are inconsistent and incomplete scope and content the quality varies.
2.     The business implications of social and environmental issues are not explained in the context of company strategy and key value drivers.
3.     The processes for assessing materiality or financial significant are not transparent.
4.     Companies do not tell what has been excluded from the scope of reporting.
5.     It is difficult to compare companies corporate responsibility performance.

1.04   THE purpose of the study
The main objective of this study include the following
1.     To identify the degree acceptance of sustainability reporting in an organization.
2.     To examine the contribution of sustainability reporting to the growth of the business organization
3.     To know if sustainability reporting is enhancing efficiency in the business organization.

1.05   RELEVANT RESEARCH QUESTION
1.     Does the management of Mobil oil accept the degree of sustainability reporting in an organization?
2.     To what extent has sustainability reporting contributed to the growth in an organization?        
3.     To what extent has sustainability reporting enhance efficiency of business organization?

1.06   STATEMENT OF HYPOTHESIS
The following hypothesis will be develop and empirically tested, the result will be formed on the basis for recommendation and conclusion.
Ho; (NULL HYPOTHESIS) sustainability reporting in not accepted by management in an organization.
Hi; (ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESIS) sustainability reporting is accepted by management in an organization.
Ho; (NULL HYPOTHESIS) sustainability reporting has not contributed to the growth of organization.
Hi; (ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESIS) sustainability reporting has contributed to the growth of the organization.
Ho; (NULL HYPOTHESIS) sustainability reporting has not led to improvement of information in the organization which has improved their efficiency.
Hi; (ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESIS) sustainability reporting has led to improvement of information in the information organization which has improved their efficiency.

1.07   DELIMITATION (SCOPE) OF STUDY
There are some of the limitations of this study, despite the fact that research would be successful. In any Research work, it may be impossible to take good care of all problems involved, the only thing a researcher can do is to consider those factors that are essential to Research. The actual limitation of the study is the sample size of company’s may not be extensive enough to reflect the situation of the company or organization.

1.08   ASSUMPTION
The study assumes that the implementation standard can be labour intensive and costly to a business, much like sustainability reporting as a whole due to the time, labour and data required to produce a report.
The information in a company’s report should be provide consistently to enable comparability overtime and between companies.

1.09   SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY
The significant of the study cannot be over emphasizing. The study enables the organization see the need for sustainability reporting  in the day to day running of its activities and contribution, sustainability reporting has the efficiencies of its service to the organization on the study also provide an insight into the various ways in which sustainability report performs in many companies as to increase its’ productivities. The study will also reveal the need for improvement in the use of sustainability reporting so as to satisfy the demanding desires of organizations and compete with their counter parts in the company.

1.10   DEFINITION OF unfamiliar TERMS
This section of the study state they contain brief explanation of some technical terms used in this study they are as follows:
1.           Sustainability reporting: According to Lowis Allan (2003), he defined sustainability reporting as economic development that meet needs of the present generation without compromise the ability of future generation to meet their own need for business this include issues of corporate social responsibility and citizenship long with improved management of corporate social and environmental impacts and improve stakeholder engagement.
2.           Profitability: The oxford advanced learner’s Dictionary described profitability as the primary goal of all business organization without profitability the business will not survive in the long run.
3.     Business organization: According to Lori D (2012, P.23), defined business organization as an individual or group of people that collaborate to achieve certain commercial goal. Some business organizations are formed to earn goal income for owners.
4.           Environmental reporting: Environmental reporting include article about environmental and sustainability reporting and equipment provide research from environmental regulators such as environmental reporting software to perform reporting task. Mortared et al (2009)
5.           Social reporting: Social reporting to the use of social media to report collectively and live from events like workshops and conference.
6.           Organization: A social unit of people that is structure and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals. All organization hare a management structure that determine relationship between the different activities and the members and subdivide and assign role responsibilities and authority to carryout different task.
7.           Information/reports: These can be as facts needed by a person or group of persons, that is or will be useful to him. These information or reports may be oral or written.

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