Balancing the Responsibilities of the Organization - Essay Example

The modern concepts that involve ethics in organizations encompass related issues to the triple bottom line, fair-trade, corporate responsibility amongst others (Savitz & Weber, 2006).

Business, non-profit, and governmental organizations have often been mentioning sustainability in their goals. However, measuring the extent to which business advocates for sustainable growth, or is being sustainable is quite difficult. In the mid-1990s, Elkington had to determine sustainability by trying to encompass new frameworks that measure the performance in Corporate America. The accounting outlines triumphs beyond the traditional measures of profits and return on investments. It also achieves shareholder’s value to incorporate the social and environmental dimensions. The framework is the Triple Bottom Line. Therefore, in focusing on the all-inclusive investment results, in which case, it includes the performance in the scope of people, profit, and the planet, the Triple Bottom Line reports become the vital tool that supports sustainability goals. It has had to enable the business and nonprofit organizations to adopt the Triple Bottom Line sustainability framework to enhance the evaluation of their performance. Such similar approaches have had the gain of currency with the governments at all levels (Elkington, 1997).

The concept that the triple bottom line demonstrates is that companies or organizations are responsible for all their stakeholders, in which case it should be by balancing the responsibilities of the organization. This might involve all that is part of the company whether indirectly or directly and the planet on which a human being lives. This approach of TBL observes the shareholders as part of the shareholder group, however, is only a part of it.

If I would conduct a cost/benefit analysis with respect to continuing to support the TBL, then I will come to draw some conclusions. One measures the accomplishment of the business in provisions of the economic performance. If the business generates some sufficient returns of finance, including from investments, operating activities, and financial activities, then the business becomes successful. The triple bottom line has had to take some criteria that assess the performance of the organizations, the economic, social, and environmental. By using the traditional method, and by basing the stakeholder's approach, one measures the inflow and the outflow of resources from the business, in which case it includes cash and the finances, the liabilities, the assets, and even the simplest definable business resources. This economic criterion will then determine the extent to which an organization generates monetary value. It determines also the net worth of business at some point in time, which is a significant benefit to the organization.

Measuring the social performance of the organization will be quite the difficult criteria. This criterion of the triple bottom line involves taking into account the influence of business on the people outside the business and those within the business. The principles of the triple bottom line on a business will play the role of benefiting the community and will ensure there is no exploitation of the people by the action of the business. Societal factors measured include the working conditions, labor utilization, and contributions to the community standards of living. On the benefits of the environment, it focuses on the influence on the natural environment. Triple bottom line organizations aim to improve the environment were reasonable, and decrease and edge the negative impact on the environment. Therefore, organizations ought to look into the noticeable environmental concerns and judge the life cycle influence on their services and products (Willard, 2002).

The use of the collective standard technique for calculating Triple Bottom Line does not exist, and neither is there a unanimously conventional standard for the measures that compromise the exact of the three TBL categories. In this, one can view it as a strength because it allows the user to acclimatize the general framework to the desires of various entities, different geographic boundaries, and various projects or policies. All the local governments and business agencies might gauge the sustainability of the environment in similar terms, for instance, to reduce the amount of solid waste leading into landfills. However, the limited mass transportation might be measuring success in the form of passenger miles, with a for-profit bus company measuring success in the form of earnings per share. In addition, Triple Bottom Line maybe a project-specific and allows a broad scope. This implies it measures the impacts across large geographical boundaries or even some small geographical towns. Therefore, the level of the entity, the geographical scope, and the project will help in driving the decisions about how the measures might be included (Henriques & Richardson, 2012).

In conclusion, the triple bottom line concept, which was under the development of John Elkington, has had to change the way nonprofit organizations, businesses, and governments measure the performance and sustainability of policies and projects. The suppleness of the Triple Bottom Line enables organizations to relate the concept in a way that is in line with their needs. This is beyond the establishment of measuring sustainability on the three fronts, in which case it includes the profits, the planet, and the people. However, there exist challenges in putting the TBL into some practice. Such challenges involve the measuring of the three categories and the finding of the applicable data. It also includes the calculation of the plan or policy’s involvement in sustainability. On the other hand, the framework of Triple Bottom Line enables organizations to appraise the consequences of their decisions from the truly long-run perspective (Dhiman, 2008).