About balanced scorecards and integrated/sustainability reporting

This assignment is not about finding a published balanced scorecard or other integrated report for a company/organisation. It's about understanding the requirements, function, and impact of such reports, then gathering information on specific organisations and their industries so that you can make some recommendations as to the feasibility and process of implementing integrated reporting in those organisations.

You'll be learning about integrated reports in your class. Here are some additional resources to consider if you'd like to learn more about the background and application of such reports:

Recent articles on balanced scorecards and on integrated/sustainability reporting via our library catalogue and via Business Source Complete, including these articles by Kaplan and Norton, the inventors of the balanced scorecard system.
Recent ebooks on the use of balanced scorecards in many contexts and on integrated/sustainability reporting in general.

Here are a few more samples of the ebooks we have on this and related topics...

Balanced scorecards are regarded as internal documents by most organisations and aren't generally publicly available. In fact, many organisations may not even tell you whether or not they are using scorecards. If an organisation is a government agency, a state-owned enterprise, or a nonprofit or NGO, then you are more likely to at least discover whether they use such tools and methods, and you may even find out some of their top-level results, but you still may not find a published version of the entire report.

Organisation site

The very first place you should check for information on your target organisations will be their own sites. Look especially for information about what they are doing, whether/how they are measuring it, what they are proud of, and what barriers they are encountering as they attempt to reach their goals. Be aware that not everything will be stated explicitly and publicly — sometimes you may need to make inferences from their actions and statements.

Try to view your organisations from different perspectives as you gather information from different parts of their sites:

As an investor - Check their investor relations pages, including any reports, filings, press releases, etc.
As an employee (current or potential) - Do they provide details about their benefits? Have they made efforts to increase diversity? Is employee safety and health a concern?
As a supplier - Is information available on their policies and principles?
As an activist - Is there information on both what they believe and what they do regarding issues such as governance, community engagement, and the environment?
As a customer - How does this company describe itself and its products/services? Again, look beyond broad branding statements to find actual details on what they are doing, and on what they are aiming to achieve.

News

Articles in newspapers, magazines, and even business blogs are another place to learn about what an organisation is doing and saying, as well as what others are saying about it. You will often find critical perspectives or minor details that are not available directly from the organisation.

Factiva
Thousands of news publications, including many that are business or industry focused. Includes the Wall Street Journal. See this post (and the "Action vs. Words" video mentioned earlier) for details on how to use Factiva's "Expert Search" feature to quickly find articles on a company's environmental, governance, labour, or other issues and actions. Also watch this "3-Minute Tip" video about Factiva for a brief introduction to this powerful resource.

Canadian Newsstream
Fulltext articles and transcripts from many Canadian newspapers. Useful if you are focusing on Canadian firms.

Business Source Complete
Articles in academic and popular publications, including many industry news sources. Try searching for your company by changing the "Select a field" option next to the search box to "CO Company Entity," then limit your search results by date (sample search).

Financial Times
FT includes categories of articles/reports such as Moral Money and ESG Investing. Check out this blog post for details about how to access SFU's FT subscription.

Company & industry analysis

Start with our Company Information research guide for resources that will help you analyse a company, especially:

Such reports tend to be high-level, but may still help you understand your companies. In some cases they may also supply a SWOT that you can build on with your own analysis. Many of the Marketline reports include SWOT analyses, but in some cases the SWOT reports are published separately: add your target firm's name to this search.

Similarly for your research on the broader industry context of your target companies: Start with the many resources outlined in our Industry Surveys research guide, especially...

S&P Capital IQ (CapIQ)
Search for your target company, then browse the options on the left to find financial data, major customers, strategic alliances, company filings, and much more. Learn the basics by watching this "3-Minute Tip" on S&P Capital IQ at SFU. See also these blog posts for more details on S&P Capital IQ ("CapIQ") at SFU.

ESG data

ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) data often plays a role in integrated reporting. Some companies may share their ESG data, especially if they have clear, publicly stated goals that are relevant to ESG topics. Also check any corporate social responsibility (CSR) or impact reports or web pages that the firm might have published (sample: Nike).

In many cases, though, you will need to look elsewhere for detailed ESG data. Start with the CSRHub ESG Ratings source in Nexis Uni. Follow the links through to the Nexis Uni site and enter your target company name, then click on the View Full Report link.

Here at SFU, our main source for detailed ESG data is the Refinitiv Eikon database, which is available on specific computers in each SFU Library branch (one computer per branch). Follow these instructions to find one of the Eikon installations, and to obtain a user ID to log in to the database.

Once you are logged into Eikon, search for each of your target companies, then browse the options in the top navigation bar to find those companies' ESG data and reports. Be sure to download all of the ESG reports available for each company — statement view, report view, peer view, and chart view — just in case you need a different presentation of the data later in the term. See this screen capture for an illustration of these search and download steps.

Getting help

Use our Ask a Librarian services to get research help via email and chat.

You can also email me: Mark Bodnar (mbodnar@sfu.ca). Please try to include as much of the following information in your question as you can. This will make it much easier for me to help you quickly.

What exactly you are looking for (saying that you need "everything about Boeing" is far too broad — saying that you need to know where to find "news about labour issues at Boeing" is better!); and
Where you have looked so far (have you tried the major sources listed in this guide such as Factiva, IBISWorld, and S&P Capital IQ?).

BUS 322: Intermediate Managerial Accounting: Library guide

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