A Social Emphasis to Triple Bottom Line Reporting of Corporate Sustainability Efforts

Abstract

Triple bottom line reporting tend to follow common approaches how it is done. There is rarely seen adapted or modified ‘bottom line’ approaches to specific market and societal characteristics in literature. The objective of this research note is to describe a ‘fivefold bottom line’ approach in implementing and reporting corporate efforts of sustainable business practices. The authors argues that insights from industry of implementing and reporting sustainable business practices based upon different corporate ‘bottom line’ approaches are required in literature. A lesson learned from the presented ‘fivefold bottom line’ approach to implement and report their corporate efforts of sustainable business practices is that it is adapted to fit and make sense in a specific market and society. The triple bottom line approach is usually derived from, or commonly based upon, a Western perspective on the market and society in literature. The authors propose that the ‘triple bottom line’ approach may need to be commonly adapted to the country and cultural context in focus, which is not normally done, but templates are used.