Evaluation has traditionally been a public sector activity. In the private sector economic and financial
criteria have been used almost exclusively to measure performance. The increasing attention paid to
corporate social responsibility (CSR), ie the responsibility of organisations for relationships with
various stakeholders is changing this. Effective management of CSR demands monitoring, measuring
and reporting of performance against generally accepted indicators. The purpose of this paper is to
evaluate the triple bottom line performance of corporations within the banking sector in Australia,
with a particular focus on corporate social responsibility performance. It explores the link between
corporate financial performance (CFR), corporate environmental performance (CER) and CSR
performance. Section one provides a brief introduction to the study. Section two discusses the impact
of CSR on shareholder value and the value of the firm. Section three considers ways and means of
evaluating CSR within the Australian banking sector. Section four describes the data, method and
evidence of performance against evaluation criteria. Finally, section five provides a summary and
conclusions. Limitations in the analysis and directions for future research are explored in this final
section.