Patrick wrote:
>I was at a workshop recently when some research was quoted into an analysis
>of companies over the past 100 years or so, using full Triple Bottom Line
>concepts, and factors like you state in your response.  The
>conclusion of the research was that no company throughout this period would
>ever have made a profit had all activities been measured.  Perhaps
>something we might intuitively felt were we asked such a question.


One example of a company starting to think along these lines:

http://www.shell.com/royal-en/content/0,5028,25467-54531,00.html

Some cautionary excerpts:

"Shell has made it clear that it is not primarily a 'triple bottom line
laboratory'.  But, given that one key message in the feedback from external
stakeholders to date is that they support 'right-minded experimentation',
Shell might want to launch experiments in several different dimensions
simultaneously. So, for example:
* a vertical study of one business against a full range of social or
environmental indicators and metrics
* a horizontal study comparing several Shell business units against a
selection of triple bottom line indicators and metrics.
As such processes proceed, however, attention will also need to be focused
on methods of integrating and trading off performance, targets and
resources across the triple bottom line agenda."

.  .  .  "So, while there is clear enthusiasm for Shell's early-stage
experimentation with triple bottom line accountability, accounting and
reporting, many stakeholders see such corporate experiments as but one
element in a much larger picture. As a direct result, a central political
challenge of the early decades of the new century will be to evolve new
global governance structures and processes embodying such values - and
requiring all businesses (not just a few hundred 'good corporate citizens')
to deliver against them. Such issues should be addressed in the 1999 Shell
Report."

JT:  The report also offers a concise glossary of terms, including this one
of "triple bottom line accounting."  Of interest is the philosophical issue
raised in the third paragraph: the un-likelihood of ever achieving
something like a single scale value ("a single currency") for economic,
social, and environmental concerns:

"_Integrated triple bottom line accounting and reporting_:

"Integrated TBL accounting and reporting implies that the three measures of
value added are incorporated into a single, all-encompassing measurement.

"So, for example, economic value added measures would be adjusted for the
environmental and social dimensions. At the macro level, integration
efforts are already in existence - the Index of Sustainable Economic
Welfare (ISEW) adjusts normal measures of welfare by subtracting costs such
as those associated with unemployment, commuting, automobile accidents, and
all forms of environmental pollution.

"Such approaches imply moving towards a single set of accounts, but there
is as yet - and many would argue there is unlikely ever to be - a single
currency into which value added or destroyed in each of these three
dimensions can be assessed. For the moment, we intend to aim for
convergence, but recognise that different indicators will often need to be
assessed in different ways, sometimes quantitative, sometimes qualitative.

"The near-term challenge, then, will be to identify a limited set of key
performance indicators for each bottom line, with a constant eye on the
degree to which - and how - progress can be measured and integrated into an
overall set of accounts."

jt