Total Impact Valuation: Overview of Current Practices

Total impact valuation—the practice of quantifying and monetizing a company’s economic, social, and environmental impacts—has almost as many methodologies as it has companies engaging in the practice.

Document Highlights

BASF, Samsung, AkzoNobel, and the 11 other companies in our sample that have published the methodologies and results of their quantitative environmental and social impact analyses are trailblazers in a complex, emerging field that could play an important role in the future of company reporting. But in the absence of a standard methodology, the differences in valuation approaches make it unfeasible to compare company practices, or even to draw useful conclusions about an individual company’s results. Without a common language, total impact valuation risks remaining at best an immensely challenging, scattered practice, and at worst a self-serving, misleading instrument.