Sustainability reporting integrated into management control systems
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how three different organisations integrate sustainability reporting into management control systems (MCS).
Design/methodology/approach
A case study examination of sustainability reporting integrated into MCS in three New Zealand organisations.
Findings
The integration of sustainability reporting into MCS holds advantages for organisations to operationalise sustainability objectives, broaden stakeholder accountability as well as intensify interactions with stakeholders, formalise organisation beliefs and improve communication of sustainability measures internally. While frameworks such as the balanced scorecard (BSC) can facilitate implementation of sustainability reporting, some organisations may choose to fully integrate the latter into their management control system.
Originality/value
Sustainability reporting is sometimes seen as an external reporting philosophy that can be managed as a separate project. The authors show it can be integrated into MCS, either entirely or through tools such as the BSC. The authors develop a framework that may be useful in future studies to locate our case organisations.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for the EMAN conference for helpful comments.
Citation
Kerr, J., Rouse, P. and de Villiers, C. (2015), "Sustainability reporting integrated into management control systems", Pacific Accounting Review, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 189-207. https://doi.org/10.1108/PAR-08-2012-0034
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited