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Mark McElroy

Mark McElroy

Founder / Executive Director
Center for Sustainable Organizations

Mark W. McElroy, Ph.D. is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Organizations and the original developer of the Context-Based Sustainability method.

Mark W. McElroy, Ph.D. is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Organizations and the original developer of the Context-Based Sustainability method. He is also co-founder of Thomas & McElroy LLC, creators of the MultiCapital Scorecard, and a veteran of management consulting including time spent at Price Waterhouse, KPMG and Deloitte Consulting. Dr. McElroy is co-author of 'The MultiCapital Scorecard - Rethinking Organizational Performance' (Chelsea Green, 2016), and also teaches in the 'MBA in Managing for Sustainability' program at Marlboro College in Vermont.

Mark McElroy is tagged in 43 assets. Page 1 of 3.
Article
Finance & Investment
Happy Birthday, GRI — Time Now to Put the Horse Before the Cart
Happy Birthday, GRI — Time Now to Put the Horse Before the Cart
Published on November 13, 2019
About a 9 minute read

The timing is right for taking concrete steps to standardize a set of generally accepted triple-bottom-line accounting principles, and for making GRI and other reporting standards stronger than they’ve ever been before. ... View More

Article
Finance & Investment
SustainAccounting Launches World’s First Triple Bottom Line Certification
SustainAccounting Launches World’s First Triple Bottom Line Certification
Published on May 17, 2019
About a 3 minute read

At the heart of the Certified TBL program is its advocacy of multicapital- and context-based Triple Bottom Line accounting, still new to most organizations but rapidly emerging as the gold standard for measurement and reporting. ... View More

Article
Finance & InvestmentSurfacing Submerged Value
Future Value, Submerged Value, 'ROP' & Other Facets of the ROI of Sustainability
Future Value, Submerged Value, 'ROP' & Other Facets of the ROI of Sustainability
Published on November 7, 2018
About a 22 minute read

Last week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of... View More

Article
New Metrics
#NewMetrics18: The ROI of Sustainability Strategy — and 6 Ways to Get There
#NewMetrics18: The ROI of Sustainability Strategy — and 6 Ways to Get There
Published on November 5, 2018
About a 16 minute read

Last week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share their latest tools and findings regarding measuring the risks an... View More

Article
New Metrics
#NewMetrics18: Dos, Don'ts, Tools and Topics Critical to Sustainability Communication
#NewMetrics18: Dos, Don'ts, Tools and Topics Critical to Sustainability Communication
Published on November 5, 2018
About a 18 minute read

Last week at Sustainable Brands’ New Metrics ’18 conference in Philadelphia, PA, over 300 delegates from brands, NGOs, strategists and practitioners across sectors gathered to share the newest credible tools and solutions for assessing the ROI of... View More

Article
Finance & Investment
Move Over, Sustainability Accounting: Here Comes Purpose Accounting
Move Over, Sustainability Accounting: Here Comes Purpose Accounting
Published on July 23, 2018
About a 9 minute read

Everyone’s heard of financial performance, asset performance and sustainability performance. Now comes purpose performance, a new measure of organizational performance that assesses impacts relative to the voluntary commitments organizations make t... View More

Article
New Metrics
How to Try Context-Based Sustainability in 3 Easy Steps
How to Try Context-Based Sustainability in 3 Easy Steps
Published on December 11, 2017
About a 10 minute read

At the closing of the New Metrics '17 conference in Philadelphia last month, attendees were asked: “What ‘New Metric’ will you go back and implement in 2017/2018?” The overriding response tabulated in real time and displayed on the big scree... View More

Article
New Metrics
Is It Possible That GRI Has Never Really Been About Sustainability Reporting at All?
Is It Possible That GRI Has Never Really Been About Sustainability Reporting at All?
Published on November 7, 2017
About a 7 minute read

September marked the fifth anniversary of a public comment that I and 65 other members of the Sustainability Context Group submitted to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in the run-up to G4. ... View More

Article
New Metrics
Can Performance Reporting for Different Companies Be Both Context-Based and Comparable?
Can Performance Reporting for Different Companies Be Both Context-Based and Comparable?
Published on October 3, 2017
About a 7 minute read

One of the hallmarks of context-based sustainability (CBS) as an approach to performance accounting in business is that it features the use of organization- or company-specific metrics. Indeed, a basic tenet of CBS is that no two organizations are ex... View More

Article
New Metrics
Companies Committed to Sustainability But Which Rely on Old-Economy Metrics Will Never Get There from Here
Companies Committed to Sustainability But Which Rely on Old-Economy Metrics Will Never Get There from Here
Published on August 16, 2017
About a 8 minute read

A close friend and colleague of mine, Joe Firestone, once pointed out that along with new conceptions of the world (i.e., new paradigms) come corresponding requirements for new measurement models. We simply cannot measure things in old ways when the ... View More

Article
Finance & Investment
Why Monetization Should Not Be Used for Sustainability Accounting
Why Monetization Should Not Be Used for Sustainability Accounting
Published on June 18, 2017
About a 8 minute read

I have over the years developed a rule of thumb or criterion for assessing the efficacy of sustainability measurement and reporting methods that goes something like this: If it is possible for an organization to perform “well” according to the pr... View More

Article
New Metrics
Introducing Aggregate Capital Sufficiency (ACS) – A New Alternative to GDP
Introducing Aggregate Capital Sufficiency (ACS) – A New Alternative to GDP
Published on March 7, 2017
About a 6 minute read

The question remains of how best to assess the sustainability of whole economies. If existing measurement models such as GDP, ISEW and GPI focus on size or welfare, then we need a third class of models – one that makes it possible to measure the su... View More

Article
New Metrics
With the Changing of the Guard at the IIRC, a Challenge to Richard Howitt
With the Changing of the Guard at the IIRC, a Challenge to Richard Howitt
Published on January 23, 2017
About a 6 minute read

Update: Read Richard's response here. ... View More

Article
New Metrics
With King IV, Multicapitalism Goes Mainstream
With King IV, Multicapitalism Goes Mainstream
Published on November 10, 2016
About a 8 minute read

Last week, the Institute of Directors South Africa (IoDSA) released the King IV Report on Corporate Governance, the long-awaited update to King III, published in 2009. As most readers here will know, South Africa has been a leader in corporate sustai... View More

Article
New Metrics
New Evidence Bolsters Claims of Connectivity Between CSR and Market Caps
New Evidence Bolsters Claims of Connectivity Between CSR and Market Caps
Published on March 7, 2016
About a 8 minute read

Last August, I published an article here in which I described what, to me, is the most compelling business case for corporate sustainability or CSR extant: the fact that it literally drives the market values of publicly traded firms up or down in mea... View More

Article
New Metrics
At Last, a Business Case for CSR That Even Milton Friedman Could Love -- The Sustainability Effect!
At Last, a Business Case for CSR That Even Milton Friedman Could Love -- The Sustainability Effect!
Published on August 28, 2015
About a 11 minute read

Way back in 1962, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously proclaimed, “… there is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits …” And whil... View More

Article
New Metrics
Science- vs. Context-Based Metrics – What’s the Difference?
Science- vs. Context-Based Metrics – What’s the Difference?
Published on May 25, 2015
About a 6 minute read

As the importance of measurement and reporting in sustainability continues to grow, it should be helpful, I think, to clarify the distinction between so-called science- and context-based metrics. These terms are not synonymous, although they do overl... View More

Article
New Metrics
Multicapitalism and the Two Faces of Integrated Reporting
Multicapitalism and the Two Faces of Integrated Reporting
Published on February 27, 2015
About a 8 minute read

If ever there was an auspicious moment in performance measurement and reporting, this is surely it. Multicapitalism has arrived! Listen to how author Jane Gleeson-White puts it in her terrific new book, Six Capitals, or Can Accountants Save the Pla... View More

Article
New Metrics
Does Monetization Equal Integrated Reporting?
Does Monetization Equal Integrated Reporting?
Published on October 24, 2014
About a 8 minute read

By now, most readers of these pages will have noticed the emergence of social and environmental monetization schemes intended to quantify in financial terms the otherwise non-financial impacts of organizations. But do these schemes really qualify as ... View More

Article
New Metrics
Ben & Jerry's Pilots the MultiCapital Scorecard™ Method
Ben & Jerry's Pilots the MultiCapital Scorecard™ Method
Published on September 16, 2014
About a 5 minute read

Way back in 2000 when Ben & Jerry’s (B&J) was acquired by Unilever, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield had the presence of mind to require that the acquisition agreement itself include language that would ensure the preservation and growth of t... View More

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