I have written before about the increasing socialist idealism that is creeping into business culture, championing the concept of corporate social responsibility. The fashionable trend of promoting triple bottom line accounting where social and environmental responsibility is promoted above financial bottom line objectives is now edging into the business mainstream."Sustainable development" and "triple bottom line" is now common business speak. Political correctness taking precedence over core business principals has been gaining momentum over recent years, aided by a government with centralist social ideals. It is well known that our cultural Prime Minister Helen Clark has been a longtime avid supporter of the triple bottom line.
Eco-enthusiast Steven Tindall has previously demanded government legislation to back a requirement for triple bottom line reporting to be included in annual reports. There can be no doubt that Tindall’s call to action has a sympathetic ear.
In the long term there is the threat to businesses of a further layer of bureaucracy imposed by the government to appease their environmental and social ideals.
Nevertheless, for most business ultimately only the financial bottom line counts. And most still can't see the point of the demanding extra reporting which triple bottom line requires. Thankfully, the first duty of a business is to its shareholders and employees is to make a profit. The old-fashioned, one-dimensional financial bottom line must always take precedence. The failure to do so has its own serious social consequences.
