Final answer:
The triple bottom line approach includes financial, environmental, and social performance measures, focusing on a sustainable economy.
Step-by-step explanation:
The three components of the triple bottom line approach to corporate accounting include financial, environmental, and social performance measures. The triple bottom line is a framework or theory that recommends that companies commit to focus on social and environmental concerns just as they do on profits.
The phrase 'triple bottom line' is credited to John Elkington who coined it in 1994. The approach is increasingly used to measure the performance and responsibilities of organizations towards a more sustainable global economy.
n traditional business accounting and common usage, the "bottom line" refers to either the "profit" or "loss", which is usually recorded at the very bottom line on a statement of revenue and expenses. Over the last 50 years, environmentalists and social justice advocates have struggled to bring a broader definition of bottom line into public consciousness by introducing full cost accounting.
For example, if a corporation shows a monetary profit, but their asbestos mine causes thousands of deaths from asbestosis, and their copper mine pollutes a river, and the government ends up spending taxpayer money on health care and river clean-up, how can we capture a fuller societal cost benefit analysis? The triple bottom line adds two more "bottom lines": social and environmental (ecological) concerns.