When John Elkington popularized the triple bottom line concept for accounting companies’ performance more holistically, the notion of people, planet and profit – or the ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability – immediately caught the attention of business people, consultants and researchers. The only problem was: there is no tripple bottom line. With a bottom line you draw the net value of a balance sheet of whatever kind. You add and subtract the ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ and arrive at a bottom line value that tells you if there is more ‘good’ than ‘bad’ in your balance.… Read more
The risk and promise of business ethics
“The matter has a name: business ethics. And a secret, that is its rules. But my guess is that this matter belongs to the variety of phenomena like the raison d’etat or English cuisine that appear in the form of a mystery, because they have to keep secret that they do not exist.”*
When you look into the real world you can hardly find any substantial objection to Niklas Luhmann’s verdict. Quite on the contrary there is tantamount evidence that business behaves without any reference to ethics, not even to the ethics of rogues.… Read more
Economic Sustainability Revisited
When business people and management scholars speak of sustainability, they most often refer to the idea of a triple bottom line for planet, people and profit – sustainability as the integration of ecological, social and economic goals or dimensions. The focus of research, just as the activities of “sustainability managers”, is on calculating and evaluating ecological and social sustainability. Carbon footprinting, lifecycle analysis, employee motivation and human capital as an asset – these topics are often driving sustainability debates in companies.… Read more
Why monetize sustainability?
When talking about corporate responsibility, the issue of measurement comes up after a while. And rightly so, because if you cannot measure it you can hardly formulate goals, develop programs for implementation and evaluate your success in achieving them. But what is measured? The answer is simple: money. Regardless if you are trying to measure your company’s ecological or societal impact, most of the times you end up with calculating in Euro, Dollar, Pound and other currencies.… Read more
Lessons from Gothenburg
After returning from the 6th Lifecycle Management Conference in Gothenburg, where I delivered one of the keynotes dedicated to “Sustainability Beyond Growth”, I noticed that some of the talks and topics really stuck with me. Especially two presentations remain notable. One was from Danone and their new tools for calculating their Carbon Footprint in the supply chain. With their yoghurts they can now see perfectly clear that the “original producers” aka “the cows” are responsible for most of it.… Read more