Birthplace & Historical Archive of Multicapitalism & Context-Based Accounting

Context-based Reporting

Because of its focus on norms, standards, and thresholds for assessing the sustainability performance of organizations, context-based sustainability (CBS) has implications when it comes to measurement and reporting.  In particular, it requires that context-based metrics be used, and that performance be disclosed or reported in a context-based manner as well.

While most of the reporting done thus far under the context-based approach has been statistical in form, visual or graphical reporting is also possible and can be quite effective.  Early pioneers in this regard have included Rockstrom et al (2009), whose depiction of ecological thresholds in the form of ‘planetary boundaries’ more or less ushered in context-based visual reporting (see top image to the left).

And while Rockstrom et al’s focus was on ecological boundaries only, Kate Raworth at Oxfam (2012) later introduced a similar model, in which performance relative to both ecological boundaries and social foundations, or floors, were depicted in an integrated way (see middle image to the left).  This is very much in keeping with the way context-based sustainability views the subject – maximum thresholds for ecological impacts, and minimum thresholds for social and economic ones.

More recently, we at CSO have introduced a system that builds on both our own work and the innovations cited above to create a solution for visually reporting the sustainability performance of organizations.  The systems designed by Rockstrom et al and Raworth/Oxfam, by contrast, describe performance at a global or societal level, not an organizational one.

The tool we have developed is called the CBS Dashboard (see image below).  It is an implementation of context-based reporting that can be used to portray the sustainability performance of organizations – social, environmental, and economic – with thresholds explicitly shown.  At the present time, the Dashboard is a work in progress, and will be made accessible to the general public via this website for research, learning, and further development as it evolves.