A Balance Sheet for Intergenerational Equity: Accounting for Sustainable Communities

Paper prepared for the 2011 European Accounting Association Annual Conference (Rome, Italy, April 2011) And for American Accounting Association Annual Conference (Boulder, Colorado, USA in August 2011)Gross Domestic Product is a touchstone for growth and prosperity. However, this calculative practice is now dissonant with current natural resource depletion and social strife. The institutionalized social practice of NEA on which GDP is based, privileges flows over stocks under the untenable assumption that the stocks to fuel the flows are infinite. Various models of Genuine Progress Indices have been developed to better proxy community wealth to improve policy-making. Although some models monetize many of the natural, social and economic indicators, the values are not recorded on a balance sheet. If the core of intergenerational equity is community-asset maintenance and the mainspring in accounting is assets, a balance sheet to monitor community wealth is obligatory. A pilot methodology and balance sheet are proposed, and valuation techniques are illustrated using the case of Cancún's marine parks, vital to the economic and social fabric of the surrounding community.N

You might not believe so, but think again…

The loss of important tax revenues has serious social and environmental consequences for Caribbean and Latin American countries that look to tourism to raise them out of poverty and provide employment. International tourism engenders inequalities with grave consequences. International corporations lure governments into subsidizing expensive infrastructure with the promise of creating instant employment for thousands of workers. But the truth lies elsewhere, perhaps in a tax havenN

The Case of the Banff-Canmore Corridor

The aims of this study are: • To define operationally, measure reliably and monetize relevantly social sustainability. • From the model developed, measure the current state of the Banff-Canmore Corridor’s (BCC) social sustainability. • From the results, determine the impediments to improving social sustainability in the Banff-Canmore Corridor such as offering workers’ living wages. • Last but not least, identify the long-term community benefits of a living wage to workers in a locality.YesMITACS, LiUN

Tourism policy research: avenues for the future

International Journal of Tourism Policy, 3(1), 2010 http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=31601&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or © Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Article deposited according to publisher policy posted on Sherpa/Romeo, August 22, 2011.Combining an understanding of past achievements with a more critical review of the meta-theoretical assumptions on which each research endeavour is based, helps to highlight gaps and contradictions suggesting bridges to future research. Similar to other areas of business research, tourism research cohorts generally coalesce into one of three perspectives within funtionalism: economics, systems or political economy. Each perspective arrives at correlative conclusions. Few tourism policy researchers have employed phenomenology and such research has been conceptual. Future research would benefit from a triangulation of perspectives combining qualitative with quantitative methods to explicate and generalize the values and processes driving policy outcomes.Ye

Evolution of Social Institutions in the Journey Towards Sustainability: The Case of the Galápagos Islands

Uploaded with permission from the University of Calgary Latin American Research Centre, granted July 4, 2012.Two hundred years after the birth of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution was influenced by the Galápagos Islands, we investigate the myriad of institutions that influence the domain’s governance. We provide insight into the complex web of economic, environmental, and social factors that result in a lack of clear direction and thus lead UNESCO to list the Islands as “at risk” in the past. Using institutional theory, with specific interest in competing logics or differences in senses of place among the major organizational populations in the Islands, we investigate the context in which the Islands exist. Several forces, both positive and negative, are driving change, and despite attempts to achieve equilibrium in the Islands, governance is in constant flux due to high turnover among key personnel in the organization populations. Instability and lack of continuity exist not only in the domain but also within the organizational populations themselves.N