Performance Management, Impact Measurement, and the Sustainable Development Goals: The Fourth Wave of Integrated Social Accounting

Integrated social accounting places social and environmental performance alongside financial performance. In the history of social accounting, it is possible to identify four waves of integrated social accounting statements: corporate social responsibility (1970s), triple bottom line (1990s), standardized reporting (2000s), and today, with the popularization of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, standardized goals. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a common language and shared purpose for a multitude of actors, spanning networks, organizational types, and geographical levels. To illustrate the fourth wave of integrated social accounting, this article(1) proposes an integrated social accounting model that focuses organizational attention on the internal and external impacts of an organization's activities through the lens of the SDGs.