Freemantle Dockers foot club dates its roots back to 1994 that was founded and owned by West Australian Foot Commission (WAFC). The foot club ranks fourth in previous AFL league results. Its revenue is close to 66 million dollars and it has only won one AFL final. Its mission is to create the best talent and to foster a creative environment for all sports people all over the world. The sustainable business strategies of the company include; good health and wellness among its client, quality education on sports, gender equality, reduced inequalities, climate action, responsible consumption and production.
How various disciplines, functions, processes, and assets of a business interrelate to create value
The Fremantle Dockers business process creates values for society and sustainability through strong positive culture. The foot is more than just food and focuses more on society’s growth. The club management offers young players with an environment to practice their talents in football. The company has football academy that trains young learners in football up to the diploma level, thus creating value in sports. The collaboration between Fremantle Dockers and the purple hand foundation has led to enables the sports person to interact with important individuals such as coaches, athletes, and sports industry experts. Therefore, the process of training high-quality sports personnel provides them with the opportunity to acquire quality training that creates an opportunity for them in leading universities.
Another business function of Fremantle Dockers that creates value for the club includes the use of function rooms; the rooms are used to provide conference spaces for presentations. The rooms contain an adaptable room that can hold smaller group or large group conferences. Thus, the charges collected from these rooms are utilized by the company to provide services such as quality education. In the same function room, there are catering services that look at the welfare of meeting participants. Also, there is free parking at the site to provide ample parking for the clients using the functional rooms; the parking provides value to the client using the rooms for conferences. In addition, in the conference hall, there is state of the art system that promote the projection of all presentations during a workshop.
Contribution of Fremantle Club to society through corporate social responsibility
Fremantle sports club is not only involved in sports activities but also contributes positively to society’s growth through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The contribution of the Fremantle dockers to society can be categorized into six key areas such as quality education, good health, and well-being, gender equality, consumption and production, reduced inequalities, and responsible and climate action (Cezarino et al., 2022). Quality education contributes to society, this is through inclusivity and promoting equitable education for all by having the Fremantle dockers club education facility. The program has over 400 sports student undertaking diploma courses under the Kimberly 9’s program; there is a development of an education strategy that promotes the inclusion of all in sports education.
Another business process that creates value for society includes the promotion of good health and the well-being of the people in sports. The Fremantle Dockers established a well-being center, and a director was appointed in 2022; this human resource asset creates much value for the company due to improved services to the client. The club has a partnership with other organization and seek to raise funds for this course. The introduction of the well-being center creates value for the club by also contributing toward the revenue basket of the company through charges paid for the use of the facility. The Fremantle dockers club has a program that works with around 135,000 participants in a community engagement program for the well-being of the community. There is a health well-being program that targets mental health well-being; thus, it promotes value to society through good mental health.
Also, the company seeks to gender equality through organising various campaigns in society, such as Women club day, which had 600 attendees on 2023 women’sWomen international day. Also, the company organizes workshops to teach players respect and responsible living style tother with their families annually. In addition, the dockers club promotes the participation of 40 clubs in the Dockers 2023 championship, hence promoting gender equality in gender. Also, the company developed a gender inclusion action plan in 2022; the action plan is a good move toward promoting gender equality in sports. The gender equality strategy is an important social corporate responsibility that Fremantle Dockers club used its inclusivity action plan to promote gender equality through promotion of all people sports from the youths, men, and women, thus benefiting all the people.
In addition, Fremantle foot club seeks to reduce inequalities in society by conducting various award, such as the Purple Hand Foundation award that reduces inequality through the club bravery award. Also, responsible consumption and production is another corporate social responsibility by Fremantle, such as the introduction of research in collaboration with Curtin University in investigation on responsible production and consumption. In addition, there are strategies for projects on recycling of plastic bottles; the company invests in recycling project that seeks to promote improved consumption and production.
The other corporate social responsibility conducted by Fremantle Club is undertaking a climate action plan. Dockers Club aims to obtain an annual report on the climate action plan of the company. There is also a tree planting plan for all players in collaborating with the host and staff players; the tree planting day is important because it restores nature and improves the environment for a sustainable society. In addition to this, there are two climate action sessions for the staff and players of the club to sensitize them on the issues of climate action and how each individual can contribute to climate action. There is also a waste management plan that is sought to materialize by 2027 and also led floodlighting that seeks to promote strategies on promote climate change action. According to Sun et al. (2022), the company engages in climate change action so as to gain the waiver on climate change taxes such as environmental pollution taxes. Thus, the company is able to claim its environmental coupons due to its environmental protection strategies.
Use of four Quadrants Hart and Milstein’s Sustainable Values Framework
The Hart and Milstein, sustainable value framework, will analyze the contribution of the Fremantle Club to sustainability through Corporate Value Responsibility (CVR). The framework provides a way of analyzing the value the company acquires through engaging in corporate social responsibility. Hart and Milstein’s model creates both value to the company and society as well because all the participants are winners. The four quadrants considered in Harts and Milstein’s framework are pollution prevention, product stewardship, clean technology, and sustainability vision. Therefore, this framework is analyzed to provide an understanding of the value created by Fremantle Club and also the society around the club.
Pollution prevention
The club engages in various strategies that seek to prevent environmental pollution, such as energy transition research with the Curtin University challenge. Society, in this case, benefits through the introduction of clean and safe technologies that protect the environment for a safe production system. The club, on the other hand, benefit through the promotion of a good image in the public that it is ready to fund activities for environmental protection. Also leads to the attraction of highly skilled players into the club even if the reward is not high in order to support the objectives of the club on environment protection. The other efforts of the club in environmental protection are through the use of recycled plastics in all its products except socks to reduce environmental pollution caused by plastic spillage all over the dumpsites (Majewski et al., 2021). Thus, this act leads to the creation of value for the company through cost saving and revenue generation while the society enjoys a clean environment and clean air because the plastic pollutants reduce. In addition, the Fremantle docker Club has a waste management plan that seeks to reduce the environmental pollution caused by the club. In this case, the club will gain value in terms of reduced pollution taxes, and social benefits through the clean environment.
Product stewardship
Product stewardship includes the promotion of responsible production and consumption. There are several contributions of the club to safe production techniques, such as safe production techniques that reduce emissions in the environment. The club has various strategies to promote the clean production of products, such as a plastic recycling plan that seeks to reduce the dumping of non-decomposing waste in the environment, hence promoting the best product production process. Also, the waste management action plan shall regulate the type of waste dumped into the environment whereby the club will control waste and recycle the recyclable materials to create value from the waste material (Majewski et al., 2021). The society gains through clean product development.
Clean technology
Fremantle Club contribution to clean technology is enamors because apart from engaging in sporting activities, the club still is investing in clean technologies. Some of the clean technologies include energy transition research; this technology provides clean energy in the production process. The initiative is supported by the Curtin University technology innovation challenge; the end product of this contest is a clean technology that leads to energy saving. Thus, in this case, Fremantle creates value for society by supporting the efforts that lead to clean energy. Also, society is set to benefit through cheap energy and sustainable energy solution after the conclusion of the research. The introduction of clean technology through the recycling of plastics is another technology that contributes toward cleaning the environment by reducing plastic waste; the company earns through recycling cheap plastic waste while the society benefits by reduced plastic waste in their compounds.
According to a study by Brahmana & Kontesa (2021), the clean technology strategies of the companies include the use of clean energy incubators and power-saving plans that seeks to reduce energy emission on the environment. The study further explains that clean technology is an activities that promote the production of outputs by reducing the negative impact of environmental pollution. For instance, in the case of Fremantle Dockers ,Club there are plans to reduce environmental pollution, such as the waste management action plan 2027 and clean energy research that is in collaboration with research organizations such as Curtin University. In addition, Majewski et al. (2021) found that innovation in clean technology begins with investing in waste recycling projects. Thus, the club has various plans to promote clean technology in the production of products.
Sustainability vision
The sustainability vision basically looks at the sustainable vision statement of the company or the business that seeks to promote the corporate social responsibility of the club. The Fremantle club has a sustainable mission statement that involves inspiring, winning and enriching communities with hope and good life. There are various strategies in the club’s sustainable plan that can be highlighted, such as include the creation of a sports school to promote quality education for society within and around the club. The school train for diploma certificates to the sports people who are over 400 sports students. The act of promoting quality education is key to promoting the sustainability of the club by ensuring equitable and inclusive education to all learners around the club. The Fremantle Club also promotes the well being of the community around them through the development of mental health action plan; a healthy population is a productive one. Hence, the health plan seeks to promote good health for both staff and the community around the club, hence high performance from the staff and players. Also, the sustainability mission of the company seeks to promote gender equality by promoting women’s sports to encourage them in sports participation. In addition, there is promotion of indigenous culture and traditions to reduce inequalities in the society. Therefore, all these sustainable activities seek to promote Corporate Value Responsibilities that benefit both the company and the society in general.
To summarize what has been discussed so far in this paper, one can not fail to recognize the contribution of Corporate Value Responsibility (CVR) toward the growth and success of companies. Our case study was Fremantle sports club, which has made a great contribution toward CVR in its sustainability model. Some of the contributions of Fremantle to society include the promotion of quality education, contributing to the health and well-being of the staff, players, and society as a whole, gender equality, reduced inequality, clean production technologies, and also in climate action plan. The application of Hart and Milstein’s sustainability framework identifies four key ways the Fremantle club uses to promote value in corporate responsibility strategies. These were environmental protection, product stewardship, clean technology, and a sustainable vision statement.
References
Brahmana, R. K., & Kontesa, M. (2021). Does clean technology weaken the environmental impact on the financial performance? Insight from global oil and gas companies. Business Strategy and the Environment, 30(7), 3411-3423. Doi https://doi.org/10.2172/1493165
Cezarino, L. O., Liboni, L. B., Hunter, T., Pacheco, L. M., & Martins, F. P. (2022). Corporate social responsibility in emerging markets: Opportunities and challenges for sustainability integration. Journal of Cleaner Production, 132224. Doi https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132224
Majewski, P., Al-shammari, W., Dudley, M., Jit, J., Lee, S. H., Myoung-Kug, K., & Sung-Jim, K. (2021). Recycling of solar PV panels-product stewardship and regulatory approaches. Energy Policy, 149, 112062. Doi https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2020.112062
Sun, L., Fang, S., Iqbal, S., & Bilal, A. R. (2022). Financial stability role on climate risks, and climate change mitigation: implications for green economic recovery. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 29(22), 33063-33074. Doi https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17439-w
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