i) Analyze the quality of the reports
Due to the annual report provided by Shangri La Hotel (Malaysia), there is not included environment and social reporting in 2006. However, in the annual report of 2009, it is included with the Environmental & Social Report. The report by Shangri La Hotel had claimed they as a responsible corporate citizen, they are fully committed to sound principles of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Corporate social responsibility concludes that the triple bottom line reporting which interrelated between three dimensions. There are economic refer to profit, social refer to ethical and environment. The three dimensions correspond to the elements of sustainable development (John Elkington, 1994). There is the same reporting stated that sustainable development incorporating economic, social, and environmental performance is of significant concern to the stakeholders (Berkel, 2003). An organization required to disclose the triple bottom line reporting to enhance internal management decisions and support interests of stakeholder (Nickie Petcharat1 and Joseph M. Mula).
Based on the annual report 2009, Shangri La Hotel reached a merely quality stage about corporate social responsibility compared to others. That is because they place the strong emphasizing on engagement with their stakeholders at all levels including employee, customer, shareholders and local communities. Whereas Shangri La Hotel also continues to having a close relationship with local authorities and government bodies at both national and local levels on environment issues. These show Shangri La Hotel had covering the depth, breadth of performance measurement and a wide areas of the extent of environment. From the report, they claimed that each of the hotel properties has a formalized CSR committee, comprising members of senior management. The CSR committee's role is to controlling and monitoring the progress in the key areas.
The organizations required to capture environmental and social impact costs to enhance cost measurement and identification. These may insists of more accurately fully cost environment and social impacts to support sustainable development reporting (Gray 2006; Gary et al. 2001). Shangri La Hotel had implement the energy and water efficiency, waste management in order to meet the obligation of the sense of economic in sustainability reporting. All the Shangri La Hotels have attained ISO 14001, (International standard of environmental management) intended to direct the hotels towards to achieve the environmental goals. Furthermore, Rasa Ria Resort (Shangri La Group Hotel) has dedicated 64 acres of its forested hills to nature reserve. These ensure a home to various species of birds and small animals. Shangri La Hotels also positions itself for the future because they had embarked on a new tarsier conservation project, in partnership with the Sabah Wildlife Department. Before that, Rasa Sayang Resort had taking part in support the turtle conservation program by raising funds. All of these shows that they are insist of good performance to enhance the environmental and social responsibility.
Besides that, Shangri La Hotel has operates non-discriminatory employment policy. This ensures that everyone will get the equal opportunities in all aspects of employment. Company's successful work are mostly depends on their employee performance; the competence of employees may become the strong competitive advantage (Vytautas JuÅ¡Äius1, Vytautas SnieÅ¡ka2, 2008). Instead of it, Shangri La Hotel has provides a comfortable environment to motivate their employees. Whereas a wide range of service and functional skills training activities also provided for all levels of employees. Communities are concerned about the health effects, and safety of the worker (Marc J. Epstein, 2009). Shangri La has places paramount important on the health and safety of all its employees, customer and general public. These can be proves when Shangri La Hotel is a HACCP certified and OHSAS 18001-certified hotel.
Naess was developed a deep ecology theory in 1973 to explain improvement in qualities of humans and the environment by reducing environmental pollution and avoiding extractions of natural resources (Devall & Sessions 1985; Drengson & Inoue 1995). In September 2009, Rasa Sayang Resort (Shangri La Group Hotels) participated in beach cleaning project with the distance of 650 meters from Pasir Pendak to the Penang National Park. On the other hand, Shangri La Hotel also showing sincere to those handicap or disabled people by helped raise funds through its Christmas tree charity project.
The form of information provided by Shangri La Hotel about the environmental & social report is present in information given and supported by the evidence. The hotel groups did not show any financial relevant pictures and graph to strengthen the report. However, it makes everything in clear and brief. These enhance the understanding of the user.
The G3 Guidelines, the cornerstone of GRI's Sustainability Reporting Framework were first published in 2006. Recently, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) had released G3.1 Guidelines and it focuses two main parts in 2011. Part one is emphasizing to reporting principles and guidance whereas part two is about standard disclosures. The principles are to define report content in materiality, stakeholder inclusiveness, sustainability context, and completeness.
Materialities reflecting the organization's significant economic, environmental, and social impacts whereas it should be substantively influence the assessments and decision of stakeholders. The report provided by Shangri La Hotel is fairly presenting the impacts and considering the influence of the assessments and decision of stakeholders. Stakeholder inclusiveness is another issue in the principle; this reporting organization should identify its stakeholders and explain in the report how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests. The sustainability report of the hotel had clearly identified each possible stakeholder and explains the reasonable expectations. Next, the sustainability context brings out several tests to justify whether the organization had meet the requirement. There is an issue need to rise out because one of the tests need to show how sustainability topics relate to long term organizational strategy, risks, and opportunities, including supply chain topics (G3.1 Guidelines, 2011). Shangri La Hotel had not clarified that the sustainability topic have relate to any strategy, risks or opportunities. However, the supply chain topics had included in the report and it provided sufficient information to the users. Overall, the completeness of the report is acceptable and merely reach the requirement but it still have to be improved.
Another principle is to define report quality in balance, comparability, accuracy, timeliness, reliability, and clarity. The G3 Guidelines showing guidance to clarifying how to set the report boundary. In these principles, the report is emphasizes only the positive aspects and result the report imbalance. Besides that, the report is unable to provide comparability because the sustainability report is not covered in annual report of 2006. However, the others factor is quite satisfying because the sufficient information have provided.
On the other hand, part two is determining the standard disclosure by strategy and profile, management approach, performance indicators (Globalreporting.org, 2011). This part is quite disappointed because the sustainability report provided by Shangri La Hotel had not disclosed on it. Firstly, the strategy and profile need the organization to disclosures that understanding organizational performance such as its strategy, profile, and governance. However, the report provided had not identifying the linkage between the performance and its strategy or profile. Next will be the management approach and performance indicators. The report of 2009 has provided insufficient information to clarify this and hardly to identify the comparable information.
Due to the environmental and social performance by Shangri La Hotel, they are providing a merely quality report by covering the depth and breadth of performance measurement. However, there are still some improvements have to be made in their report to ensure that to reach the quality report requirement and enhance the report content.
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