reporting refers to an extension of the accounting standards of businesses that also
includes information on the environmental and social impacts of their activities.
Several standards have been developed for this and some, like the Global
Reporting Initiative, have become widely influential reference frameworks.
Campaigns have been launched to make the entire approach obligatory and comprehensive, rather than a voluntary and selective endeavor. These campaigns have
also sought transparency on lobbying behavior and a higher degree of accountability, which should involve sanctions for corporations violating certain standards.
None of these initiatives, however, have gone as far as to address the general
purpose of corporations and business in society. Triple bottom line accounting is
about slowly reducing so-called externalities—social and environmental costs—in
the process of making profits. This is different from the 2009 initiative on the
Economy for the Common Good or Gemeinwohlökonomie. It starts from the system
view that the overall challenge of societies of thinking and aspiring individuals is to
find a balance between community responsibility and individual freedom. Neither
functions without the other. Individuals need to cooperate to flourish and build
wealth, and the community needs creative deviators in order to keep on diversifying
and adapting.
Some of the uninformed criticism of the Common Good Economy rejects the
‘communist’ ideology behind it. But Christian Felber, the leading proponent of this
movement, sees the path toward sustainability as lying in reconnecting private
entrepreneurship with the overall goal of the common good. Common good as an
output goal can only be defined in democratic political processes, and private
entrepreneurship can, if a business is run correctly, contribute to that common good.
We see that the definition and possible redefinition of ends to which an economy
should contribute are put center stage. This is unlike the mainstream economic view
in which ‘more growth’ is the single abstract pole star.
The website ecogood.org chronicles some historical references to the common
good as an overarching goal for societal development and also puts forward 20
principles or ideas for what putting that into practice could look like. None of these
are seen as fixed rules but are meant to inspire reflection and dialogue on the values,
norms and practices that status quo solutions nurture or even prescribe.
With this starting point, status quo solutions are judged to incentivize egoism,
greed and striving for power, and to reward those who behave most effectively
toward egotistical, greedy or power-hungry ends. What are called ‘competition
rules’ have lost almost all of the com, the Latin word for ‘together’ or ‘we.’ They
are all about ‘I’ and ensure that winners take pretty much all, while making even
hostile takeovers of entirely healthy businesses feasible. The result is a constant
incentive for asocial behavior and a structural driver of the concentration of wealth
and power, because successful, attacking units are better prepared for the next
round of what should be called ‘contrapetition.’
The goal of the movement and the 20 proposed principles are thus “more
intelligent rules of the game.” The first expresses the overall mission purpose:
4.1 Pioneering Businesses: Common Good Matrix and Balance Sheets
123
includes information on the environmental and social impacts of their activities.
Several standards have been developed for this and some, like the Global
Reporting Initiative, have become widely influential reference frameworks.
Campaigns have been launched to make the entire approach obligatory and comprehensive, rather than a voluntary and selective endeavor. These campaigns have
also sought transparency on lobbying behavior and a higher degree of accountability, which should involve sanctions for corporations violating certain standards.
None of these initiatives, however, have gone as far as to address the general
purpose of corporations and business in society. Triple bottom line accounting is
about slowly reducing so-called externalities—social and environmental costs—in
the process of making profits. This is different from the 2009 initiative on the
Economy for the Common Good or Gemeinwohlökonomie. It starts from the system
view that the overall challenge of societies of thinking and aspiring individuals is to
find a balance between community responsibility and individual freedom. Neither
functions without the other. Individuals need to cooperate to flourish and build
wealth, and the community needs creative deviators in order to keep on diversifying
and adapting.
Some of the uninformed criticism of the Common Good Economy rejects the
‘communist’ ideology behind it. But Christian Felber, the leading proponent of this
movement, sees the path toward sustainability as lying in reconnecting private
entrepreneurship with the overall goal of the common good. Common good as an
output goal can only be defined in democratic political processes, and private
entrepreneurship can, if a business is run correctly, contribute to that common good.
We see that the definition and possible redefinition of ends to which an economy
should contribute are put center stage. This is unlike the mainstream economic view
in which ‘more growth’ is the single abstract pole star.
The website ecogood.org chronicles some historical references to the common
good as an overarching goal for societal development and also puts forward 20
principles or ideas for what putting that into practice could look like. None of these
are seen as fixed rules but are meant to inspire reflection and dialogue on the values,
norms and practices that status quo solutions nurture or even prescribe.
With this starting point, status quo solutions are judged to incentivize egoism,
greed and striving for power, and to reward those who behave most effectively
toward egotistical, greedy or power-hungry ends. What are called ‘competition
rules’ have lost almost all of the com, the Latin word for ‘together’ or ‘we.’ They
are all about ‘I’ and ensure that winners take pretty much all, while making even
hostile takeovers of entirely healthy businesses feasible. The result is a constant
incentive for asocial behavior and a structural driver of the concentration of wealth
and power, because successful, attacking units are better prepared for the next
round of what should be called ‘contrapetition.’
The goal of the movement and the 20 proposed principles are thus “more
intelligent rules of the game.” The first expresses the overall mission purpose:
4.1 Pioneering Businesses: Common Good Matrix and Balance Sheets
123