Search results

Purpose of This Chapter:

This perspective seeks to assert that India was (and is) a great civilization and is on its way to further greatness in the year 2047 (the 100^th year of India’s independence), provided some challenges are confronted in the earnest – both at the managerial and societal levels.

Design / Methodology / Approach:

The chapter adopts a simplistic review of literature-cum-personal analysis-based approach. Sources ranging from journals and newspapers to websites have been employed to arrive at an informed opinion on the theme.

Findings:

The chapter advocates for concerted action on the fronts of employee welfare, adoption of the latest digital technologies, improving inter- and intra-team communication, upgrading the skills of employees, promoting innovation and employment of women in decent jobs with robust wage and social security structures to tackle the new-age management challenges.

Research Limitations:

In the wake of the absence of empirical research and lack of quantifiable data on the new-age management challenges, it is difficult to ascertain the exact nature of the relationship of the same with Target 2047.

Practical Implications:

The chapter projects certain strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) that are both internal and external to the country’s socioeconomic makeup. The same would assist the new-age managers to be better prepared for upcoming challenges and roadblocks to India’s Goal 2047.

Originality:

This chapter is one of the earliest attempts at linking the seemingly unrelated concepts of new-age management challenges and India’s quest to become a developed country by 2047.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential for technical accounting resources to help professional accountants exercise their performative agency.

The authors combine the integrative learning theory of truth and the concept of performativity, including two approaches to sustainability education and interventions, to construct a grid for coding the technical resources provided by the UK's Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, a pioneer in sustainability advocacy.

The findings suggest the dominance of the “predetermined and expert-determined” approach. They also reveal the emergence of three levels of performative topoi based on the relative presence of the “predetermined and expert-determined” and “process-of-seeking” approaches to professional interventions toward sustainability. The results show the profession's evolving contribution to the construction of actionable knowledge.

The main limitation of this research is that it draws on a limited corpus. In addition, the use of a binary code to represent the presence/absence of a code does not convey the code's quantitative importance.

The results are useful for those wanting to produce technical accounting resources that are more likely to help professionals build actionable knowledge and contribute to accountants' interventions toward sustainability.

Findings suggest the need for reflection on how the accounting profession can best contribute to implementing sustainability in organizations.

Few studies deconstruct professional technical resources to see how a profession can contribute to a process of societal change.

The aim of this paper is to propose a basis upon which accounting reporting can be developed to reflect real values and the real economy. It aims to address the environmental considerations discussed in the UN debate (Bebbington and Unerman, 2020) and the concern for a “better life-world”, which is the theme of this special issue.

Addressing the task involves the application of the philosophy of pragmatic constructivism (which explains how people can relate to their reality in ways that lead to successful action) and the philosophical concept of the “good life” (which establishes the values to be pursued through action and so defines action success). Also, it outlines the necessary characteristics of measurement frameworks if they are to be effective in the development and control of human practices to achieve desired values.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for guiding the measurement of how a sustainable good life has improved and/or deteriorated as a result of organisational activities. It outlines a system of concepts on basic and instrumental values for analysing the condition of maintaining a sustainable good life in real terms. This is related to the financial results and societal regulations to analyse and adjust controls according to the real economic goals. Also, it provides a system of value measurands to produce valid information about the development of a sustainable good life. The measurand makes accounting reporting reflect the conditions of the good life that constitute the real economy instead of merely the financial economy driven by shareholder capitalism. Providing tools to analyse whether the existing practices of business and social regulations promote or counteract the real economic goals of producing a sustainable good life means the measurement system proposed makes the invisible hand of the market visible.

The mechanism proposed to enable accounting reporting to reflect real values and the real economy is a new conceptual framework that will allow accounting to more fully realise its potential to contribute to a “better world”. In aiming to serve a sustainable good life, accounting reporting will inherently foster ethical social practices.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into how management accountants can become relevant business partners out of respect for existing locally developed accounts of economic performance for decision-making.

The paper is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with local business actors, in this case, families from seven financially successful Danish dairy farms. The casework and the analysis have been informed by pragmatic constructivism.

The local business actors do not use the official accounting system for ongoing cost-management-related decision-making. Instead, they use several epistemic methods that include locally developed decision models, experiences, rules of thumb and intuition. The farmers use these vernacular accountings to compensate for the cost management illusion that the formal accounting system tends to create. What the study suggests is that when management accountants engage as business partners, they are likely to enter a space where accounting is already present.

This paper argues that local business actors practice epistemic methods where they develop and use vernacular accountings to support their managerial practice, also in the absence of a professional management accountant. These vernacular accountings may lead the local actors into an illusion because the vernacular accountings do not necessarily have an inherent economic logic and theoretical reliability. The role of the management accountant in such a setting is hence to understand, support and advance local epistemic methods. Becoming a business partner requires a combination of management accounting analytical skills and a sense of empathy and sensitivity regarding what is already at play and how this can become an object of discussion without violating the values of the other.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of socio-political interactions in determining the topos of sustainability reporting (SR) practice. For this purpose, this study harnesses pragmatic constructivism perspective to identify facts, possibilities, values and communication of SR practice.

This study adopts a systematic literature review approach using a sample of 167 articles from 54 academic journals.

The results of this study indicate that companies in their SR are driven by self-interest, treating disclosure as a mean in itself and neglecting its role in sustainability transition. In the light of the results, this study proposes three main avenues for further research: the interplay of institutional, organizational and individual factors as drivers for transparency; approaches to improve the quality of SR; and (3) sustainability impact of SR.

The past decade has seen a proliferation of literature on the practice of SR. One of the most influential streams in studies on SR has been grounded in socio-political theories with legitimacy, stakeholder and institutional theories on the front. Nevertheless, there is still no systematic and comprehensive overview of this rich literature. This study offers a comprehensive framework which conceptualizes SR as a social construct defined by the interplay between various, often conflicting institutional demands.

The purpose of this paper is to use the case of York University in Canada to analyze the connection between University Social Responsibility and voluntary disclosure. The authors examine whether the university’s voluntary air emissions disclosure is performative by exploring whether York University’s espoused commitment to its community stakeholders truly guides its incentive to disclose carbon emissions in the absence of a legal mandate.

This qualitative exploratory study uses a post-humanistic approach to build on publicly available data on key measures and metrics of air quality and carbon emissions to facilitate our understanding of representational and interventionist uses of measurement models by social actors and their basis for making voluntary disclosures.

York University linked the logic of capital markets with sustainability disclosures as an incentive for managing the cost of long-term debt. This paper contributes to measurement practice of sustainability disclosure by reinforcing the practice-theoretic conception of measurement that questions the independent nature of objects measured from the measurement methods and reporting tools.

The findings of this study are important to higher education administrators, regulators and policymakers, as they offer a strategic guide for the assessment of reports on an organization’s commitment to sustainability and in determining the efficacy of voluntary reporting to community stakeholders in general although they are intended for specific groups.

Using York University as an illustrative case, the authors argue that air emissions per se are not a reality that shapes decisions at the organizations; instead, the intra-action of air emissions measurement, communications and operational investments define the reality where sustainability is advanced. Specifically, the authors find that the performative effects of emissions disclosure may be associated with socially desirable outcomes in terms of social responsibility and concrete financial rewards.