Corporate Environmental Reports as Wealth Appropriation Statements

Abstract

Industry′s claim to create wealth serves to legitimize the independence of its policies and actions. Yet such a creation process is delusory in an interdependent and indeterminate world grounded in quantum physics, ecology and chaos theory. Contemporary corporate annual reports are prepared from the perspective of discrete industrial entities driven by the dynamic of unlimited growth. Most pressures being applied to change these reports seek merely to complicate, by adding information, rather than to revise by removing organizational boundaries and restating core beliefs. Recent corporate environmental reports, for example, confuse and are of limited use to company analysts; they do little to aid the fundamental transition to sustainable industry. However, a conception of industry as a wealth appropriator within the ecosphere can help, and this understanding gives rise to a new direction for accounting, auditing and environmental reporting. Examples of first steps taken by Denmark in this new direction are given.

Citation

Birkin, F. and Bank Jørgensen, H. (1994), "Corporate Environmental Reports as Wealth Appropriation Statements", Environmental Management and Health, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 23-27. https://doi.org/10.1108/09566169410059513