The development of social and environmental accounting research 1995-2000

This paper reviews five years of social and environmental accounting literature (from 1995-2000) in an attempt to evaluate the current position. The methodology used follows that employed in Mathews (1997a) which covered a period of 25 years in three time periods: 1971-1980; 1981-1990; and 1991- 1995. The literature was classified into several sub-groups including empirical studies, normative statements, philosophical discussion, non-accounting literature, teaching programmes and text books, regulatory frameworks, and other reviews. In this review a number of new sub-categories have been employed as appropriate. The author is able to conclude on an optimistic note. The additions to the literature during the period 1995-2000 are encouraging. Researchers in this area are perhaps less naïve and more experienced than previously, and this, when added to their enthusiasm should lead to penetrating observations and commentaries over the next five years

One way forward: non-traditional accounting disclosures in the 21st century

Recent empirical studies (Deegan and Rankin, 1999; Deegan et al., 2000) have indicated that although many corporations have begun to respond to perceived demand for environmental disclosures in published accounts, their perspective of organisational legitimacy is a narrow view, in which information is targeted towards specific stakeholders and not to the general public. This paper considers a range of models (variously called guidelines, standards and charters) which have been put forward by different organisations to aid the development of social and environmental disclosures. In all cases verification and attestation are part of the proposed regimen. The question which the papers attempts to answer is whether any one of the models would be capable of rapid adoption as part of an expanded GAAP, should the professional accounting bodies think that this is desirable. The outcome of our deliberations is cautious support for the use of EMAS and ISO 14000 as the basis for a modified GAAP plus the further development of the GRI 2000 guidelines into a set of standards covering both social and environmental reporting

Gift-giving, reciprocity and trust

This paper examines the role that gift giving plays in supplier–buyer relations, specifically, the role of gift giving and the creation of inter-organisational trust. Repeated inter-organisational exchanges in a mature industrial district are analysed using Mauss’ theoretical framework of gift giving, receiving and counter giving. Actors in embedded network relationships frequently exchange gifts and favours as part of commercial exchanges. This gift giving is a fundamental part of the exchange relationship. Gift giving is found to be instrumental in creating and maintaining relationships, defining group and individual identity and resolving conflicts, thus contributing to the creation of trust between partners. Mauss’ theory of gift giving elaborates how this practise creates the conditions for reciprocity and induces trust. The originality of our findings lies in the fact that despite the dominant ideology of the purely altruistic gift, field research demonstrates that gifts do play a role in modern economic exchanges and that this ancient deeply rooted social custom should not be simply relegated to families, close friends and Christmas, but contributes to explaining the first step of trust and trust creation in repeated exchanges

Externalities revisited: the use of an environmental equity account

This exploratory paper attempts to restart a debate about the incorporation of environmental externalities into the cost structure of the organisation. A number approaches are considered; regulation together with all that would follow such as audit and policing; pollution permits, which probably can only be used with a sinking lid application; and other charging mechanisms such as making the private sector pay for public sector capital funding. The fourth alternative, the use of an environmental equity account, has not been widely considered in the literature. The paper proposes the use of an environmental equity account (after Boone and Rubenstein, 1997) with the express intent of generating a charge for environmental impact based on the cost of control. That is, the cost of implementing state of the art technology compared to that currently in use within the organisation, is used as a balance which may be either paid as a capital sum or carried as a balance sheet entry upon which dividend payments would have to be made. It is envisaged that both capital sums and dividend payments would go to an agency responsible for environmental remediation activity

Potentially dysfunctional impacts of harmonising accounting standards: the case of intangible assets

Intangible Assets as a category within accounting and reporting disclosures have become far more noticeable in recent years, including large amounts associated with brands, mastheads, franchises, and patents. Many of these items are not purchased but internally generated within the organisation, and may account for much of the difference in magnitude between book value and market capitalisation. The International Accounting Standards Committee has recently issued IAS 38 to regulate the reporting of intangible assets, and includes therein the prohibition of those intangible assets, which have been internally generated. This prohibition would cut across recently developed practices in Australia and New Zealand. The problem is compounded by an increasingly close relationship between IASs and the national standards of both Australia and New Zealand, making it very likely that the problem areas within IAS 38 will be transferred to the national standards. This paper examines the areas within IAS 38, which are likely to lead to undesirable consequences, both for internally generated intangible assets but also in terms of the reinforcement of somewhat conservative aspects of financial accounting including historical cost and the inhibiting effects on new developments generally. The possible compounding effects of an expectations gap between the traditional and expected role of financial statements is briefly examined as a possible explanation of the divergence of opinion between different groups involved in the development of accounting standards and reports

A Quantum Quasi-Harmonic Nonlinear Oscillator with an Isotonic Term

The properties of a nonlinear oscillator with an additional term $k_g/x^2$, characterizing the isotonic oscillator, are studied. The nonlinearity affects to both the kinetic term and the potential and combines two nonlinearities associated to two parameters, $\kappa$ and $k_g$, in such a way that for $\kappa=0$ all the characteristics of of the standard isotonic system are recovered. The first part is devoted to the classical system and the second part to the quantum system. This is a problem of quantization of a system with position-dependent mass of the form $m(x)=1/(1 - {\kappa} x^2)$, with a $\kappa$-dependent non-polynomial rational potential and with an additional isotonic term. The Schr\"odinger equation is exactly solved and the $(\kappa,k_g)$-dependent wave functions and bound state energies are explicitly obtained for both $\kappa0$.Comment: two figure

Vector boson production in association with KK modes of the ADD model to NLO in QCD at LHC

Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the associated production of vector boson (Z/W) with the the Kaluza-Klein modes of the graviton in large extra dimensional model at the LHC, are presented. We have obtained various kinematic distributions using a Monte Carlo code which is based on the two cut off phase space slicing method that handles soft and collinear singularities appearing at NLO level. We estimate the impact of the QCD corrections on various observables and find that they are significant. We also show the reduction in factorization scale uncertainty when QCD corrections are included.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure