Achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:An enabling role for accounting research

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to establish and advance the role of academic accounting in the pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are regarded as the most salient point of departure for understanding and achieving environmental and human development ambitions up to (and no doubt beyond) the year 2030. Design/methodology/approach: This paper provides a synthesis of interdisciplinary perspectives on sustainable development and integration of this with the accounting for sustainability literature. In addition, potential accounting research contributions are proposed so as to support the development of new research avenues. Findings: Existing research in accounting that is relevant to individual SDGs serves as an initial link between them and the accounting discipline. At the same time, the SDGs focus highlights new sites for empirical work (including interdisciplinary investigations) as well as inviting innovation in accounting theoretical frameworks. Moreover, the SDGs provide a context for (re)invigorating accounting’s contribution to sustainable development debates. Originality/value: This is the first paper to explore the roles academic accounting can play in furthering achievement of the SDGs through enhanced understanding, critiquing and advancing of accounting policy, practice and theorizing. It is also the first paper to propose a research agenda in this area. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

Craft and sustainable development:reflections on Scottish craft and pathways to sustainability

To date, the majority of studies on pathways to sustainability have neglected or under-explored the possibilities that the crafts and craftsmanship represent for sustainability. Yet both craft and sustainable development are intricately connected with the way human beings create and interpret life; with culture and social relations; with use of and relationship with natural materials; and with livelihood and broader economic opportunities. In this paper, based upon data from Scotland, we study the theoretical and practical intersections between craft and sustainable development and analyse some of these mutual contributions in the area of building resilient of community; alternative concepts and models of the economy, and education for sustainable development

Disclosure on climate change : analysing the UK ETS effects

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Advancing research into accounting and the UN sustainable development goals

Purpose – This paper introduces a special section devoted to accounting scholarship that addresses the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and has three purposes. First, we explore the puzzle of a relative absence of accounting related scholarship that address the SDGs. Second, the papers within the special section are introduced and located within streams of existing research and practice. Third, the paper then suggests framings, approaches and/or conditions under which we might see more accounting scholarship in support of advancing the SDGs. Design/methodology/approach – A structured review of publication patterns in accounting journals over the last five years is undertaken to explore the nature and extent of SDG-related accounting research. These patterns and foundational accounting literature are used to shape a series of observations and propositions underlying the line of argument developed in the paper. Findings – Despite the SDGs’ prominence in the policy world, and the widespread embrace of their utility for shaping understandings of organizational responsibilities, accounting scholars have been slow to engage in SDG motivated research. This gap creates two issues. First, accounting scholarship is less available to the web of knowledge that is being developed about how to enact the ambitions of the SDGs. Second, accounting scholarship is not developing in a way that incorporates SDG related challenges facing organizations. This paper suggests ways in which accounting scholarship can overcome these limitations. Originality/value – Accounting research on the SDGs is in an early stage of development, despite almost five years having elapsed since their formal adoption. This paper highlights avenues for accounting scholars’ engagement with the SDG agenda

Leverage points in the financial sector for seafood sustainability

Can finance contribute to seafood sustainability? This is an increasingly relevant question given the projected growth of seafood markets and the magnitude of social and environmental challenges associated with its seafood production. As more capital is injected into the seafood industry, it becomes crucial that such investments steer the sector towards improved sustainability, as opposed to fueling unsustainable working conditions and overexploitation of resources. Using a mixed-methods approach, we map where different financial mechanisms are most salient along a seafood firm’s development trajectory and identify three leverage points for sustainability that can redirect capital towards more sustainable practices: loan covenants, stock exchange listing rules and shareholder activism. Our results show that although they hold great promise for transformative capacity, this potential is currently unlikely to be realized due to limited social-ecological awareness within the finance industry. We argue that seafood sustainability requirements need to be integrated into traditional financial services and propose key research avenues for both the academic and the policy community. While our study focuses on the role of finance in seafood sustainability, the insights developed throughout are of high relevance to other extractive industries as well

The evolution of delayed dispersal and different routes to breeding in social birds

Many animals live in stable groups, where sexually mature individuals delay dispersal and stay as nonbreeding subordinates, seemingly counter to their own evolutionary interests. Revealing what circumstances drive the evolution of delayed dispersal is central to understanding sociality, family living and cooperative breeding across the animal kingdom, but there is as yet no general consensus about the relative importance of the various ecological and social conditions and the reproductive benefits proposed to drive delayed dispersal. We argue that two components may facilitate further progress in this respect: firstly, full consideration of the various routes that individuals can follow to obtain an independent breeding position. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of these routes: inheritance of a natal territory, budding off part of the natal territory, shifting to a neighboring vacancy, making temporary prospecting trips throughout the population; or permanently leaving to float in search of a breeding position or to stage as subordinate in a non-natal territory. Second, we illustrate that in order to understand delayed dispersal, we need to consider that the fitness consequences of these different routes apply across the lifetime: as subordinate (e.g., benefits of philopatry and indirect fitness); while waiting or searching for a position; and after obtaining a breeding position. Overall, we conclude that by which route and under what circumstances individuals can obtain a breeding position must be considered in order to make more comprehensive inferences about the evolution of delayed dispersal, cooperative breeding and animal sociality as a whole.</p

Delayed dispersal and the cost and benefits of different routes to independent breeding in a cooperative breeding bird

Why sexually mature individuals stay in groups as non-reproductive subordinates is central to the evolution of sociality and cooperative breeding. To understand such delayed dispersal, its costs and benefits need to be compared with those of permanently leaving to float through the population. However, comprehensive comparisons, especially regarding differences in future breeding opportunities, are rare. Moreover, extra-territorial prospecting by philopatric individuals has generally been ignored, even though the factors underlying this route to independent breeding may differ from those of strict philopatry or floating. We use a comprehensive predictive framework to explore how various costs, benefits and intrinsic, environmental and social factors explain philopatry, prospecting and floating in Seychelles warblers (Acrocephalus sechellensis). Floaters more likely obtained an independent breeding position before the next season than strictly philopatric individuals, but also suffered higher mortality. Prospecting yielded similar benefits to floating but lower mortality costs, suggesting that it is overall more beneficial than floating and strict philopatry. Whereas prospecting is probably individual-driven, though limited by resource availability, floating likely results from eviction by unrelated breeders. Such differences in proximate and ultimate factors underlying each route to independent breeding highlight the need for simultaneous consideration when studying the evolution of delayed dispersal

Experimentally induced antipredator responses are mediated by social and environmental factors

Nest predation is a common cause of reproductive failure for many bird species, and various antipredator defense behaviors have evolved to reduce the risk of nest predation. However, trade-offs between current reproductive duties and future reproduction often limit the parent’s ability to respond to nest predation risk. Individual responses to experimentally increased nest predation risk can give insights into these trade-offs. Here, we investigate whether social and ecological factors affect individual responses to predation risk by experimentally manipulating the risk of nest predation using taxidermic mounts in the cooperative breeding Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis). Our results show that dominant females, but not males, alarm called more often when they confront a nest predator model alone than when they do so with a partner, and that individuals that confront a predator together attacked more than those that did so alone. Dominant males increased their antipredator defense by spending more time nest guarding after a presentation with a nest predator, compared with a nonpredator control, but no such effect was found for females, who did not increase the time spent incubating. In contrast to incubation by females, nest guarding responses by dominant males depended on the presence of other group members and food availability. These results suggest that while female investment in incubation is always high and not dependent on social and ecological conditions, males have a lower initial investment, which allows them to respond to sudden changes in nest predation risk

Accounting and sustainable development : reflections and propositions

This paper emerges from an invitation to reflect upon the achievements of social and environmental accounting as well as to identify the challenges that lie ahead as the field continues its engagement with the goal of sustainable development. Three perspectives are developed in pursuit of that aim, namely: exploring the nature of the issues and mode of academic inquiry that is ‘fit for purpose’ given the demands of sustainable development; considering if a de-centring of accounting and the embrace of more holistic versions of accountability would be productive for future scholarship; and an exploration of how we might conceptualise ‘engagement’ with practice in this context (and what is meant by practice and practitioner). Taken together, this paper seeks to provide points of provocation and encouragement to social and environmental accountants, critical accounting scholars and to those seeking to understand sustainable development scholarship and action.PostprintPeer reviewe

Corporate reporting and accounting for externalities

Externalities comprise economic, social and/or environmental impacts arising from the activities of an entity that are borne by others, at least in the short term. As they do not feedback directly into immediate financial consequences for the entity, they tend to be outside the remit of financial reporting. A dispersed academic accounting literature on externalities has hitherto developed separately from concerns about what information is appropriate to report on corporate performance. This paper develops insights into accounting for, and reporting of, externalities that are intended to improve the use of externalities information in breaking down silos between the traditionally discrete domains of financial reporting and sustainability reporting, and between silos within sustainability reporting. Challenges in such use of externalities information are explored, including difficulties inherent in the quantification of externalities. The paper also highlights ways in which externalities can progressively become internalised, thereby bringing them more readily within the domain of economically focused financial reporting practices. An agenda for further research to help enhance the accounting for, and reporting of, externalities is also proposed. © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group