Vision Core · Object

Responsibility

The organisation’s effect on people, society and the environment, and what it is prepared to commit to about that effect — stated plainly enough for someone outside to check.

The term

What it is

Every organisation has effects beyond its transactions: on the people who make and use what it sells, on the places where it operates, on the climate and on the materials it draws from. Responsibility is the object where those effects are named, weighed and turned into commitments the organisation is prepared to be held to.

It sits in the Vision Core because it describes the kind of organisation this one is trying to be — part of the few things it will not trade. The purpose names whom the organisation exists to serve; this object covers everyone its activity reaches, including people it never chose to serve.

Sustainability and business ethics have their single home here. The legal minimum and its controls sit in Compliance, and the board and the enterprise risk register sit in Governance. This object begins with what the organisation owes beyond those, and with what it says publicly about how it is doing.

Why it earns a place

What goes wrong without it

01

Impacts exist whether or not anyone assesses them

An effect nobody has named still falls on someone. Naming it early is cheaper than meeting it for the first time in a journalist’s question or in a customer’s tender requirements.

02

A commitment without a baseline cannot be kept or broken

A target stated as a percentage of an unrecorded starting point can be met by moving the start. The baseline is what turns an aspiration into something that can be checked.

03

Credibility is lost in the gap between claim and evidence

Much of the damage in this area comes from statements that ran ahead of what the organisation could show. Saying less, and being able to support all of it, is a considered position in its own right.

One level in

The modules within responsibility

Four working areas. The first establishes which effects matter, the second commits to something about them, the third governs conduct where the law is silent, and the fourth says publicly how it is going.

  1. Impact and materiality

    Which of the organisation’s effects matter, judged in two directions: its impact on people and the environment, and the financial effect those issues have on the organisation in return.

    Learn

  2. Commitments and targets

    What the organisation commits to about its material impacts, against a recorded baseline, with interim milestones and a named owner — the point where intention becomes something that can be missed.

    Learn

  3. Ethics

    How people are expected to act where the law is silent or permissive: the conduct standards, the dilemmas already worked through, and what happens when someone raises a concern.

    Learn

  4. Disclosure

    What the organisation states publicly about its sustainability impacts, commitments and progress, and the evidence behind each claim. Sustainability-specific; statutory accounts and general stakeholder reporting have their own homes.

    Learn

Across the framework

What it touches

  • PurposeStakeholder rationale in Purpose names whom the organisation exists to serve, and core values hold what it has declared it will not trade. This object covers everyone its activity affects and turns those values into conduct standards.
  • ComplianceCompliance holds the legal minimum and the controls around it, including any legal duty to report on sustainability. Ethics here starts where the law stops asking.
  • GovernanceThe board’s oversight and the enterprise risk register sit in Governance. Climate and other sustainability risks found by the materiality assessment are registered there, not here.
  • Supply ChainSourcing owns how suppliers are chosen and managed. The conduct expected of them is set in Ethics, and their impacts are assessed within the value-chain boundary here.
  • StakeholdersStakeholder reporting covers what each group is told in general. Disclosure here is limited to the sustainability statement and the claims made within it.
  • FinanceFinancial reporting owns the statutory accounts. The sustainability statement sits beside them and has to reconcile with them where the two touch the same numbers.
  • Brand CoreEnvironmental and social claims in marketing draw on the claim substantiation file here; the brand narrative carries them, it does not originate them.

Beyond the framework

Models worth knowing here

The Omnigoal says where this belongs and what it touches. It does not tell you how to think about it — other people have done that, and done it well. These are theirs.

  1. The triple bottom line

    John Elkington · 1994

    Also known as People, planet, profit, TBL

    Account for a company’s social and environmental results as seriously as its financial ones.

    The phrase asks that performance be judged on three lines rather than one. Elkington’s own later reflection is the most useful part: he argued that it had been reduced to an accounting exercise for balancing trade-offs, when it was meant to provoke a deeper rethink of what business is for.

    Reach for it when
    When responsibility is reported as a set of good deeds unconnected to how the business actually operates.
    Where it stops
    There is no common unit across the three lines, so they cannot be netted against one another, and the framework invites reporting without change. Its originator has said as much.

    John Elkington, “Towards the Sustainable Corporation”, California Management Review, 1994; Cannibals with Forks, Capstone, 1997; “25 Years Ago I Coined the Phrase ‘Triple Bottom Line.’ Here’s Why It’s Time to Rethink It”, Harvard Business Review, 2018.

  2. Doughnut economics

    Kate Raworth · 2012

    Also known as The doughnut

    A good economy stays above a social foundation of basic needs and below an ecological ceiling set by the planet.

    Between the shortfall of unmet human needs and the overshoot of planetary limits lies a safe and just space, and the aim is to operate within it rather than to grow without reference to either. Applied to a company, it asks two questions at once: what the business contributes to people’s basic needs, and what it takes from the natural systems everyone depends on.

    Reach for it when
    When responsibility is framed only as reducing harm, or only as doing good, and the two need to be held in view together.
    Where it stops
    It was framed for economies and cities, and translating it to one company is not straightforward. It sets boundaries but does not say how to trade off between them when a business sits close to both.

    Kate Raworth, “A Safe and Just Space for Humanity”, Oxfam Discussion Paper, 2012; Doughnut Economics, Random House Business, 2017.

  3. Theory of change

    Carol H. Weiss · 1995

    Spell out, step by step, why the things you do should lead to the change you want to see.

    Weiss observed that initiatives were hard to evaluate because the assumptions linking their activities to their intended outcomes were never stated. Writing out the chain — this activity leads to that result, which leads to this change, on these assumptions — makes each link testable, and shows where the reasoning is weakest before money is spent on it.

    Reach for it when
    When a company claims a social or environmental impact and cannot explain how its activities are supposed to produce it.
    Where it stops
    A well-drawn chain can give a false sense of certainty about causes in a complicated world. It is a statement of belief to be tested, not evidence that the impact happened.

    Carol H. Weiss, “Nothing as Practical as Good Theory: Exploring Theory-Based Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families”, in New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives, Aspen Institute, 1995.

  4. Double materiality

    European Commission; developed in EFRAG’s reporting standards · 2019

    A sustainability matter is material if it affects the company’s finances, or if the company significantly affects people and the environment — either is enough.

    Conventional materiality looks from the outside in: what could change the company’s value. Double materiality adds the view from the inside out: what the company does to the world. The practical consequence is that a company cannot leave out a serious impact simply because it does not yet cost the company anything.

    Reach for it when
    When deciding what a responsibility report must cover, and when the list of priorities contains only the issues that threaten revenue.
    Where it stops
    Assessing impact is judgement-heavy, and the process can become a compliance exercise that ranks topics without changing decisions. It governs what is reported, not what is done.

    European Commission, Guidelines on Non-Financial Reporting: Supplement on Reporting Climate-Related Information, 2019; Directive (EU) 2022/2464 (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive); European Sustainability Reporting Standards developed by EFRAG, 2023.

  5. Right-versus-right dilemmas

    Rushworth M. Kidder · 1995

    The hardest ethical choices are not between right and wrong but between two things that are both right.

    Kidder distinguished temptations, where one option is plainly wrong, from genuine dilemmas, where two sound values collide. He found that most such dilemmas fall into a few recurring tensions — honesty against loyalty, the individual against the community, the short term against the long term, justice against mercy — and that naming which tension is at stake makes the choice discussable rather than a matter of who argues hardest.

    Reach for it when
    When a responsibility decision is being framed as a question of integrity, and both sides of the room believe they are the ones defending it.
    Where it stops
    It clarifies the dilemma; it does not resolve it. The resolution principles it offers can point in different directions, and the decision still has to be owned by someone.

    Rushworth M. Kidder, How Good People Make Tough Choices, William Morrow, 1995.

  6. The GRI Standards

    Global Reporting Initiative · 2000

    Also known as Global Reporting Initiative

    A widely used common structure for reporting an organisation’s impacts on the economy, the environment and people.

    The standards set out which impacts to consider, how to decide which are significant, and how to disclose them, with topic-specific standards for areas such as emissions, labour and anti-corruption. Their orientation is towards impact — what the organisation does to the world — which makes them a natural partner to the inside-out half of double materiality.

    Reach for it when
    When a company starts reporting on responsibility and has no agreed structure, and when stakeholders ask for figures that can be compared with other companies.
    Where it stops
    A complete report is not the same as responsible conduct, and extensive disclosure can bury what matters. The standards govern how impacts are described, not whether they are acceptable.

    Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, 2000; GRI Standards, 2016; revised Universal Standards, 2021. GRI is named here only to refer to its published work.

  7. Science-based targets

    Science Based Targets initiative (CDP, UN Global Compact, WRI and WWF) · 2015

    Also known as SBTi, Science Based Targets initiative

    Set emissions targets by what climate science says is needed, not by what seems achievable from where the company stands.

    The initiative publishes criteria for corporate greenhouse-gas targets consistent with limiting warming, and validates targets that meet them; its net-zero standard added long-term targets and limits on relying on offsets. The shift is in the reference point: the target is derived from the required outcome and worked backwards, rather than extrapolated forwards from current plans.

    Reach for it when
    When a climate commitment has been set as a round number with no stated basis, and when customers or investors ask whether a target is credible.
    Where it stops
    It covers emissions only, and its rules — particularly for the supply chain and for offsets — are contested and revised. A validated target is a commitment, not a result.

    Science Based Targets initiative, founded 2015 by CDP, the UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute and WWF; Corporate Net-Zero Standard, 2021. The initiative is named here only to refer to its published criteria.

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

Every model in the framework, and where each one belongs

Ask which public statement about responsibility the organisation could not currently support with a document. That statement is where the work starts.

The other objects in the Vision Core

Vision Statement

The future state the organisation is working towards — far enough away to be worth the effort, and specific enough that someone could tell whether it had been reached. Of purpose, vision and mission, it is the only one with a finish line.

Learn

Mission Statement

What the organisation actually does now, for whom and to what end, written so that the people doing it would recognise their own week in it. Purpose says why the organisation exists; the mission describes what it is doing about that now.

Learn

Culture

The lived pattern of assumptions and norms — who the organisation is when nobody writes it down. It is read from what is rewarded, tolerated and repeated rather than from the values on the wall.

Learn
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