There have been amendments to the competition and consumer act (CCA) 2010 in the last 12 months. A new division, Division 1A, was inserted into part IV of this act. This division is about anti-competitive conduct provisions, which prohibits anti-competitive price signalling and/or any other related information. This amendment act received royal assent on December 6, 2011 and was incorporated into the CCA on June 6, 2012.
It applies to the goods, services, suppliers of goods and services described by the law as warranting the prohibitions under subsections 44ZZT (1) and (2). The signalling prohibitions have been applied to the banking sector.
Institutions under this sector are regulated as Authorised Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) and they are authorised by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) under the 1959 Banking Act (Australian Government ComLaw 2012). The goods and services, therefore, subjected to the price signalling prohibitions involve the depositing or withdrawal of money.
Misleading or deceptive conduct is a kind of demeanour that is aimed at luring someone away from their main goal. For example, in advertising where a certain product is deemed to be very effective, in reality it is an imitation of another one.
This misleads a customer from achieving their main goal, which is the product they are familiar with, and instead they buy the new imitated product at a low price. The presumption is that the effects derived from the new product are the same as those of the old product, but this may not be the case.
Yes, General Stores Pty Ltd can sell its goods in this way because they are not misleading their customers as discussed above. Section 18 (1) of schedule 2 of the CCA 2010 stipulates that “a person must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive” (Australian Government ComLaw 2012).
The General Store Pty Ltd is thus not breaching this section because they do not give false information to their customers. Initially, the General Stores intended to sell the imitation of the more original form of the European tool at a low price.
They outlined the characteristics of the garden tool as they were. They did not equate them to the well known European tool. When the customers could not agree to buy the imitation convincing them to buy the more expensive tool was a way of presenting them with an alternative choice.
In comparison to the General Stores Pty Ltd, Robert breaches the section on misleading or deceptive conduct because he intentionally misleads the customers. He colludes with his friend to manufacture antique domestic furniture, yet there is no way that antique objects can be created anew.
Robert’s way of doing business is associated with risks because when he and his friend are found involved in selling fake antiques, they will not escape the long arm of the law. Section 29 on false or misleading representations about goods or services stipulates that “a person dealing with goods or services in trade or commerce should not under whichever circumstance, make a false or misleading representation that goods are of a particular standard, grade, style, originality/history, quality, composition, value, or model” (Clarke 2011).
The implication of doing business in this manner will result in pecuniary penalty for both Robert and his friend, according to the notes section (1) under section 29 (1) of schedule 2 of the CCA 2010. The penalty charged will mean loss for the businesses of the two friends.
It is very important for any trade or commerce to come up with compliance programs that govern behaviour and trade/commerce practices to avoid infringing on the law. In addition, compliance programs are used to resolve any occurring breaches by acting as reference points. The compliance program promotes a positive culture in the workplace by creating a positive attitude.
This prompts individuals within an organization to proactively comprehend the requirements of the law in relation to any activity that is to be undertaken. Abiding by the law frees the organization of conflict with legal authorities and both employers and employees develop a strong positive attitude towards the law.
It is however worth noting that the senior management plays a key role in developing this positive attitude because it is the pillar of the organisation and if it fails everyone in that organization fails.
In accordance with the CCA 2010, misrepresentation of products or services is greatly prohibited. Sometimes one is bound to discard information on weak characteristics of products and services when promoting these products and services to customers. This information is, however, very important and can be managed by using it to improve the characteristics of the products and services in question.
Another risk is duplication of misrepresentation. The use of old materials to create an eye-catching headline statement may result in delivering information that is already misrepresented since the actual products and services are not the centre of focus.
Whereas this may be a time saving way of coming up with headline statements, it is always important to verify this information by having a thorough understanding of the products and services. In addition, the same strategy is applicable in a case where contradictory information prevails, another risk is likely to be encountered.
A compliance program review committee should be put in place. This committee is charged with the responsibility of carrying out intense research and liaising with relevant authorities so that they get to know when new changes come up for the CCA. This will help in ensuring that the organization’s compliance program is always up to date and relevant to the current times.
In addition, this committee will be responsible for identifying any gaps in the organization’s compliance program so that they can be addressed. It is this committee’s task to come up with the most feasible and effective solutions in filling in the identified gaps.
Safety and productivity are very much interlinked because it is difficult to alter one without affecting the other. In Australia, there are almost no publications on safety and productivity in relation to pure risks. However, there are some literatures that show safety and productivity or profitability at the work place. Neyland, Hickey & Edwards (2009) have done a research on this in the forest and logging industry.
Their research aimed at evaluating the safety and productivity of various harvesting and regenerating systems of tall wet eucalypt forest so as to come up with the best option. This was carried out with the long term goal of reducing the high fatality rates that were characteristic of the forestry and logging industry.
The aggregated retention system was found to be the most ideal option because it ranked first in terms of safety and productivity. This option has been tested for two years and its effectiveness affirmed. The high fatality rates reported in the forest and logging industry are of great concern. The fact that more safety processes are being sought is a good thing. It would be ideal if all companies under this industry adopt the safest working systems.
Lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) has been criticized as not being an ideal measure for high consequences because of various reasons. To begin with, they ignore the aspect of change in relation to safety performance. Instead, they are sensitive to management processes of injury and claims.
LTIFRs cannot give information in as far as the safety measures/mechanisms of an organization are concerned. Since injuries will occur in few numbers each year, this leads to statistically insignificant differences. As a result, there lacks a guide on the status of safety measures in an organization. As a result, it becomes difficult to tell if the safety hazards in an organization are being managed or not, or whether they do exist (Hopkins 1994).
A competent management team is more focused on the goals of the organization. A competent team will also bear in mind that the employees are very important and without them these goals cannot be met. This is why a company will operate in such a manner that incurs less losses and risk costs.
This way, it is less likely to be caught unaware because risks can be predicted and controlled in the best way the company can so that the occurrence of these risks if inevitable results in reduced losses and costs.
Risk management will ensure that the organization’s assets are spared; if they are destroyed, compensation is guaranteed. It would be very difficult for an organization to recover from a disaster while solely relying on its own resources. Therefore, appropriate risk management procedures are paramount.
Organizations with strategic risk management systems benefit more than those without in terms of performance and productivity. In addition, such organizations are considered to be among the most successful ones.
The global Coca Cola Company incurs total costs of risks (TCOR) as a means to reduce and manage risks. There are four constituents of TCOR, they are risk transfer costs, risk retention costs, external risk management costs, and internal risk management costs. In reference to the Coca Cola company, there is a need to ensure that the company is well insured through insurance premiums that are components of the risk transfer costs.
Coca Cola is a company that will always have various opportunities to choose from and will have to incur opportunity costs. In addition, it has to ensure that its employees are well protected from harm in order to support their performance as well as the company’s productivity.
These two fall under internal risk management costs. The company is also subjected to external risk management costs through brokers and other vendors who may fail to pay for the products. The company is also bound to experience pending matters related to claims that fall under risk retention costs (Aon Risk Solutions & Aon esolution 2012).
The triple bottom line is an accounting framework used to measure sustainability for growth in an organization. It has three dimensions of performance, namely, environmental (planet), financial/economic (profit) and social (people). The economic dimension is concerned with the flow of money. The focus is on tax, business diversity factors, income/expenditures, employment, and business climate factors.
Environmental measures encompass measurements of the natural resources like energy consumption, land use, and air/water quality. Social measures, on the other hand, are about the social dimensions defining a community, society, or religion. They entail measurements of health and well-being, access to social resources, social capital, and quality of life.
Of all the three measures, the ones that are relevant to risk management are the environmental measures since their occurrence is unpredictable and has an adverse effect. For example, energy in the form of fires or cyclones causes a lot of damage, so an effective risk management system should be in place to ensure that an organization recovers quickly.
Various organizations run differently and thus do their management systems in different ways. The various types of organizations as proposed by Hollnagel (1998) are listed in the table below. This table is a presentation of the different approaches that different organizations will take in implementing the ISO 9000.
Family Inventory of risks
A contingency plan has no definite time frame but instead it is a document for an ongoing funded business activity. The contingency plan is very important because it ensures that a facility/system does not stop running in the event that the facility/system fails. This plan is an assessment of the needs and requirements that should be put in place to respond to the failure. The objectives of a contingency plan include:
- Protect personnel and data, which are very important assets to any organization;
- Formulate policies and procedures for information systems in case a contingency exists in relation to the above objective;
- Identify the most important decisions;
- Capture necessary resources;
- Identify actions for various pre-designated groups;
- Identify information recovered during the hot site phase;
- Define the procedure for testing and ensuring the sustainability of this plan;
- Define the process of training contingency teams;
There lacks information on work design procedures. The article I could find related to work design procedures is outdated. According to this article by Suchman (1983), the set up of the office is a major determinant of the work design procedure for computer scientists. Therefore, work design procedure is regarded as a product of the office organization.
This article aims at describing office procedure as practical action. Work procedures are the outcomes to which the work of practitioners is oriented. The significance of any work procedure is determined by the workers depending on the particularities of the case in question. This study, however, does not indicate in what cases and when work procedures are appropriate.
References
Aon Risk Solutions & Aon esolution 2012, Global Risk Technology Survey 2012. Web.
Australian Government ComLaw 2012, Competition and Consumer Act, 2010. Web.
Clarke, J. 2011, “Australian Consumer Law (Cth)”, Australian Contract Law. Web.
Hollnagel, E. 1998, Cognitive Reliability and Error Analysis Method, Elsevier Science Ltd, UK.
Hopkins, A. 1994, “The limits of lost time injury frequency rates”, Positive performance indicators for OHS, Issue 1. Web.
Neyland, M. G., Hickey, J. E. & Edwards, L. 2009, “Safety and productivity at the Warra silvicultural systems trial”, Tasforests, vol. 18, pp. 1-15.
Suchman, L. A. 1983, “Office Procedure as Practical Action: Models of Work and System Design”, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, vol.1, no. 4, pp. 320-328.