Management Accounting Tools for Sustainability Information Decision-making and Financial Performance

Many organisations today are still not making use of Management Accounting Tools (MATs) to assist in providing sustainability information for decision-making and the way it influences the financial performance of an organisation. As a result it may negatively impact financial performance of organisations due to a number of errors which may include ancient cost drivers; erroneous business decisions, inaccurate information and human errors. Without applying MATs, managers of organisations may find it difficult to improve the day-to-day operations and take decisions to enhance the financial performance of the business. Information was collected using interviews to examine whether MATs can provide sustainability information for decision-making and how it influences the financial performance of an organisation. The research was carried out among listed organisations on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). It was established that MATs provide strategies that influence decision-making and performance, although decision-making is the responsibility of executives or directors of the organisations. The study also established that financial managers who are focusing more on financial statements and reporting perform Management Accounting (MA) tasks. Hence future research should focus on the importance of segregating MA roles from those of financial accountants or managers to enable the organisation to focus on different reports for different outcomes

Water Sustainability of Selected Mining Companies in South Africa

Many parts of the world, and South Africa specifically, are facing a water crisis, not only because of the scarcity of water, but also the quality of the available water. Apart from agriculture, industry is viewed as the second largest user of water and can, therefore, have a significant impact on the saving of water. The purpose of this research is to investigate how selected South African listed mining companies are measuring, managing, and disclosing their water risks, as well as engaging with stakeholders. The selection of the mining companies was made using the companies with the highest market capitalisation figures of those that have a primary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). The sustainability/integrated/annual reports for 2013 were reviewed using the Ceres Aqua Gauge™ (Boston, MA, USA) as the framework. The findings of this research were that the selected mining companies had grasped the seriousness of the water crisis in South Africa, and the effects it will have on their businesses in future. Most concerning was the activities relating to water management in the supply chain; all of the selected mining companies were found to have no evidence of this in their reports, subsequently this is an area that needs to be addressed in future research

An Information Framework for Facilitating Cost Saving of Environmental Impacts in the Coal Mining Industry in South Africa

Coal-mining contributes much to the economic welfare of a country. Yet it brings along a number of challenges, notably environmental impacts which include water pollution in a water scarce country such as South Africa. This research is conducted in two phases. The first phase intends to establish environmental and other challenges brought about by the coal-mining industry through a comprehensive analysis of available literature. Combatting these challenges is costly; consequently, our work investigates how established management accounting tools and techniques such as Environmental Management Accounting (EMA), Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) may facilitate cost savings for the companies involved. These techniques promote increased transparency of material usage by tracing and quantifying the flows and inventories of materials within the coal-mining industry in physical and monetary terms, hence hidden costs are elicited. The researchers postulate that an Information Framework integrating these aspects may be the way forward. To this end existing frameworks in the literature are identified. A number of research questions embodying the above aspects are defined and the objective is to define a conceptual framework to facilitate cost savings for coal-mining companies. The main contribution of this work is an information framework presented towards the end of this article. The second phase of the research will involve fieldwork in the form of a survey among stakeholders in industry to validate the conceptual framework

A Framework for Risk Management in Small Medium Enterprises in Developing Countries

Failure to holistically manage risk in Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is one of the major causes of small businesses failure. To answer the research question as to what supports the adoption of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) in SMEs, this research aims to analyse Risk Management (RM) in SMEs and develops a framework to facilitate the adoption of ERM. In achieving the primary objective, the research establishes for SMEs: the sources of information for RM; the importance of information governance in managing risk; the fundamentals of RM; and the pillars of RM. Previous research conducted on RM in SMEs reviewed the challenges of the successful implementation of ERM in SMEs and proposed different ways to address these challenges. The common ground reached by the research is that there is a need for the simplification of ERM in SMEs. We followed an interpretive philosophy with an inductive research approach and employed a qualitative methodological choice with a cross-sectional time horizon through data collection, employing a review of the scholarly literature, to, in the end, develop a conceptual Small Medium Enterprises Risk Management Framework (SMERMF). The limitation of the research is that the empirical part of the research has not been concluded yet. To present the results, that will be compared to the theory and conclude the research