AccountAbility 1000: a new social standard for building sustainability

The pressing need to build common frameworks to redefine the performance and sustainability of organisations, has led to the development of a new standard, AccountAbility 1000 (AA1000). AA1000 is a quality framework that aims to make clear how principles of accountability and sustainability are related and complementary. Accountability is founded in democracy and is also the principle used as the basis of financial and other forms of accounting, auditing and reporting. In accountability’s relationship to sustainability, however, there has been little clarity. Sustainability – defined broadly by the concept of the triple bottom line – is underpinned by three forms of accountability: social‐ethical, environmental and economic accountability. With the introduction of a new social standard AA1000, the difficult‐to‐bridge gaps within the sustainability debate – between morality and science, measurement and performance, inclusion and exclusion – are addressed using a model of accountability. AA1000, it is argued, represents an innovation for sustainability by linking the development of accounting, auditing and reporting of sustainability with the need to create legitimacy for outcomes, through a process of stakeholder engagement and inclusion