Rolling out Corporate Sustainability Accounting: A Set of Challenges

The benefits of improving corporate environmental and social performance have been addressed by an increasing number of companies in the past two decades. However, not all companies have been interested in the topic since it first came up. Thus, companies’ attempts to quantify sustainability performance typically start with a qualitative understanding of the impacts of the environment and society on corporate economic performance and vice versa. At the forefront of corporate sustainability accounting practice, research has highlighted the attempt of various companies to expand and transform sustainability information collection practices into regular, day-to-day activities known as sustainability accounting. However, this step – referred to as roll out – is related to various obstacles that hinder its success. The following conceptual paper identifies the obstacles in the roll-out process and suggests an approach to deal with them. Based on various studies in the field, the developed approach presents typical challenges and highlights their significance for the success of the roll out of corporate sustainability accounting. The contribution of the paper lies in the identification of decision-situations which – albeit essential for the success of the roll out – appear to be neglected by many decision makers, often with undesired consequences. The novelty of the findings can support higher and middle management in their transition from smallscale, project-based collection, analysis and provision of decision-making information to a company-wide, self-sustaining management accounting system that integrates social and environmental impacts of and upon business. This transition can contribute to the long-term success of the enterprise and reduce its externalities on environment and societ

Der erfolgreiche Abbau von Einkaufsbarrieren in Unverpackt-Läden

Unverpackt-Läden sprießen in ganz Deutschland aus dem Boden. Der damit verbundene Ansatz zur Reduzierung von Verpackungsmüll ist jedoch aus Sicht der Konsumierenden mit zahlreichen Herausforderungen verbunden. Wie können Unverpackt-Läden dazu beitragen, das Verhalten der Käufer/innen positiv zu beeinflussen

SUSTAINABILITY AND MANAGEMENT CONTROL: EXPLORING AND THEORIZING ON CONTROL PATTERNS IN LARGE EUROPEAN FIRMS

Purpose of the research A growing body of literature argues that management control is essential in promoting corporate sustainability (Epstein and Roy, 2001; Crittenden et al., 2011). Furthermore, the conventional accounting and control literature has identified sustainability and control as an important emerging theme (Berry et al., 2009). Nevertheless, except a series of conceptual (and often prescriptive) papers, few papers have proposed to empirically explore management control practices for sustainability. This explains partly the scepticism that has been raised about the existence of these management controls in the context of sustainability and especially about their role in promoting sustainability within the organizations (Deegan, 2002; Norris and O’Dwyer, 2004; Durden, 2008). Based on these observations, this paper aims at exploring sustainability management control practices in large European firms. It investigates the extent to which large companies have developed a package of formal and informal management control mechanisms in order to steer their organization towards corporate sustainability and, based on this empirical observations, it theorizes on typical sustainability control patterns. Principal results All of the researched companies deploy sustainability management control. There are, however, notable differences with regard to the complexity of the underlying systems and tools – from basic to advanced ones. The paper also identifies two distinct approaches in management control for sustainability. Whereas some companies seem to focus on formal approaches of management control, others concentrate on informal management control. A mixture of both was not observed in the sample companies. Major conclusions The insights and recommendations provided in this paper help organizations in translating their aspirations into their organization (Epstein and Wisner, 2005). The results also highlight the need for research to better understand the situations in which formal and informal management control for sustainability yields the results anticipated

Is environmental management accounting a discipline? A bibliometric literature review

International audiencePurpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the body of literature on environmental management accounting (EMA) and provides a quantitative overview of the academic as well as the professional literature constituting the field. By doing so, the paper discusses whether EMA has developed as a discipline.Design/methodology/approach– Based on a database containing 814 (396 of them published in academic journals) publications in English, German and French with a publication date prior to 2012 a bibliometric analysis is conducted. Data on the publications, journals, authors and citations were collected, double‐checked and examined by applying bibliometric measures.Findings– The bibliometric analysis identifies trends in EMA research publications which show that EMA has developed as a young discipline, but is still faces challenges to get better established in mainstream accounting and management research. Although the publication number is growing, a substantial part of the publications have been published outside mainstream accounting journals in non‐accounting journals, books and reports. A recent trend towards establishing specialised environmental (and sustainability) accounting journals is also rendered apparent. The low number of highly cited publications of few authors, however, indicates that EMA is still to become a mainstream field of research.Originality/value– The paper discusses with the help of bibliometric analysis and measures whether EMA has developed as a discipline and whether it has become part of mainstream accounting research

Sustainability and management control. Exploring and theorizing control patterns in large European firms

peer reviewe