Triple Bottom Line Reporting

ACCA P4考試：Triple Bottom Line Reporting

The phrase was coined by John Elkington, co-founder of the business consultancy SustainAbility. It is an expanded baseline for measuring performance.

Triple bottom line accounting attempts to measure and report corporate performance against economic, social and environmental benchmarks in order to show improvement or to make more in-depth evaluation.

It can be viewed as:

a reporting device (e.g. information presented in annual reports); and/or

an approach to improving decision-making and the activities of organisations (e.g. by providing tools and frameworks for considering the economic, environmental and social implications of decisions, products, operations, future plans).

Advantages

Makes transparent the organisation's decisions that explicitly consider effects on the environment and people, as well as on financial capital.

More informed decision-making as decision-makers can quantify tradeoffs between different aspects of sustainability.

Improved relationships with key stakeholders and improved riskmanagement through consultation.

Specific commercial advantages (e.g. competitive advantage with customers suppliers and providers of finance).

Enhancement of reputation and brand. May result in attracting and retaining employees with sustainable values.

Disadvantages

There are currently few standards for measuring these effects.

Usefulness and comparability, as there is a significant range of disclosure (content and quality).

The difference between the economic bottom line and the financial bottom line is often blurred.

Increase in annual reporting costs with disproportionate costs for smaller entities.

Potential exposure to risk and liability relating to the reliability of the report's content (unless audit is mandatory).

Potential bias in voluntary presentation (e.g. including only favourable information).