Within the social sector, or those that are concerned about their footprint, there seems to be a lack of definitions and criteria. I've talked a bit about this, in some past posts, in relation to nonprofits, but does this hold true for triple bottom line businesses as well?
So in this quest to find some measurable criteria, I first looked up Wikipedia's definition of triple bottom line, which locates the concept in a set of values that measure organizational success based on profit, environment, and social. Yes, this is what it is, but I'm not answering the question with such a definition, am I? The question then becomes, how? How are you measuring organizational success in the environment and socially (profit's easy--net gain or loss).
From a bit of research, it does seem as though there are some firms that are instating accounting reports and measures. Here is Ernst and Young's method for reporting a company's sustainability efforts:
The problem with this is that it's very company specific--it focuses on defining, for a specific company, the ways in which it may develop it's own sustainability practices, as opposed to a way for everyone to recognize good sustainability practices. Is it possible to sum up your social and environmental performance to arrive at a defensible, coherent bottom line?
GreenBiz.com featured an article titled "Adapting Your Accounting Practices to Triple Bottom Line Reporting". They, too, talk about each company developing it's own concept of standards as they relate to: percentage of materials used that are wastes, direct energy use segmented by primary source, standard injury lost days, absentee rates and fatalities, as well as including such peformance indicators as total recycling and reuse of water to help calculate profit, for example. Is there, though, a sense that one can understand it's positioning in relationship to profit and environmental and social benefit? Or is it fairly subjective?
I will keep searching, but as of right now I can find no explicit standards defining success in environmental and social "profitability". There is a general sense of how businesses should conduct themselves, but there are no real standards or definitions. Much seems to be based upon each company's unique strucutre and position within the marketplace. So. More later.
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