It isn’t often enough that corporations get picked up and ridiculed for the rubbish they perpetuate in their public relations spin on the environment. But we can’t let what we have here pass without comment, simply because we are building before your eyes the very evidence that makes a mockery of David Jones’ claims on its environmental stance. Indeed, it is the very reason for this blog.
Cloud Citizen’s favourite sustainability academic, Emeritus Professor Dexter Dunphy of University of Technology Sydney, is the original creator of what we describe as the Dunphy Scale. It depicts six progressive stages of corporate evolution on the environment, of which we tend to use five, but third of these is the “compliance” mentality of most commercial organisations.
Compliance is the stage at which companies will do as much as it takes to stay on the right side of the law on their environmental stance, avoiding the possibility of any directors being carted off to jail, but little more. At this stage, companies will typically over-claim on their environmental records to keep unquestioning customers and shareholders happy.
Compliance is the stage at which David Jones exists: its management knows exactly how limited its undertakings are and may be hoping its shareholders aren’t alerted to its real record.
Where it over-claims is in its annual report, and these words may come back to haunt it.
It is not possible while still aiming at growth based on selling more of the same goods for a department store to become a sustainable operation, and anyone who tells you it is will likely be working in the public relations operation of a department store. So let’s pick this apart, because there are two key statements which undermine the credibility of all else it claims.
Let’s begin with the summary to the environment section on page 35 of the David Jones 2010 annual report. It says:
A whole-of-business strategy on the environment and the company’s impacts must embrace accountability for the environmental impacts throughout each of the supply chains of each of the products it sells from each of its suppliers. We are doing the research: we know there is no whole-of-business strategy, unless it is to be hands-off. But its message implies the opposite.
The implied strategy can’t possibly exist until its suppliers undertake to act otherwise on the environment and climate, and we can see already that almost none is. Few are even trying to over-claim for their achievements, and that makes for a pretty reliable barometer.
If David Jones has “also made considerable improvement in relation to environmental disclosure through FY2010”, it hasn’t moved far at all. Of course, if it were that the whole-of-business environment strategy was to do nothing, that would make a mockery of the latter part of the above statement.
This is more likely the strategy: comply, over-claim, under-deliver and hope none of the shareholders, media or public is smart enough to pick it up.
The next can be found under environmental management in section three, found on page 33:
If we take the fact that a meaningful whole-of-business strategy is absent, then this second statement must also be untrue, simply because David Jones has absolute discretion over its stockholdings of each and every product it sells. Unless caught in a contractual obligation to a supplier, there is nothing it must stock – unless it chooses to do so.
The company can not eschew its responsibilities and is therefore completely culpable for, once again, the environmental impacts throughout each of the supply chains of each of the products it sells from each of its suppliers. This is its footprint and no amount of weasel words can escape this simple fact. It is a business built entirely on the shoulders of others which are doing little or apparently nothing to ameliorate their own impacts on the environment.
We aim for a future in which companies can not state such utter rubbish in their reports, but there is more to complain about here, all of it pointing to continued growth in this business’s externalities – or environmental cost to everyone else – and all in contradiction to what David Jones might wish to perpetrate as the myth of its own environmental good work. And here we must be selective, for wishing not to bore the reader.
But this one, wrapping up, from chairman Robert Savage, is a jewel: “Our continuing success in a very challenging environment is a tribute to the strength of our brand...”
That one could come back to bite. Shareholders beware.
Cloud Citizen’s favourite sustainability academic, Emeritus Professor Dexter Dunphy of University of Technology Sydney, is the original creator of what we describe as the Dunphy Scale. It depicts six progressive stages of corporate evolution on the environment, of which we tend to use five, but third of these is the “compliance” mentality of most commercial organisations.
Compliance is the stage at which companies will do as much as it takes to stay on the right side of the law on their environmental stance, avoiding the possibility of any directors being carted off to jail, but little more. At this stage, companies will typically over-claim on their environmental records to keep unquestioning customers and shareholders happy.
Compliance is the stage at which David Jones exists: its management knows exactly how limited its undertakings are and may be hoping its shareholders aren’t alerted to its real record.
Where it over-claims is in its annual report, and these words may come back to haunt it.
It is not possible while still aiming at growth based on selling more of the same goods for a department store to become a sustainable operation, and anyone who tells you it is will likely be working in the public relations operation of a department store. So let’s pick this apart, because there are two key statements which undermine the credibility of all else it claims.
Let’s begin with the summary to the environment section on page 35 of the David Jones 2010 annual report. It says:
Over the past year, David Jones completed development of its whole-of-business environment strategy … David Jones has also made considerable improvement in relation to environmental disclosure through FY2010.The lie is that David Jones’ business lies in trading the branded goods of others. That is “the business”. It is where its revenue and its motivation lies. It exists for no other reason. It does not exist to employ people, to be a good citizen or to run any other kind of supporting operation. These are only needed to keep the money rolling in.
A whole-of-business strategy on the environment and the company’s impacts must embrace accountability for the environmental impacts throughout each of the supply chains of each of the products it sells from each of its suppliers. We are doing the research: we know there is no whole-of-business strategy, unless it is to be hands-off. But its message implies the opposite.
The implied strategy can’t possibly exist until its suppliers undertake to act otherwise on the environment and climate, and we can see already that almost none is. Few are even trying to over-claim for their achievements, and that makes for a pretty reliable barometer.
If David Jones has “also made considerable improvement in relation to environmental disclosure through FY2010”, it hasn’t moved far at all. Of course, if it were that the whole-of-business environment strategy was to do nothing, that would make a mockery of the latter part of the above statement.
This is more likely the strategy: comply, over-claim, under-deliver and hope none of the shareholders, media or public is smart enough to pick it up.
The next can be found under environmental management in section three, found on page 33:
David Jones’ key focus in relation to environmental management is on those areas where the business has the ability to influence environmental outcomes …It goes on to isolate “energy, waste management, packaging, transport, travel, water and refrigerant gases” as being areas in which it “is obligated to disclose its impacts”.
If we take the fact that a meaningful whole-of-business strategy is absent, then this second statement must also be untrue, simply because David Jones has absolute discretion over its stockholdings of each and every product it sells. Unless caught in a contractual obligation to a supplier, there is nothing it must stock – unless it chooses to do so.
The company can not eschew its responsibilities and is therefore completely culpable for, once again, the environmental impacts throughout each of the supply chains of each of the products it sells from each of its suppliers. This is its footprint and no amount of weasel words can escape this simple fact. It is a business built entirely on the shoulders of others which are doing little or apparently nothing to ameliorate their own impacts on the environment.
We aim for a future in which companies can not state such utter rubbish in their reports, but there is more to complain about here, all of it pointing to continued growth in this business’s externalities – or environmental cost to everyone else – and all in contradiction to what David Jones might wish to perpetrate as the myth of its own environmental good work. And here we must be selective, for wishing not to bore the reader.
Robert Savage, chairman:So, there is apparently no holding back the environmental juggernaut that is David Jones.
“We recorded sales growth in each quarter …”
Paul Zahra, chief executive officer:
“In the future however we will overlay an increased focus on … sales growth (in particular as we start to experience an improvement in economic conditions) … "
“The two new David Jones Bourke Street Mall stores offer customers … 30% more selling space spread across 11 brand new architecturally designed floors … ”
“Sales and EBIT from our new Bourke Street mall stores are expected to grow by at least 30% over time (in line with floor space) …”
“Enormous growth potential exists for David Jones in the Melbourne metropolitan market … "
But this one, wrapping up, from chairman Robert Savage, is a jewel: “Our continuing success in a very challenging environment is a tribute to the strength of our brand...”
That one could come back to bite. Shareholders beware.
