Talk:Triple bottom line/Archives/2012

Reporting TBL is more important than individual outcomes
It's interesting that all of the arguments against TBL listed in the article focus on the net value above the bottom line (i.e. 'profit' in the case of the financial bottom line), not on the importance of the reporting itself.

It is okay, utilizing agreed upon reasoning and justifications (which are always situational and dynamic), for particular entities to display deficits within certain bottom lines (e.g. the Red Cross showing no profit, or an oil company in 2005 showing a net deficit in greenhouse gas emissions), however availability of this information to shareholders, contributors, members of voluntary organizations, the general public, etc., to enable informed decision making (just as in financial reporting), is the crux of TBL.

Article's quality
I think this article contains some outdated notions. for example:

1) some of the "arguments against" miss the point on TBL: a) the problem with "force businesses to take responsibilities outside their area of expertise" or "business should not be expected to take on concerns outside its core expertise." is that every business does take responsibilities outside their area of expertise. Business have the responsibility to keep their books in order, and they can do it with an in house or external accountant. Same goes for being socially and environmentally responsible: there a guidelines, and certifications available to help a business choose the best way to minimize its impact on the environment and there are also VERY traditional standards to help business decide what constitutes fair working standards. TBL proposes an EXTENSION of these responsibilities related to non-core activities. It does not propose that businesses replace their core competency with profit + how to be good to the environment + how to be fair to workers. it is asking businesses to be good to the environment + be fair to workers in your pursue of profit. b) "it makes it difficult for businesses to recognize the benefits of using TBL for the company, itself" TBL is not about benefiting the company itself - it is about benefiting the world we live in. it looks to bring some responsibility for the common good into the character of the corporation.

2) the "Arguments in favor" section doesnt mention the major traditional economists who have sided with TBL. it mentions TBL as an idea of the fringe "green party" crowd.

3) I believe it is a very poor article as it stands. It confuses the MEASUREMENT issues (which are rapidly becoming of greater interest to many organisations)with the POLITICAL issues of who should do what. It fails to mention capturing the cost of externalities (one of the main objectives of TBL) but talks of getting a "free ride" (which is politically charged). It describes what "TBL companies" will not do (such as overfishing and destruction...) implicitly excluding the exploitative industries from the measurement process. All activities should be capable of applying a rigourous TBL process. If the Hicksian principle of economic capital maintenance is the basis for calculating "profit", then it would be conceptually consistent to apply the same principle to the maintenance of society and the environment. However, many problems exist around defining and measuring social capital and environmental capital. There is room for an article along these lines, discussing the many practical difficulties of MEASUREMENT. Please remove the emotional and political language that hinders serious attempts to develop objective TBL metrics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikid4change (talk • contribs) 11:30, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This being a wiki, "please do this" requests are frequently not acted upon. It's often more expedient to make the changes yourself. --Cyber cobra (talk) 11:37, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Criticisms are poorly thought out at best
"Support for the concept of the triple bottom line itself is said to be an example of the choices available to the citizens of a society made wealthy by businesses attending to business." This statement makes a huge assumption that old structures remain necessary. In science, older models acted as the scaffolding for new models. The old models were factually wrong. An atom doesn't look the way we were taught in high school, physics isn't completely deterministic, thermodynamics is just a crude approximation, etc. Just because this old method worked for a while, doesn't mean it's correct, and doesn't mean it's where we should settle.

The environmental and economic fallout from our current mode of doing business is logically clear. The practices encouraged by the TBL model would sidestep many of the current ills that are making increasingly more trouble for us here in America. Companies don't tend to offer comprehensive, matched retirement plans anymore, which greatly decreases employee loyalty in these enterprises, and tends to lead to lower quality from there. Less employee loyalty means lower quality for everyone. It seems to guarantee higher turnover rates, which means that more time is wasted on training new employees (for example). The current attitude encourages waste and inefficiency, which should be something that every company strives to minimize.

Similar to their unwillingness to treat their workers well, large companies often hire large teams of lawyers to find and exploit loopholes in tax law so that they can pay significantly lower taxes than they should owe. This decrease in tax revenue is making it harder and harder to maintain, let alone expand, our nation's infrastructure. Whether you're talking about maintaining roads, levees, schools, or any other publicly-funded project, the results are the same. By weaseling out of paying taxes, they are failing to support the infrastructure that has been essential in supplying them with skilled workers. This has lead to high-tech companies hiring skilled workers from other nations because American workers don't have the skills/attitude desired.

Simply put, to believe that our economic systems don't affect our social and environmental systems is completely naive, and in clear denial of reality. If they're linked in reality, then those organizations need to be required to behave as though they are. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.234.27 (talk) 16:08, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

UN and ICLEI Citations
Article says "With the ratification of the United Nations and ICLEI TBL standard for urban and community accounting in early 2007, this became the dominant approach to public sector full cost accounting," but I can't find any reference on the United Nations or the ICLEI site to substantiate the claim of such ratification. Can anyone else? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Whitaksm (talk • contribs) 23:43, 8 August 2010 (UTC) I didn't find the direct source saying it, but did find a UN paper from 2011 stating it in paragraf 37. http://www.unep.org/delc/Portals/119/industrryRoleOfIndclean.pdf is that good enough as a source? Anyway have posted it now.