Writing Assignment help on : British Airways

British Airways – the Company

British Airways is a group which comprises of British Airways plc along with several other subsidiaries which includes the British Airways Holidays Limited. Today British Airways is among the leading airlines and has a vast network that caters to passengers and freight services in 149 destinations in over 72 countries. By the year 2010the aircraft had carried over 70 million passengers and nearly 2000,000 tonnes of cargo. Primarily the airline network is centred on the United Kingdom which is the place from where it employee around 85% of its employees. With the mission to deliver services which matters for people that value the way they fly the company is one of the market leaders today. To facilitate this aspect and recognise the importance the company has been working in partnership with its stakeholders. It has largely been the factor that has influenced the approach of the airline towards its corporate social responsibilities. The management has been following the approach which is influenced by the recognition which the airlines have generated over the major social and economic benefits over the years. It has further taken several initiatives to have significant impact on the environment by way of noise and air quality control along with communities around airports (Article 13 2006).

What is meant by Corporate Social Responsibility?

Corporate Social Responsibility is defined as the continuous commitment for the business for behaving ethically and contributing towards economic development along with improvement in the quality of life for its workforce, their families, local community and the entire society at large. This is seen as an attempt by organizations for taking the responsibility for the impact they make to the customers, employees, environment, suppliers, shareholders, stakeholders, and communities through its operations. Maintaining corporate responsibility is seen as an attempt by the company for building a meaningful relationship between the corporate sector and the rest of society. It is much more than just gaining goodwill, corporate involvement and strategic corporate philanthropy. The companies adopts all the practices for ensuring that they operate in the manner which meets or exceed the ethical, legal public expectations, and commercial that society has for the business.

Reasons to be engaged in CSR activities

Reasons are many which have engaged the British Airways to undertake CSR activities. The primary reason is that CSR is the tool which the company can use for achieving company’s long term strategic goals for providing growth opportunities in and around the Heathrow airport. The second reason is that it helps in improving the business efficiency while reducing the costs through the waste and energy programmes. The company believes that CSR can help it to manage risk and identify the risks of health, safety and environment which could well be a hindrance towards its opportunities to attract investors for continuous business growth. The other factor seen as the reason behind the involvement on CSR activities by the company is for enhancing the corporate reputation and customer feedback.

Corporate Social responsibility: The Drivers

In the early 1990s climate change had emerged to be one of the major issues for the company to counter. The establishment of potential damaging impacts of carbon emissions lead to formation of UN Framework Convention for Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol. As British Airways was a part of the aviation industry climate change was one of the major issues the airline faced. These issues included the global carbon dioxide emissions and main greenhouse gas. With increased emissions due to the rise in passenger and freight travel which had called several politicians and civil society to call for reduction in carbon emissions. As British Airways was seeking its way towards being the leading player in the airline industry these presented a series of problems. Environmental issues were one of the major issues the airline had to address through its CSR activities. The company formed the Climate Change Programme with the motive to address all the environmental concerns it was facing.

Goals of Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility

The company has several goals and objectives which has facilitated towards the progress of the CSR measures by the company. Basically the entire CSR policies had been framed keeping environment, marketplace, community, and workplace as the primary components. The primary goals for deploying the CSR activities through the Climate Change programme for the British Airways were as follows:

Environment: Here the primary objective was to reduce the carbon emissions, waste, noise and further improve the local air quality.
Community: Towards community the British Airways extended its support to the international communities, charities, and conservation projects.
Marketplace: Here the goal of the company was to encourage the customers as well as the suppliers for acting responsibly.
Workplace: The goal of the company for the workplace was to provide its employees with a great workplace and encourage them to embrace the organization as One Destination.

Implementing Corporate Social responsibilities

The programme of Climate Change was developed by the board where they first sought to identify the ways through which the company could reduce its own impacts in the environment. Through the process of auditing the emissions and energy use the target areas for reduction was developed. One such example could be the target set by the company for 30% improvement in 20 years starting from 1990 to 2010. This represented a volume of 50m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The second part of the programme evolved from the interactions that the company had with the UK government for promoting long term solutions towards industry of trading carbon emissions. The year 2001 saw the British Airways joining the UK Emission Trading Scheme after which the company had been asked by the government for setting voluntary emission reduction targets to cover the domestic air services and other UK facilities. The trade of carbon emissions eventually stands for selling saved carbon emissions to another company that needs to go above the carbon emission allowance. British Airways hence agree to be a part of the offer that presented an excellent opportunity for getting some first-hand experience in the world’s first emission trading scheme. The government also paid incentives for promoting the initiative so that companies as part of the scheme could make the best voluntary reduction which was possible. In between the year 2002-2006 British airways set its new targets for total reduction in its annual emissions of about 125,000 tonnes of CO2. Further the year 2004 saw the company agreeing to the government of UK for increasing the voluntary targets. The participation of a big airline company such as British Airways established that ETS could be a part of the aviation sector. Further it formed a basis for encouraging other company’s in different departments for taking action. One such example is the property department which was set to 2% per annum reduction in energy. These initiatives and involvement led to saving more than 31,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum. As a part of CSR activities since the year 2005 British Airways has been piloting carbon offsets project. It has allowed passengers to offset the carbon expenditure caused due to travel by the investment in carbon offsets projects. Till today British Airways has done considerably well to promote the scheme through its press launches, emails to executive club members and other articles published in magazines (British Airways 2010). However the only factor which may have resisted the passengers to pay additional costs was the increase in fuel surcharges. One of the other aspects of the programme arose from lack of knowledge in the field of atmospheric science as well as the relationship between aviation, atmosphere and climate change. The company in an attempt to answer this query to derive the possible effects an aircraft-induced cirrus clouds on climate change participated in the European Commission’s research program (IAGOS) in the year 2005. For this research the company installed devices and special instruments on its planes for measuring as well as monitoring the atmosphere during flights.

Challenges in the CSR initiatives

While implementing its CSR plans, British Airways had to counter several challenges which are still prevalent today. The political environment within which the company is operating has several views on the climate change which has its own levels of awareness which surrounds the topic. In the UK region the governments had always made it clear that the scale at which the aviation industry was expanding meant that the industry would have several environmental issues to deal with. But most of the other European countries did not go through such detailed consultation or analysis which has not brought much clarity on the issue. Cost implications were the other challenge the company faced when the other competitors were not facing such issues.

The British Airways attempted to deal with all these challenges and hence improve the understanding of these issues by being proactive in its leadership and stimulating the debate through direct advocacy of the government’s participation.

CSR benefiting the business

All the feedback and reports which was revealed by the government depicted that the Climate Change Programme had eventually placed the British Airways in the league of the responsible airlines. They projected it to be much more involved in the debate towards sensible proposal of emission trading as compared to the other interventions which could have been much expensive for the industry. Further the investment community has also acknowledged these facts and initiatives by the airlines which have enabled it to attract fresh investments. The other important benefit has owned to the company’s attitude towards environmental sustainability presented a genuine prospect of the expansion of the airline in the Heathrow Airport.

With regular CSR activities and contributing larger to the society British Airways has been consistently updating its efforts to pay back to the society in which it operates. It further needs to keep on implementing newer steps and initiatives to enhance its goodwill and further brand the image of the company as a contributor to the society.

Why was CSR important for the British Airways?

Climate Change Programme has been the core of the CSR activities as it was about taking actions for reducing the impact of its operations on the environment. Climate change which is seen as a major threat to the environment and the societies globally was well countered by the airlines through its involvement in the programme. All the actions by the airlines go beyond the compliance which demonstrates that the airlines had taken voluntary actions as an attempt to reduce the contributions for the carbon emissions and better understand the impact of it on the climate change.

Also the competition was one of those factors which had been getting intense with newer players coming in the arena. With old as well as the new players eating up the market share British Airways had to show that it was working continuously for the betterment of the society and provide the best possible services to its customers. Corporate Social Responsibility shaped the image of the company as a very genuine service provider. Although the efforts added to the costs of the company, but in the long run played a vital role to help the company get popular across the world. Today its model and efforts have been adopted by several other airlines across the world.

CSR activities: The Future

British Airways wishes to maintain its industry leadership position by continuing the development policy and advocating the fact of cost effective instruments which benefit the environment. The airlines seeks to improve the customer engagement on the climatic change for raising awareness and communicating the British Airways gives the best efforts in this area. This hence would help in developing the ground energy strategy for including actions and reducing the internal impacts such as improving the energy efficiency in the maintenance hangers. Also with its continuous development it would seek for improvements for meeting the fuel efficiency targets and setting a new target in future.

Being a responsible airline which one of the largest fleet operators in the world today the company further needs to expand its avenues to involve in the CSR activities to set an example of the possible ways which company could adopt and contribute towards the society. The strategies by the company should stay focused as they had been so that it builds upon the policies and steps implemented. This would surely contribute towards growth of the organization and further establish it as a world leader which leads by example for the others to follow.

Some other associations by the company towards Corporate Social Responsibility

Besides the above mentioned involvements and initiatives by the company there have been several other contributions by the company towards facilitating its corporate social responsibility initiatives. The company had been involved in several other events and organizations to contribute for a social welfare as a part of its Corporate Social Responsibility. Some of those efforts are:

The foundation of the community learning centre in Heathrow, London
Partnering with UNICEF for promoting the initiative ‘’change for good’’
Donating around £1.3 million in the year 2010 on behalf of the airlines and its staff
Raised $30 million from passengers in a period of 10 years.

British Airways: contributing towards community

Being a member of the oneworld initiative the British Airways has been an active role player to contribute for charity which has a philanthropic association with the group. The groups associated with the OneWorld airlines include UNICEF’s change for good campaign, the Cosmic Relief and Susan G.Komen for the Cure. As a member to the group British Airways has raised millions of dollars each year which are provided to the chose charities through direct donations or other fund raising activities. It has also been carrying out some non-financial assistance in form of flights, baggage allowances and freight.

The airline has been closely involved with community organizations like the schools, youth groups or arts groups. The employees are always encouraged to contribute their time and expertise for raising funds, and assist or advise the smaller initiatives from the grassroots level. The partnerships through OneWorld has been as high as multi-million dollar charity partnership and the small scale but equally important for supporting communities across the globe. This surely has been one of the most praised contributions of the airlines and a major portion of its CSR activities.

Recommendations for better Corporate Governance

The recommendations for the company to keep on expanding and contribute towards both society and the British Airways could be listed as below:

For the Community

As a part of its policy the company should keep on raising £2 million per year for the partner charities.
It should continue to offer the learning experience to the schools in and around Heathrow through the British Airways Community Learning Centre.
Should continue its support and extend it in the field of different communities and conservation projects across the globe.
The airlines should make it easier for the employees and related staffs for volunteering time towards charity and other community activities
Should promote creation of more energy efficient workplaces for its teams across the globe.
Should take the steps to ensure that each member of the airline gets the opportunity for being involved in the campaign of One Destination.
As per its targets set for the next decade the company should carry on its efforts to reduce the average noise per aircraft by at least 15% till 2015.
Should take the measures to become much more carbon efficient preferably the set target of 25% more by the year 2025.
Take measures to recycle the wastes by more than 50%
Steps need to be taken for reducing the net CO2 emissions by half in the next 40 years.
BA should make it easier for the customers for offsetting carbon while flying on their flight.
Should continuously get its key suppliers audited independently

For the Workplace

For the Environment

For the Marketplace

Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility

Entire corporate sector has been in the news for the perception that profit maximization leads to several steps which could damage the society. The other thing which has been a concern for the society has been the fact that businesses have been following unethical means for carrying out its business operations. Going by the definitions an effective socially responsible corporate code would prevent actions that are legal but inappropriate due to its consequences on some of the shareholders. This leads to the explanation that corporate governance and corporate social responsibility are complementary to each other. British Airways needs to keep these facts in mind and reinforce each of them with the modern vision to be an institution that doesn’t disregard various relevant constituencies in search for increase in its value (Corostrandberg 2005). Therefore with Corporate Governance policies and steps planned and oriented towards facilitating Corporate Social Responsibility should always be the aim of the airline to get the best out of its efforts (Geneva Association 2005).

Conclusion

The progress of the company over the last few decades is the perfect result which shows that the company has been doing all the things in the right manner. Although a few things could have been better, British Airways needs to be complimented for its initiatives. With a few more improvements and steps as a part of corporate governance policies it stores a huge world of possibilities in future. Also it needs to be mentioned that the steps would set example for many of the other companies both from within the arena and beyond to practice ethical means of operations and give importance to corporate social responsibilities.

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