Search results

This paper applies a stakeholder salience theoretical framework to facilitate the understanding of the roles salient stakeholders can have in the integration of education for sustainable development, one of the important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), into Jordan’s university accounting education.

We used stakeholder salience theory to inform our study. This study adopted a qualitative research method. The study used semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative, open-ended data that explored the salient stakeholders’ thoughts, beliefs and feelings about their roles in influencing the integration of education for sustainable development into the Jordanian accounting curriculum.

The results indicate that education for sustainable development in accounting is important; however, most Jordanian salient stakeholders indicate their inability to integrate sustainable education into the accounting curriculum due to their lack of power to do so. The findings show that there is currently an inappropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst the salient stakeholders, who indicate that a progressive education solution is required in the critical area of education for sustainable development in accounting. This research indicates that a significant number of salient stakeholders would like the Jordanian government to provide power, legitimacy and urgency to enable accounting educators to become definite stakeholders as this will enable them to integrate sustainable education into the accounting curriculum.

The study is limited to Jordan only. The paper draws attention to the need for an appropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst salient stakeholders in Jordan.

This paper provides evidence that the salient stakeholders in this emerging economy want to make changes in their education system to address climate change concerns, an important SDG, through a better education curriculum for sustainable development in Jordanian universities.

Accounting educators should be given the power to make changes in the accounting curriculum, such as integrating education for sustainable development.

There is an inappropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst the Jordanian salient stakeholders and this imbalance hinders the integration of education for sustainable development into the accounting curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions that management accountants have of their roles in accounting for sustainable development in their organisations.

The paper draws arguments from prior literature to identify the roles that management accountants play in accounting for sustainable development. Management accountants' perceptions of their roles in accounting for sustainable development are examined by conducting interviews and surveys of management accountants from various organisations in New Zealand. The study is informed by legitimacy theory.

Management accountants of small-medium organisations in New Zealand play a limited role in accounting for sustainable development, compared to management accountants of larger organisations. The correlation between the type of organisation and their overall goals for achieving sustainable development are closely linked with the roles the organisations' management accountants play in accounting for sustainable development.

This research is limited as it is only an exploratory study with a small sample of small-medium and large businesses in New Zealand. There is a need for greater acceptance by senior management of the role management accountants could play in accounting for sustainable development.

This paper may help management accountants, of both small-medium and larger organisations, to advance accounting for sustainable development within their organisations by actively engaging with the issues that have deterred such advancement.

This paper provides a review of the current debates and positions of accounting for sustainable development as well as the barriers management accountants face in getting engaged in accounting for sustainable development initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to first empirically illustrate the construction of accounting for sustainable development tool (Bebbington and Gray, 2001) and, second, to discuss the operationalization of accounting for sustainable development (Bebbington and Larrinaga, 2014).

This research is based on a unique intervention-research approach, the main author having worked part-time for four years on the development of the tool for a business organization in the organic food sector.

This paper proposes an operationalization of sustainable development within an accounting tool and presents the results of the calculations. It also touches briefly upon the organization’s decision not to adopt the tool. The research concludes on the difficulty of operationalizing the economic, social and environmental capitals while proposing results that demonstrate “unsustainability”.

This research in operationalizing sustainable development paves the way for future potential use of the tool described, and future developments to address the model’s current shortcomings, notably in interconnecting social and economic capitals with natural capital.

The non-adoption of the accounting tool raises questions about the acceptability among practitioners of visualizing the unsustainability of their own organization, in particular within “green” and “socially responsible” businesses. Moreover, it raises the question of growth and decoupling of the organization’s impact from its economic growth.

This paper makes three contributions to the current literature. First, it furthers the discussion on how to operationalize accounting for sustainable development, notably by trying to implement capital as a liability (a debt), placing its “maintenance” at the very heart of the design. Second, it offers an initial operationalization of “system thinking” within a tool to account for sustainable development. Finally, it contributes to the literature on “engagement research” through a four-year intervention-research project.

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

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.

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

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.

This research seeks to explain how a national government becomes capable of constructing an account of its biodiversity performance that is aimed at enabling formulation of policy in pursuit of SDG 15: Life on Land.

The research examines a case study of the construction of the UK government's annual biodiversity report. The case is analysed to explain the process of framing a space in which the SDG-15 challenge of halting biodiversity loss is rendered calculable, such that the government can see and understand its own performance in relation to this challenge.

The construction of UK government's annual biodiversity report relies upon data collected through non-governmental conservation efforts, statistical expertise of a small project group within the government and a governmental structure that drives ongoing evolution of the indicators as actors strive to make these useful for policy formulation.

The analysis problematises the SDG approach to accounting for sustainable development, whereby performance indicators have been centrally agreed and universally imposed upon all signatory governments. The analysis suggests that capacity-building efforts for national governments may need to be broader than that envisaged by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The purpose of this paper is to establish and advance the role of academic accounting in the pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are regarded as the most salient point of departure for understanding and achieving environmental and human development ambitions up to (and no doubt beyond) the year 2030.

This paper provides a synthesis of interdisciplinary perspectives on sustainable development and integration of this with the accounting for sustainability literature. In addition, potential accounting research contributions are proposed so as to support the development of new research avenues.

Existing research in accounting that is relevant to individual SDGs serves as an initial link between them and the accounting discipline. At the same time, the SDGs focus highlights new sites for empirical work (including interdisciplinary investigations) as well as inviting innovation in accounting theoretical frameworks. Moreover, the SDGs provide a context for (re)invigorating accounting’s contribution to sustainable development debates.

This is the first paper to explore the roles academic accounting can play in furthering achievement of the SDGs through enhanced understanding, critiquing and advancing of accounting policy, practice and theorizing. It is also the first paper to propose a research agenda in this area.

The purpose of this study is to explore undergraduate accounting students' perceptions and understanding of the concept of sustainable development. Moreover, this study aims to explore students' perceptions of the integration of sustainable development issues in accounting education in Saudi Arabia as an emerging country.

A questionnaire survey was administered to a sample of accounting students from four Saudi universities. The questionnaire contained five groups of questions aimed at exploring the extent of students' awareness and understanding of the concept of sustainable development, their perceptions of the importance of sustainable development for society, their perceptions of the important role of accounting in sustainable development, their satisfaction with the level of integrating sustainable development issues in accounting education at the present time and their opinions about the appropriate approach to integrate sustainable development issues in accounting education.

The findings of the study revealed that although most of the students have heard about the concept of sustainable development from the media and perceive the importance of sustainable development for society, they have a low level of understanding of this concept due to the apparent weakness in integrating sustainable development issues in accounting education in Saudi universities. Students were unsatisfied with the sustainable development learning offered by Saudi universities. They also showed a positive attitude toward integrating sustainable development issues in their accounting education. They suggested that the appropriate approach to integrate sustainable development issues in accounting education is to treat these issues in the relevant courses included in their current accounting curricula.

The results of this study provide indications to the administrators of Saudi universities to start developing accounting curriculum to integrate sustainable development issues into accounting education. This will result in an increase in the effectiveness of the role of these universities in achieving the goals of the Saudi Vision 2030.

This study contributes to the existing literature concerning how students perceive sustainable development education by focusing on the accounting students in Saudi Arabia as context that has not previously examined.

The purpose of this paper is to explore students’ perceptions and understandings of, and attitudes towards, education for sustainable development (ESD) at Delta Business School (DBS) in New Zealand[1]. The aim is to extend the limited literature on students’ perceptions of ESD within an accounting and business curriculum.

To ascertain the students’ evaluations of their ESD, a survey was administered to 60 accounting and business students at DBS. The survey data were supplemented with interview evidence from 20 of the 60 students to obtain a deeper understanding of the students’ evaluations.

A majority of the students perceive ESD as a “good thing.” Students were supportive of the sustainable business learning experience offered at DBS. The results suggest that students’ knowledge of sustainable business practices improved significantly from their studies.

The paper should assist education providers to assess how students perceive ESD. This may help bring about changes, to improve the teaching of sustainable development. Universities can be the main providers of ESD, but other educational providers such as the professional accounting bodies will also need to manage the development of ongoing education processes. Most students at DBS believe they are obtaining a good understanding of the concept of sustainability.

There is a shortage of research concerning how students perceive sustainable development education. This paper contributes to the discussion of what to incorporate in sustainable education programmes, to help students properly to understand sustainable development. We believe accounting and business education should develop graduates into broad-minded thinkers with a capacity for independent and critical thought. This will prepare them for future leadership roles.

This paper aims to set the scene for an emerging conversation on the Rights of Nature as articulated by a philosophy of law called Earth Jurisprudence, which privileges the whole Earth community over the profit-driven structures of the existing legal and economic systems.

The study used a wide range of thought from literature relating to philosophy, humanities, environmental economics, sustainable development, indigenous rights and legal theory to show how Earth Jurisprudence resonates with two recent treaties of Waitangi settlements in Aotearoa New Zealand that recognise the Rights of Nature.

Indigenous philosophies have become highly relevant to sustainable and equitable development. They have provided an increasingly prominent approach in advancing social, economic, environmental and cultural development around the world. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Maori philosophies ground the naming of the Te Urewera National Park and the Whanganui River as legal entities with rights.

Recognition of the Rights of Nature in Aotearoa New Zealand necessitates a radical re-thinking by accounting researchers, practitioners and educators towards a more ecocentric view of the environment, given the transformation of environmental law and our responsibilities towards sustainable development.

This relates to the application of Earth Jurisprudence legal theory as an alternative approach towards thinking about integrated reporting and sustainable development.

Purpose – This study investigates the interplay between strategic performance measurement and management accounting to gain a deeper understanding of how strategic measures of performance evolve with the managerial accounting practices.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The study explored the performance measures used at a bank focused on the development and sustainability initiatives in Africa. Thirty-two semistructured interviews were conducted with directors, managers, and analysts from nine different categories of job families.

Findings – Analysis shows that managers assimilate a comprehensive, multifaceted measurement system to understand the creation and delivery of sustainable value. The results show that the managerial accounting practices adapt to incorporate an integrated set of performance measures that afford sustainable value to the stakeholders. The findings provide rich insights into how the managers adapt their information assimilation practices to the changing demands of the different stakeholders and adopt practices which innovate measures of performance that are aligned to the strategic goals. Finally, the findings illustrate that the interplay between strategic performance and managerial accounting practices has the potential to improve or inhibit sustainable development.

Originality/Value – Little is known about how performance measures evolve, and how they interplay with the managerial accounting practices within organizations. This study reveals that the interplay of strategic performance measurement and managerial accounting can only be understood in the confluence of organizational change and sustainability. While acknowledging the need to embrace change and sustainability simultaneously, the study offers insights into the dynamics of change – the duality of emergent managerial accounting practices and the evolution of strategic performance measurement systems.