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The Organizational and Operational Boundaries of Triple Bottom Line Reporting: A Survey

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Abstract

This article responds to Gray’s (2002) call for normative research on social and environmental accounting (SEA) and Parker’s (2005) call for active engagement in the process of designing SEA systems. More specifically, our investigation focuses on the study of boundary setting for triple bottom line (TBL) reporting, an issue that has been given more attention by practitioners than by researchers. The study reviews the consequences of boundary setting for the discharge of organizational accountability, from which it develops a framework to investigate TBL reporting boundaries and then reports on an empirical survey of best practice. It concludes that organizations are strategically setting and disclosing their boundaries instead of discharging their accountability and argues that such strategies have far-reaching consequences, because reporting boundaries are not only reflective of organizations but also have a constitutive role in their definition. A further consequence is that it calls into question the use of voluntary labeling, such as “in accordance” with Global Reporting Initiative; one implication being that further research into technical developments in TBL reporting could contribute to the discharge of organizational accountability.

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Acknowledgments

Comments received from participants at the V RICSMA (Barcelona, 2005), the 29th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association (Dublin, 2006), and two reviewers are gratefully acknowledged. We are also thankful to Antony Price for having edited the English language version of this paper. The Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia) (projects SEC2003-04438 and SEC2006-03959 and FPU programme) provided financial assistance for this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Gestión de Empresas, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Campus de Arrosadía s/n, 31006, Pamplona, Spain

    Pablo Archel

  2. Departamento de Economía y Administración de Empresas, Universidad de Burgos, Plaza Infanta Elena s/n, 09001, Burgos, Spain

    Manuel Fernández & Carlos Larrinaga

Authors
  1. Pablo Archel
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  2. Manuel Fernández
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  3. Carlos Larrinaga
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Correspondence to Carlos Larrinaga.

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Archel, P., Fernández, M. & Larrinaga, C. The Organizational and Operational Boundaries of Triple Bottom Line Reporting: A Survey. Environmental Management 41, 106–117 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-007-9029-7

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