ABSTRACT
For a firm’s stakeholders to build and maintain corporate trust, the firm must “prove” that it is consistent with its decisions and actions related to corporate sustainability. Firms must demonstrate to stakeholders that their commitment to sustainability issues is sincere by providing goals and objectives related to corporate sustainability, as well as whether the firms have achieved these goals. By presenting a triple bottom line approach of measuring its financial, social, and environmental performance, the firm can give the necessary information to its stakeholders for a comprehensive evaluation of its operations. Firms also need to demonstrate that their actions comply with rules and regulations established by internal and external monitoring mechanisms. In this chapter, some of the concepts that are presented include: triple bottom line; benefit corporations; the UN Sustainability Development Goals; reputation risk management; corporate governance; the board of directors; social and environmental accounting; and corporate sustainability reporting. The chapter begins with how Levi Strauss is using the triple bottom line to measure its performance and concludes with a discussion of how Novozymes is using the UN Sustainable Development Goals in order to reach both its financial and non-financial goals.
