RIT 2009 Symposium Workshop Summary: Multiple-Bottom-Line Thinking
May 20, 2009 by Brian Butler and | Filed under: Multiple-Bottom-Line Thinking [4]
Workshop objective:
To address the need for a change by presenting a relational view of the corporation based on the strategic value of the linkages with stakeholders and its implication in terms of corporate performance evaluation and reporting system.
Discussion:
- Going beyond the traditional management tools, the triple bottom line agenda is not enough to achieve a full corporate social responsibility (CSR) evaluation and reporting.
- The sustainability of the corporations depends on their relation with the stakeholders (including the natural environment).
- It is not possible to reduce the complexity of the international and large size corporations and their interactions into just monetary measurements.
- A need for a new evaluation and reporting system is required.
- It is crucial to work on managerial tools capable of monitoring and tracking from a qualitative and quantitative viewpoint the overall corporate performance and to address the internal and external stakeholders as well.
- The sustainability evaluation and reporting system (SERS) include the following:
o The social report
o The environmental report
o The overall reporting system
o The integrated information system
o A set of integrated performance indicators
- The integrated reporting system needs to work off a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) according to the specific stakeholders of a particular corporation.
In this way, according to the relational view of the corporation, the SERS methodology enables a corporation to manage the stakeholder relationships and address the information needs and the sustainability concerns of the various stakeholder groups. This will also build an assessment framework to assess the sustainability of the corporation.
The triple bottom line is a great model especially when companies make it available to their customers like e3 Bank has done. Check them out at http://www.e3bank.com they give interest rate reductions to customers who invest in green products.