ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING AND SHAREHOLDER STRUCTURE IN THE CASE OF ROMANIAN COMPANIES

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The Improvement Process of the Romanian Educational Accounting System Toward a Global Economic Environment

Through this paper we intend to disclose our actual research project focused on evaluation of the actual stage of Romanian academic accounting education in order to support the national university reform which has began in 2005. The research is meeting the international trends oriented to improve the academic process of accounting graduates. In this way, by determine a correlation degree between international trends: globalization, regionalization and the evolution of Romanian accounting system and by evaluation of the actual stage of Romanian accounting academic system from the point of view of actors involved (graduates, teachers and employers) we intend to determine the connection between the appliance of public requirements with the actual level of graduates’ professional knowledge. Then we will offer constructive solutions, empiric validated, which will help the accounting graduates in their way to accounting profession. The research is interdisciplinary and its originality is give by the pioneering work performed at national level by the research team who is developing such a theoretical and practically complex approach.accounting education, professional development, academic education, accounting profession

DRAWING UP THE FINANCIAL BUDGET IN THE CASE OF A PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION COMPANY

The drawing up of the companies’ budget represents one of the mostimportant instruments through which is accomplished an efficieny management, theevaluation of companies’ performances and personnel motivatio. Public localtransportation companies usually use budgets as comparison benchmarks for theperformances they obtain in their current activity. These bidgets represent anessential part in the unfolding of each company’s activity. This paper presents thedrawing up of the financial budgets with a public local transportation company,referring to the drawing up of purchase budgets, investments budgets and cash flowsbudgets.financial management, budget, financial budget, profit center

The Improvement Process of the Romanian Educational Accounting System Toward a Global Economic Environment

Through this paper we intend to disclose our actual research project focused on evaluation of the actual stage of Romanian academic accounting education in order to support the national university reform which has began in 2005. The research is meeting the international trends oriented to improve the academic process of accounting graduates. In this way, by determine a correlation degree between international trends: globalization, regionalization and the evolution of Romanian accounting system and by evaluation of the actual stage of Romanian accounting academic system from the point of view of actors involved (graduates, teachers and employers) we intend to determine the connection between the appliance of public requirements with the actual level of graduates’ professional knowledge. Then we will offer constructive solutions, empiric validated, which will help the accounting graduates in their way to accounting profession. The research is interdisciplinary and its originality is give by the pioneering work performed at national level by the research team who is developing such a theoretical and practically complex approach

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING AND SHAREHOLDER STRUCTURE IN THE CASE OF ROMANIAN COMPANIES

Because environmental reporting remains voluntary on an international scale, there are major difference in terms of quality and quantity of environmental information, reported by entities from varied sectors and countries. The literature identifies factors like public exposure, entities legitimacy, laws and regulation, characteristics of the company (management, size, profitability etc), culture as the main factors that could determine environmental reporting (Lee and Hutchinso, 2005). Within this study, I have focused on environmental reporting and I have analyses factors related to corporate governance characteristics, such as shareholder structure, in order to identify the existence of certain associations between the shareholder structure and the level of environmental reporting. The paper represent an empirical analyzes on how shareholder structure might explain the level of environmental reporting in the case of Romanian companies listed at Bucharest Stock Exchange. The sample consist in 64 entities listed at Bucharest Stock Exchange in the first, second and third tier from 10 areas of activity that may impact the environment: agriculture, forestry and fishing; the extractive industry; the manufacture industry; production and supply of electricity, thermal energy, gas, water; water distribution, sanitation, managing waste, recyclable materials recovery activities; construction; transport and storage; food industry, hotels, restaurants; the repair, retail, maintenance and installation of machinery and equipment; printing and reproduction of recorded media. I suggest a model comprising shareholder structure: percentage owned by families, percentage owned by institutional investors, percentage owned by private investors, percentage owned by foreign investors, percentage owned by board members, percentage owned by management members as factors that could explain environmental reporting. As future research we will test this model on companies listed with the London Stock Exchange. I conclude that the presence of foreign shareholders help increasing transparency maybe because they are more expose to the public and maybe because foreign investors need more relevant information’s regarding environmental performance. Companies where the percentage of the shares owned by the state is higher report more on environmental aspects maybe because the state wants to give examples of good transparency. The paper contributes to the development of the research in the field of environmental reporting and corporate governance in the case of Romanian companies and shows that foreign ownership and state ownership influence the level of environmental disclosure

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING AT INTERNATIONAL LEVEL (STUDY OF THE LITERATURE)

One of the most important areas of development during the last 15 years, as far as accounting is concerned, has been the environmental reporting and accounting, generating interests beyond the restrictions imposed by purely academic discussions or the professional accountants community. The objective of the paper is represented by the analysis of scientific knowledge and existing practices in the area of environmental reporting. Mathews (1997, 2001) and Parker (2005) are one of the most representative studies that examine the evolution and status of researches in the area of accounting and environmental reporting. Because of the fact that reports offered by the traditional financial accounting system are insufficient for reflecting a clear and complete image of the company's environmantal impact, I monitored the frameworks or mechanisms of environmental information. Also, the paper analysis the articles treating international environmental reporting, articles publised in ISI quoted or BDI indexed journals. The collection and analysis of reporting frames, the interpretation and analysis thereof represent the main instruments used in order to bring to the forefront the main existing reporting frames for environmental information, found at international level. The quantitative, applicative research is used to reflect the current status of researches in the field of environmental reporting, using the non-participative observation to reflect the current status of researches in the field of environmental reporting, by using the non-participative observation, the collection and analysis of articles as main research instruments. The study concludes that environmental reporting continues to represent the main attraction of researchers in the field of environmental accounting. The main reason for researches on environmental reporting is represented by the description, investigation and improvement of practices on accounting and reporting environmental impacts. Although the complexity of researches and existing international and European reporting frameworks have contributed to creating the required premiss for introducing the environmental accountability international standards and regulations, they delay their appearance. The study add value to the existing literature in the field of environmental reproting by presenting and analysing environmental reporting frameworks and important papers that analysis environmental raporting practices

CONCEPTUAL DELIMITATIONS ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable development is a model for resource use meant to satisfy human needs, without polluting the environment, so that these needs can be satisfied not only in the present, but in the future as well. It is a concept of nowadays with no generally accepted definition, placing environment first and foremost, aiming at implementing the environmental policies in all structures and at all economic levels. Within the present study we have aimed at creating a conceptual delimitation on sustainable development, sustainability and socialresponsibility, concepts of present interest, that tend to become a mystery for the academic community and practitioners by their variety and complexity of approaches. During our scientific endeavor we believe that social responsibility is the foundation of sustainable development. Sustainable development is a concept used especially at macro-economic level, while social responsibility is used at entity level and incorporates the economic, environmental and social dimension, which has a voluntary character and tries to respond to the information needs of the society and other stakeholders. Sustainability at the entity\'s level is the goal or final objective of sustainable development – satisfaction of present needs without compromising the possibility for future generations to satisfy their own needs, while social responsibility is an intermediate phase of sustainability wherein entities try to balance the economic, social and environmental dimension. Thus, we can state we include ourselves within social corporatism, slightly close to social institutionalism, which is characteristic to developed countries, giving a particular importance to social contract and relations between entity and society. We believe that in Romania, a POSDRU funded project should be regarded as a legal person with social values, which must be based on sustainable development and to promote, besides legal liability of automatically deriving legal contract, social responsibility, which resulting from its relationship with society in which it is implemented, and within these relations, environmental protection represent a major social responsibility of any kind of project

Environmental Reporting and Good Practice of Corporate Governance: Petroleum Industry Case Study

AbstractBecause environmental reporting remains voluntary on an international level, there are major differences in terms of the quality and quantity of environmental information, reported by entities from varied industries and countries. Starting from the agency theory, the company is accountable for the decision to report environmental information, decision which is made by the management to serve for the best interest of the shareholders (Buniamin et al., 2011: 56). Within this study, we would therefore focus on certain factors related to the entity's internal characteristics, consisting mainly in how the entity is managed, in order to identify if good corporate governance practices explain the voluntary environmental reporting. The research is conducted as an empirical study which explains how the disclosure of environmental information varies across the largest entities operating in the petroleum industry and reflects factors that could account for these variations. The paper identifies the corporate governance characteristics such as the percentage of independent directors and the existence of an environmental committee as factors that explain the variation in environmental information disclosure. We conclude that in order to secure the transparency of environmental performance within a company, the board should ensure a sufficiently number of independent members able to exercise an independent reasoning for solving potential conflicts of interests. Also, the environmental committee monitors the company's activity in terms of its environmental impact, bringing about increasing transparency regarding the environmental aspects. We can therefore consider that implementing good corporate governance practices by establishing environmental, safety or responsibility committees that monitor the environmental impact of the company and introducing a sufficient numbers of directors ensuring transparency and objectivity can solve the agency's theory conflict and determine companies to report more voluntary information regarding their environmental performance and other aspects. The paper contributes to an understanding of the correlations between corporate governance practices and voluntary environmental reporting