The Triple Bottom Line: A Critical Review from a Transdisciplinary Perspective |
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Authors: | Ozgur Isil Michael T Hernke |
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Institution: | 1. Kania School of Management, University of Scranton, Scranton, PA, USA;2. Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA |
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Abstract: | The triple bottom line (TBL) has reformed management discourse by making sustainability part of the business agenda, yet increasingly the TBL has evolved into a proxy for sustainability, often visually depicted as the mutual maximization of economic, social and environmental dimensions. We use a sentiment analysis to show that the extant literature views the TBL favorably and uncritically, with only 8% of academic studies invoking the term negatively. Next, based on extant management literature, we show that two core assumptions underpin the TBL metaphor: win–win and firm‐level sustainability. Then we employ a transdisciplinary comparative analysis to contrast these assumptions with two ecological perspectives: strong sustainability and nested hierarchy. By drawing extensively from the literature of ecologically grounded sciences, our study contributes a critical evaluation of the TBL paradigm of sustainability. |
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Keywords: | sustainability triple bottom line sustainable development transdisciplinary ecology |
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