Systematic Review - Network for Business Sustainability

eports or as social and environmental indicators
reported alongside the financial indicators in an annual
report.
In Practice
Bendigo Bank does not produce a separate
triple bottom line report as it believes that
TBL reporting is a natural outcome of its
business rather than an imposed structure.
Its annual report details the progress and
outcomes of the community engagement
initiatives. Adapted from Stubbs and Cocklin
(2008: 114).
In Practice
The German sportswear company Puma
is leading the way in transparency and
disclosure of its external costs to society.
It measures, evaluates and publishes data
on its carbon emissions, freshwater usage,
pollution and waste. The unique aspect of
this exercise is that Puma has measured
and monetized these impacts, calculating
them along its entire supply chain. It
has effectively created the world’s first
environmental profit-and-loss statement.
Although Puma disclosed an estimated
€145 million (US$182 million) in such
externalities for 2010, the revelation was far
from the public relations disaster that some
had predicted. The firm is now using what
it learned to engage its raw materials and
manufacturing supply chain (which is where
almost 95 per cent of these externalities
arise) to improve its environmental
performance. Source: Sukhdev (2012: 27).
Some sustainability reporting has been criticized for
bias and self-laudatory “greenwashing” (Bos-Brouwers,
2010b), but limited evidence suggests that firms that
commit to transparent and integrated sustainability
reporting have better sustainability performance
(Sardinha, Reijnders & Antunes, 2011). Embedding
sustainability metrics with financial reporting integrates
sustainability as a core concern for organizations’ chief
financial officers (CFOs), though a globally accepted
standard for peer-to-peer and industry benchmarking
remains elusive. 5. Exploit organizational slack
Organizational slack refers to organizational resources
in excess of the minimum necessary to produce a given
level of organizational output (Nohria & Gulati, 1996).
Ironically, despite the implied waste associated with
this concept, firms may use slack to build SOI cultures.
Slack can enable the following benefits:
• Market research through environmental surveys
• Speculative market testing of eco-labelling
products
Innovating for Sustainability 43