The Triple Bottom Line: the People, the Planet, and the Profits

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Profit: Organizational Viability Considerations and Recommendations
A business is formed primarily to profit its founders and employees. As part of the 3BL, profit is a co-equal consideration with business impacts on the planet and people. However, profit is the only of the three that is essential to the operation of the business; if the business is not making profit, then the next-best-case scenario is that the business is breaking even. That means that the business is stagnant and unable to invest in expansion and development without cutting jobs or reducing product costs. And of course, the worst case scenario is that the business is losing money, and its days are numbered. Therefore, profit is the only one of the 3BLs that needs to be maintained in order to keep the business running. A business can ignore its commitments to people and the planet and still continue operations. However, it is necessary for the business to maintain the other components of the 3BL in order to be truly successful.
Maintenance of profit is a balancing act. The business must ensure that corporate profit drawn from the community balances the profits that the community draws from the corporation. In other words, the company must be a benefit to the community as much as the community is a benefit to the company. The biggest benefit that a company provides to a community comes in the form of jobs and employment; a company hires members of a community and pays them a decent wage, which in turn drives economic growth in the community. This benefit must be in balance with the benefit that the company gets from the workers; in other words, if a company benefits from productive, skilled employees and makes very large profits, the employees would be ...

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...dations of a business, and without managing them effectively, a business can find itself falling behind in the marketplace. The Triple Bottom Line creates a three-tiered focus for the company to work towards. If a company commits to maintaining the Triple Bottom Line, then the company makes a commitment to remain viable and in-touch with the ever-changing marketplace.

References
Freeman, R. E., & Stewart, L. (2006). Developing ethical leadership. Business Roundtable,1(1), 1-13.
Heskett, J. (2008, February 1). How sustainable is sustainability in a for-profit organization? Retrieved from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5834.html
Mattila, M. (2012, December 6). Sustainability reporting and the law: practical considerations for avoiding liability. Retrieved from http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/12/sustainability-reporting-law-practical-considerations-avoiding-liability/

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