Don’t ask Novo Nordisk for the company’s corporate responsibility report. The Danish pharmaceutical firm, which had revenues of DKK 60.7 billion (US$10.5 billion) in 2010, doesn’t publish one. Instead, Novo Nordisk reports on its environmental and social performance – including water and energy consumption, waste reduction, employee turnover, the diversity of its management team, new patent filings and charitable donations – alongside its financial performance in a single annual report.

This integrated approach to reporting reflects the way business is done at Novo Nordisk, the world leader in diabetes care and the No. 1 firm on the 2012 list of Corporate Knights Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations. Novo Nordisk has pursued a triple bottom line of financial, social and environmental gains since the 1990s, when the phrase was coined by writer John Elkington, and it incorporated the concept into the company’s legal structure nearly a decade ago.

“The main foundation for Novo Nordisk is the triple bottom line because that is what’s protecting our license to operate,” says Lars Rebien Sorensen, the firm’s president and CEO. “That begs and obliges everybody in the company not only to see that we become a good business – that’s the financial bottom line – but that we do so in a way that is socially and environmentally responsible.”

Lise Kingo, who has worked on sustainability issues since joining Novo Nordisk in 1988, says the company’s business case for corporate responsibility goes well beyond protecting its license to operate. Today, she says, the firm envisions sustainability as a way to drive innovation, and finds that engaging with stakeholders helps spot business opportunities as well as avert trouble. One sign of the value that the company places on sustainability is the fact that Kingo, 50, has been part of Novo Nordisk’s five-person executive management team since 2002.

How, though, does the pursuit of the triple bottom line affect Novo Nordisk? Here are three ways: