Three years and inclusion in scopus

Citation

Adams, C.A. (2013), "Three years and inclusion in scopus", Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, Vol. 4 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/sampj.2013.46804aaa.001

Three years and inclusion in scopus

Article Type: Editorial From: Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, Volume 4, Issue 1

It is pleasing to present the first issue of the fourth volume of the Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal marking three years of completed publication. Thanks to all the authors who have submitted papers, reviewers and editorial board members, I think we can say the journal is established. Submissions have increased and the acceptance rate of around 26 per cent is indicative of the level of quality. Importantly also the journal has now been accepted for inclusion in SCOPUS. The Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal aims to make a difference through multidisciplinary perspectives aimed at informing policy and practice. This issue does that in a number of important ways.

Griffin (2013) and Connors et al. (2013) both consider disclosures from an investor perspective and find different impacts of disclosures across sectors. Griffin focusses on financial disclosure of emission allowances and Connors et al. on Toxic Release Inventory disclosures (TRI). Both papers have implications for regulation policy. Coffey (2013) focusses more directly on strategic sustainability policy and planning at state government level in Victoria whilst Yang Spencer et al. (2013) looks at organisational level practices – specifically the role of top management commitment in the adoption of environmental accounting information systems. Wolfson et al. (2013) put forward a model for the delivery of services consistent with sustainability principles.

Griffin (2013) examines the impact of emission allowances under the cap and trade programme in California, USA on the financial statements of the S&P 500. He calls for a single international standard for emissions accounting arguing that, in the absence of one, a range of unclear accounting treatments will continue to emerge. Of particular concern is the treatment of free allowances estimated to be worth almost $10 billion and representing close to 5 million tons of GHG emissions. Treatments include fair market value and moving entirely off balance sheet and Griffin argues that the differing impacts on net income particularly in the utilities, energy and materials sectors causes information uncertainty in the investor community in turn raising the cost of capital. Griffin’s study rejects, from an accounting perspective, perceptions of politically favoured industries.

Also concerned with informational value to investors Connors et al. (2013) evaluate the TRI as an external outcome measure of corporate environmental performance, emphasising market response differences between the electric utility, chemical and paper and pulp industries. Their pooled cross-sectional, time-series data and event study methodologies examining the effects of TRI emissions on abnormal market returns, reveal sector differences with respect to whether investors reward decreases or penalise increases in emissions, possibly as a result of differing cost/benefit analyses by industry of reducing emissions and/or decreasing returns to emissions reduction investments over time. Also, they note that given that TRI does not weight toxicity of chemicals, it may not reflect investors’ assessments of environmental performance and risks across sectors. The authors suggest that their findings point to the need to model the effects of environmental performance on market measures by industry. They argue that there is a need for alternative regulatory initiatives to disclosure to reduce emissions which are considered on an industry basis though they also note that these industries have differing proportions of US sales.

Coffey (2013) analyses sustainability policy and planning through both examination of text and semi-structured interviews. The study covers initiatives in the period 1999-2010 focussing on sustainability policy, planning and assessment in the State of Victoria, Australia with the lessons having much wider relevance. The paper considers a range of policy initiatives such as “‘Growing Victoria together”, “Our environment our future”, establishment of the Department of Sustainability and Environment and the establishment of a Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability (CES) with a role to report performance and a focus on community education and behaviour change. In contrast to the CES focus, a key lesson to be learnt from the “Growing Victoria together” and “Our environment our future” is around the failure to engage the community. Whilst the Victorian Government devoted a lot of effort to introducing sustainability initiatives, Coffey’s analysis also points to a failure to do so in a fully whole of government manner, an under-estimation of the transformative nature of change required and a lack of integration all of which worked to weaken the policy outcomes and the extent of change achieved.

Yang Spencer et al. (2013) found that top management commitment to environmental sustainability was associated with the adoption of a sophisticated internal environmental information system and that the availability of aggregated environmental information was found to mediate the relationship between top management commitment to environmental sustainability and environmental performance. Following previous studies, four dimensions of management accounting systems, broad-scope; timeliness; aggregation; and integration are considered as measures of the extent of sophistication of the environmental accounting system. The authors’ findings also point to the importance of aggregated environmental accounting information to organisations aiming to improve their environmental performance. The findings are based on a survey of Chief Financial Officers.

Wolfson et al. (2013) present a model for the delivery of services which avoid having negative impacts on society or the environment. In addition to having a core value of sustainability such services also engage with the customer to further promote sustainability. The authors argue that sustainable service should mimic natural processes, thus achieving energy efficiency and adapting to changes in its environment. Consistent with some of the thinking behind the push for integrated reporting they argue that sustainable service should account for the use of natural resources, technologies, information and knowledge and integrate environmental, social, and economic elements together with the delivery of services and of manufacturing and agricultural processes.

Carol A. Adams