I. INTRODUCTION
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), founded in 1911 and headquartered in Sydney, Australia, is a leading integrated financial services provider in Australia. CBA’s customers are financially taken care of from home to corporation, from national to international; furthermore; the bank also focuses on creating value for the community through its Corporation Social Responsibility as well as management policies. It is operating in the following segments: Retail Banking Services; Business and Private Banking; Institutional Banking and Markets; Wealth Management; New Zealand; Bankwest; and International Financial Services and Other (Forbes n.d.). Conducting business in Australia, Commonwealth Bank deals with other banks nationally, which is significantly named Westpac Banking Corporation; National Australia Bank Limited; Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (IBIS World 2022). Regarding the segments that CBA contributes to with its various financial policies and facilities, the bank’s mission is to take good care of its customers’ financial lives and hence contribute to the community. This is a part of the long-term strategy of improving high standards of professionalism by giving its customers a seamless banking experience and being one of the leading banks in Australia with core values including “care, courage and commitment” (Commonwealth Bank Headquarters n.d.).
Regarding financial statements in the last 5 years, although CBA faced a downtrend due to the global pandemic COVID-19, it is reported to be in a recovery session in the context of the Australian economy recovery.
II. Corporate social responsibility
Given that the primary activities of banks are receiving deposits, disbursing loans, and offering ancillary services, banks must be accountable for their clients in a socially responsible manner, regardless of the types of nations, cultures, financial products, or investors (Yeung 2011).
In 1917, CommBank Staff Foundation, the bank’s internal staff charity, was formed to support Australians fighting in the First World War by sending care packages and this work has continued since. This is the most significant philanthropic initiative of CBA given that 100% of donations are matched by the Bank and passed on to community organizations, leading to doubling the impact of worker generosity in the community (Commonwealth Bank n.d.). The Foundation’s signature programs include:
The Foundation shows its effectiveness by giving back positive impacts on society, which is considered a meaningful social initiative, particularly, enhancing the living conditions of others. Furthermore, it also positively impacts CBA’s stakeholders, both internal and external, in their ethical decision-making. Firstly, this creates a great organizational culture in which employees prefer to dedicate their effort (O’Donnell 2022) whilst the Australian banking industry is a highly competitive hiring environment (Aston Carter 2018). Secondly, there is a potential of influencing firms’ charitable giving practices given that adopting an initiative could create connections between CBA and other organizations in the field, which are significantly crucial in the area of philanthropic activities (HESS and WARREN 2008). However, CBA should be clear in reporting these activities to get rid of a manner akin to “greenwashing” or covering practices that are harmful to society.
Regarding cyber security, scams & fraud, CBA has the initiative to prioritize keeping customers’ data secure 24/7, including fraud prevention technology and secure banking. Additionally, protecting the privacy of individuals is a responsibility that falls under both cybersecurity and human rights law in this case (Christen et al. 2020:77). The effectiveness of this initiative should be approached from a multi-stakeholder perspective as shareholders, customers, managers, employees, and even society as a whole are interested in a company's cybersecurity management, including its technical, financial, and ethical risk perspectives since they care about the ethical concept of privacy (Smaili et al. 2022). This contributes to the reputation of the firm in the reliability of respecting customers’ rights and as a leading firm in the industry, CBA could influence its responsibility on others.
The Climate Report's climate commitment, in particular the way CBA aligns its sector-level financed emissions targets with temperature ambition, demonstrates the importance of its environmental initiative. CBA informs its sector-level financed emissions targets by aligning temperature ambition (Commonwealth Bank n.d.) to support the responsible global transition to net zero emissions by 2050. The company is fully aware of its impacts on the environment and has certain strategies to contribute to the alleviation of climate change, which creates a friendly-environmental reputation as a financial firm. However, their strategy seems to be theoretical, which could not approach the customer’s empathy in environmental issues.
III. Diversity, equity, and inclusion policy
Another ethical factor firms should put effort into completing and improving is the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy given that these three concepts are primary to a happy and productive workforce and a fair and just culture for everyone (Gutterman 2022). Regarding the policy CBA published on their website, including Purpose and scope; Policy statement; Policy requirements; Accountabilities; Compliance statement, and Breach of Policy.
Thirdly, CBA mentions the effectiveness of Women in leadership in terms of gender equality in the 2020 Annual Report. In this stage, the company has effectively done its policy in the board of directors where approximately 55.5% of the board team is women (Commonwealth Bank of Australia n.d.).
However, whilst the report claims that the percentage of women in Executive Manager and above roles is 41%, which is over the 2020 target of 40%, there are only 4/12 members of the Executive Leadership Team who are women, which is approximately 33.3%
IV. Influence of AI and visualization
For many years, banks have continuously changed how their consumers engage with them by incorporating the most recent technological advancements (Biswas et al. 2020).
On the one hand, AI technologies can help banks upsurge revenues by increasing the personalization of services to customers which could be able to drive rapid innovation to remain competitive in the industry. Using AI technologies effectively is an opportunity for CBA to improve a new competitive advantage over other firms in the banking industry. Customer service is enhanced given that there is a 24/7 AI assistant so users can access technical support anywhere and anytime they have problems with CBA’s products, this is a significant example of the benefit of implementing AI. Additionally, the implementation of AI could reduce the cost by lowering error rates and higher automation (Biswas et al. 2020). This could be considered a financial benefit which is the potential to generate unrealized opportunities given that CBA has more funds to invest in other AI technologies and other aspects. Another advantage is fostering collaboration between humans and AI, where workers’ specialization skills could be improved with the implementation of AI. AI technologies should be a close assistant to the human workforce so the advantage of AI’s automatization and correction will be used in the decision-making process and improve productivity. This benefit will be best effective with the involvement of professional training and support for employees.
On the other hand, implementing AI technologies is involving a numerous number of data collected, which generates potential challenges regarding security. CBA is not only a bank of finance but also a bank of data that contains sensitive and confidential information of their customers. They will be ideal targets for cyber-attack and other difficulties of breaching data and privacy. Therefore, CBA should have data protection with certifications and regulations to ensure the security of customers’ information, which is obviously CBA’s responsibility towards its users. An additional challenge relates to the ethical standards of decisions made by AI and the lack of transparency (Kruse et al. January 2019). Decisions made by AI technology could have a low rate of error however it could not process as many ethical factors as humans’ decisions. The decision will be made strictly according to the policy without any exceptions for urgency situations. In this challenge, CBA should provide professional training to foster the collaboration between humans and AI technologies, hence, this difficulty of implementing AI could be effectively alleviated.
V. Reflection
As a transferred student from RMIT University Vietnam to RMIT Melbourne, I have had a chance to experience the educational system in Vietnamese and Australian culture and context. Hence, I can critically figure out the difference between the two courses, which generates specific values to best suit each country’s context. The content in this course involves a lot of group work which was a great chance for students to improve their communication and working group skills. Additionally, groups were able to be formed differently in each part of the assignment so students in a class could know each other well, and this feature give international students, like me, a great chance to get to know more friends in other countries and native English speaker countries. Regarding theories and workshops in the course’s modules, each topic has been divided into smaller aspects and explained well by slides and lecture videos. Hence, students’ self-study skills can be improved significantly given that they were able to review the lesson unlimited times after the lessons with the lecturer. Apart from academic knowledge, the course also introduces other applications used to support the study process and also applies to assignments. This makes the assignment more interesting and stimulates students’ creativity because the digital world is increasingly advanced. From this, I have learned to review my knowledge critically by summarizing, visualization, charts, and infographics.
However, I still had some difficulties relating my study skills and abilities to absorb new knowledge whilst having four courses in one semester, particularly, I was confused to make a connection between courses. This was a problem for me given that Business Decision Making should be the fundamental knowledge for every other course. Fortunately, I had a chance to handle my problem through my lecturer, Meredith Tharapos – the course coordinator, whose explanations have clarified the practical usage of this course in real life. Additionally, she was so friendly that I was so comfortable sharing my difficulties and she gave me valuable solutions in that conversation. I always consider my weakness of being indecisive, as a result, I was expected to do well in this course to complete myself. Previously, I have prioritized ethical factors to decide as I am an emotional person and after this course, I have more measurements to consider my decision such as cost behavior, budget preparation, budget analysis, data analysis, and the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). These new ideas require me to spend more time researching related tools and practicing being skillful in them. Furthermore, by learning about AI in Business Decision Making, I had a chance to explore the limitations of AI, and I decided to use AI as a source to refer to instead of depending on this virtual assistant.
The content and what I have learned in this course are so a foundation to me that my future academic progress should be more feasible as well as my personal life. Regarding my professionalism for my future career, I decided to major in finance and financial advisory, where preparation and planning in the decision-making progress are crucial. What I am learning today will be strong opportunities in my future career path. Additionally, this course will help me to have more confidence in having entrepreneurial projects to gain more experience and create more value.
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