Sustainability has become more and more important to the business and the community, the needs of sustainability reporting have been increased also. John Elkington coined an accounting framework in 1997, which called triple bottom line reporting (Vivian 2012). Generating profit is the traditional goal of the business, with triple bottom line reporting, the business not only need to present the economic value of the company, but also the environmental and societal issues (Timothy and Hall 2011).
In order to comply with the community expectation, the company should use the most relevant and common indicators, such as Global Reporting Initiative, to provide a good triple bottom line reporting to the public, because it is easier for them to compare
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If the company wants to prepare triple bottom line reporting, the relevant training should be provided by the business to the employee, this is time consuming and can be costly. The additional work on preparing the report may make the employee become stressful as they need to work within the limited time or work overtime. Is it worth for a company to have triple bottom line reporting actually?
According to the legitimacy theory, the company needs to show that they are working in accordance with the expectation of the society. Nowadays, the social contract has not only focused on the economic performance, but also the impact of the company’s activities on the environmental and social aspects. In order to comply with the need of the society, the triple bottom line reporting can disclose all the information that they need and showing that the business is meeting the expectations of the
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Furthermore, there are some benefits that can help the company to increase the market value. First of all, with the triple bottom line reporting, the business can improve the risk management through enhancing the management systems and the company can have better business planning as the risks are understood. Triple bottom line reporting helps to ensure the company is embedding the corporate governance and acts ethically not only on the Board level, but also on the whole company. Although it cost time to train the staff and need more time for the preparation work about the triple bottom line reporting, the staff and the shareholder may have more confidence on the business that the organization are focused on the social contract and ensure they survive in the coming future ethically (Department of the Environment and Heritage 2003).
Corporate social responsibility is embedded in the social contract and most of the company. In order to be a responsible company, they need to focus on people, environment and economy. Although the organizations need to spend more time on preparing the triple bottom line reporting, it is worth to spend it and it is not a waste. With triple bottom line reporting, it can show that the business is maintaining and have more legitimacy