Seeds of hope? Exploring business actors’ diverse understandings of sustainable development
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 15 June 2015
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is first, to investigate empirically the plurality of understanding surrounding sustainability held by those working in the business sector, and second, to consider the likelihood of a dialogic accounting that would account for the plurality of perspectives identified.
Design/methodology/approach
The subjects of this study are those people actively working to incorporate sustainability within New Zealand business, both business people and their sustainability advisors. Participant’s subjective understanding is investigated using Q methodology, a method used widely by social science researchers to investigate typical views on a particular topic, from an analysis of the order in which participants individually sort a sample of stimuli. In this study, the stimuli were opinion statements.
Findings
Five typical understandings of sustainable development were identified, including understandings more usually attributed to business antagonists than business. Conflicts between environment and development are acknowledged by most participants. However, an agonistic debate that will create spaces, practices, and institutions through which marginalised understandings of sustainable development might be addressed and contested, is yet to be established and will not be easy.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the few empirical investigations of the plurality of understandings of sustainability held by those people working to incorporate sustainability within business. It is further distinguished by the authors attempt to describe divergent beliefs and values, absent from their immediate business context, and absent from any academic priming. The paper also provides an illustrative example of the application of Q methodology, a method not commonly used in accounting research.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was originally funded through the Royal Society of New Zealand ' s Marsden Fund, Grant 02-UOO-120 New Zealand Business and Sustainability: Critically Analysing Discourse and Practice. Dr Christine Byrch is a Doctoral Graduate from the University of Otago, and was subsequently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Canterbury during the course of this research project.
Citation
Byrch, C., Milne, M.J., Morgan, R. and Kearins, K. (2015), "Seeds of hope? Exploring business actors’ diverse understandings of sustainable development", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 671-705. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-08-2013-1438
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited