To read this content please select one of the options below:

Environmental accounting and change in UK local government

Amanda Ball (School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Article publication date: 1 June 2005

7501

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore environmental accounting in terms of long‐term societal transition towards “sustainable development”.

Design/methodology/approach

Accordingly, the paper uses an abstracted and generic framework of antecedents to “deinstitutionalisation” (the erosion or discontinuity of institutionalized organisational activities or practices) to analyse a case study of how a UK local government council is responding to an environmental agenda in the context of an array of gradual political, functional and social pressures to change its activities.

Findings

The findings of the study indicate how, in different ways, environmental accounting is pressed into use to promote such change.

Originality/value

Contrary to other frameworks which emphasise how environmental accounting is potentially constructive/empowering or captured/colonized, drawing on this case study the paper argues that environmental accounting may in contrast be mobilised to contribute to a process of deinstitutionalisation, even when attempts to develop such accounting are not entirely successful.

Keywords

Citation

Ball, A. (2005), "Environmental accounting and change in UK local government", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 346-373. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513570510600738

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Related articles