A crooked stool: The rhetoric of the triple bottom line

Abstract

The triple bottom line (TBL) is a popular model used to introduce the basic sustainability concept that social and environmental concerns deserve consideration alongside economic concerns, especially for businesses. Despite its best intentions, however, the TBL fails to resolve central tensions between the economic bottom line and environmental and social priorities, resulting in a fatally flawed model. The TBL inherently privileges economic accounting, which is reliably measurable, over social and environmental accounting, which are more complicated and contestable.