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The triple bottom line is an accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental and economic. Some organizations have adopted the TBL framework to evaluate their performance in a broader perspective to create greater business value. Business writer John Elkington claims to have coined the phrase in 1994.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) or corporate social impact is a form of international private business self-regulation which aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature by engaging in, with, or supporting professional service volunteering through pro bono programs, community development, administering monetary grants to non-profit organizations for the public benefit, or to conduct ethically oriented business and investment practices. While once it was possible to describe CSR as an internal organizational policy or a corporate ethic strategy similar to what is now known today as Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG); that time has passed as various companies have pledged to go beyond that or have been mandated or incentivized by governments to have a better impact on the surrounding community. In addition, national and international standards, laws, and business models have been developed to facilitate and incentivize this phenomenon. Various organizations have used their authority to push it beyond individual or industry-wide initiatives. In contrast, it has been considered a form of corporate self-regulation for some time, over the last decade or so it has moved considerably from voluntary decisions at the level of individual organizations to mandatory schemes at regional, national, and international levels. Moreover, scholars and firms are using the term "creating shared value", an extension of corporate social responsibility, to explain ways of doing business in a socially responsible way while making profits.
Governance is the overall complex system or framework of processes, functions, structures, rules, laws and norms borne out of the relationships, interactions, power dynamics and communication within an organized group of individuals which not only sets the boundaries of acceptable conduct and practices of different actors of the group and controls their decision-making processes through the creation and enforcement of rules and guidelines, but also manages, allocates and mobilizes relevant resources and capacities of different members and sets the overall direction of the group in order to effectively address its specific collective needs, problems and challenges. The concept of governance can be applied to social, political or economic entities such as a state and its government, a governed territory, a society, a community, a social group, a formal or informal organization, a corporation, a non-governmental organization, a non-profit organization, a project team, a market, a network or even the global stage. Governance can also pertain to a specific sector of activities such as land, environment, health, internet, security, etc. The degree of formality in governance depends on the internal rules of a given entity and its external interactions with similar entities. As such, governance may take many forms, driven by many different motivations and with many different results.
The United Nations Global Compact is a non-binding United Nations pact to get businesses and firms worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. The UN Global Compact is the world's largest corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiative, with more than 20,000 corporate participants and other stakeholders in over 167 countries. The organization consists of a global agency, and local "networks" or agencies for each participating country. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society.
Sustainability reporting refers to the disclosure, whether voluntary, solicited, or required, of non-financial performance information to outsiders of the organization. Sustainability reporting deals with qualitative and quantitative information concerning environmental, social, economic and governance issues. These are the criteria often gathered under the acronym ESG.
The Global Reporting Initiative is an international independent standards organization that helps businesses, governments, and other organizations understand and communicate their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights, and corruption.
ISO 26000:2010 Guidance on social responsibility is an international standard providing guidelines for social responsibility. It was released by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on 1 November 2010 and its goal is to contribute to global sustainable development by encouraging business and other organizations to practice social responsibility to improve their impacts on their workers, their natural environments and their communities.
Societal responsibility of marketing is a marketing concept that holds that a company should make marketing decisions not only by considering consumers' wants, the company's requirements, but also society's long-term interests.
The chief sustainability officer, sometimes known by other titles, is the corporate title of an executive position within a corporation that is in charge of the corporation's "environmental" programs. Several companies have created such environmental manager positions in the 21st century to formalize their commitment to the environment. The rise of the investor ESG movement and stakeholder capitalism, has increased the need for corporations to address sustainability and social issues across their value chain, and address growing needs of external stakeholders. Normally these responsibilities rest with the facility manager, who has provided cost effective resource and environmental control as part of the basic services necessary for the company to function. However, as sustainability initiatives have expanded beyond the facility — so has the importance of the position to what is now a C-level executive role. The position of CSO has not been standardized across industries and individual companies which leads it to take on differing roles depending on the organization. The position has also been challenged as symbolic, in that it does not actually have the effect of increasing sustainable practices.
Sustainability metrics and indices are measures of sustainability, using numbers to quantify environmental, social and economic aspects of the world. There are multiple perspectives on how to measure sustainability as there is no universal standard. Intead, different disciplines and international organizations have offered measures or indicators of how to measure the concept.
Sustainability accounting originated in the 1970s and is considered a subcategory of financial accounting that focuses on the disclosure of non-financial information about a firm's performance to external stakeholders, such as capital holders, creditors, and other authorities. Sustainability accounting represents the activities that have a direct impact on society, environment, and economic performance of an organisation. Sustainability accounting in managerial accounting contrasts with financial accounting in that managerial accounting is used for internal decision making and the creation of new policies that will have an effect on the organisation's performance at economic, ecological, and social level. Sustainability accounting is often used to generate value creation within an organisation.
Creating shared value (CSV) is a business concept first introduced in a 2006 Harvard Business Review article, Strategy & Society: The Link between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. The concept was further expanded in the January 2011 follow-up piece entitled Creating Shared Value: Redefining Capitalism and the Role of the Corporation in Society. Written by Michael E. Porter, a leading authority on competitive strategy and head of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, and Mark R. Kramer, of the Kennedy School at Harvard University and co-founder of FSG, the article provides insights and relevant examples of companies that have developed deep links between their business strategies and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Porter and Kramer define shared value as "the policies and practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing social and economic conditions in the communities in which it operates", while a review published in 2021 defines the concept as "a strategic process through which corporations can turn social problems into business opportunities".
A socially responsible business (SRB) is a generally for-profit venture that seeks to leverage business for a more just and sustainable world. The objective of the SRBs involves more than just maximizing profits for the shareholders; it is also about creating positive changes and making valuable contributions to the stakeholders such as the local community, customers, and staff. In other words, the SRB is both profit-oriented and socially responsible as these companies seek to make financial gains, and at the same time, aim to improve the well being of the community. In doing so, the businesses engage in the voluntary initiatives with the aims of improving in various areas ranging from the social to environmental aspects of the society.
Traditionally, market orientation (MO) focuses on microenvironment and the functional management of an organisation. However, contemporary organisations have widened their focus to incorporate more roles, functions and emphasis on the macro environment. Firms have been concerned with short run success and often not taken into account the long-run ecological, social and economic effects from their activities. Despite growth in the MO concept, there is still a need to reconceptualise the concept with a greater emphasis on external factors that influence a firm.
Multistakeholder governance is a practice of governance that employs bringing multiple stakeholders together to participate in dialogue, decision making, and implementation of responses to jointly perceived problems. The principle behind such a structure is that if enough input is provided by multiple types of actors involved in a question, the eventual consensual decision gains more legitimacy, and can be more effectively implemented than a traditional state-based response. While the evolution of multistakeholder governance is occurring principally at the international level, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are domestic analogues.
India's National Voluntary Guidelines on Social, Environmental and Economic Responsibilities of Business (NVGs) were released by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) in July 2011 by Mr. Murli Deora, the former Honourable Minister for Corporate Affairs. The national framework on Business Responsibility is essentially a set of nine principles that offer businesses an Indian understanding and approach to inculcating responsible business conduct.
Social accounting is the process of communicating the social and environmental effects of organizations' economic actions to particular interest groups within society and to society at large. Social Accounting is different from public interest accounting as well as from critical accounting.
Bekeme Masade-Olowola is a Nigerian social entrepreneur, a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – the world's leading sustainability impact measurement and reporting standards body – and the Chief Executive of CSR-in-Action, a group made of a consulting firm, a think tank and a training institute dedicated to corporate social responsibility, policy development, advocacy, empowerment and sustainable development in the region.
Corporate environmental responsibility (CER) refers to a company's duties to abstain from damaging natural environments. The term derives from corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Corporate political responsibility (CPR) is a corporate responsibility concept that emphasizes the political dimension of a company's actions. The concept was developed in the 2010s as an enhancement of existing frameworks such as Corporate Social Responsibility. CPR regards the social and ecological aspects underlined by CSR as inherently connected to the political, thus highlighting the interdependence of business activities with the public realm, societal institutions and collective goods.
References
- 1 2 Jeffery, Neil (July 2009). "Stakeholder Engagement: A Road Map to Meaningful Engagement" (PDF). The Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility, Cranfield School of Management. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 April 2015.
- ↑ Ziafati Bafarasat, A. and Baker, M. (2016) Building consensus for network power? Some reflections on strategic spatial planning in the North West region of England, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 34(5), pp.900-926.
- ↑ "Stakeholder Engagement: A Good Practice Handbook for Companies Doing Business in Emerging Markets" (PDF). International Finance Corporation. May 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 January 2009.
- ↑ Torelli, Riccardo; Balluchi, Federica; Furlotti, Katia (2019-07-22). "The materiality assessment and stakeholder engagement: A content analysis of sustainability reports". Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management. 27 (2): 470–484. doi:10.1002/csr.1813. ISSN 1535-3958. S2CID 199740313.
