Triple Bottom Line Issues

The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework measures an organization's performance financially, socially, and environmentally. However, it has issues such as the difficulty in combining the three distinct accounts of people, profit, and planet, lack of clarity on responsibility for each aspect, and exclusion of time, which makes it challenging to develop short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals.

Triple Bottom Line Issues
Triple bottom line is the framework of accounting which contains three aspects i.e.
environmental, social and financial. The first bottom line is related to the company’s profit and
loss statement. The second bottom line is related to the account of people of an organization. The
third bottom line is related to the account of planet i.e. how much the organization is
environmentally responsible. The motive of triple bottom line is to measure the performance
financially, socially and environmentally ("The Economist - World News, Politics, Economics,
Business & Finance," 2016).
The major issue with the triple bottom line is that the three distinct accounts i.e. people, profit,
and the planet cannot be added easily together. It is nearly impossible to measure the accounts of
the people and planet in terms of cash i.e. profit. For example, the cost of spillage of a tanker of
oil cannot be measured in terms of monetary aspects. The triple bottom line is very rigid to use,
and it is very important to make it flexible by using the conceptual framework of responsiveness.
The visual representation of the triple bottom line is sometimes misguided and gives the huge
value of conceptual. The issue in triple bottom line doesn't give a clear idea about who is
responsible for which aspect. The triple bottom line only includes three aspects i.e. people,
profit, and planet but it doesn't include the important aspect i.e. time. As it is the very important
aspect for the organizations (Alhaddi, 2015). The triple bottom line doesn’t include the aspect of
time, so it becomes difficult for the organizations to develop short term, medium term, and long-
term goals.

REFERENCES
Alhaddi, H. (2015). Triple Bottom Line and Sustainability: A Literature Review. Business And
Management Studies, 1(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/bms.v1i2.752
The Economist - World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance. (2016). The Economist.
Retrieved 4 October 2016, from http://www.economist.com/