Search results

Previous research has highlighted a contradiction in regard to environmental reporting in South Africa. Managers, who can influence decisions regarding disclosure, express the view that more environmental reporting is needed, yet very little such reporting is done. A questionnaire was sent to every company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) with the request that the financial director should complete it. The questionnaire set out to establish whether managers are still as positive about environmental reporting as reported in previous research findings and, furthermore, to determine the reasons for the dearth of environmental reporting. Managers are still as positive as before about environmental reporting. The reasons for not reporting range from the contention that data is not available, that there are no legal requirements and that there is no demand for the data to the contention that it is not applicable to the particular industry and that costs exceed benefits. Most respondents do not regard the fear of liability to be a very important reason for non‐disclosure. The most important reason for non‐disclosure is that there is no legal requirement in respect of disclosure. This reason, together with the positive attitude of directors towards environmental reporting in general and towards reporting on a compulsory basis in particular, makes a strong case for the introduction of legislation in this regard. The introduction of legislation could be achieved by amending the Fourth Schedule of the Companies’ Act or the introduction by The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) of a statement of Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (GAAP) on environmental disclosure.

The content of the annual reports of listed South African mining companies from 1994 to 1999 was analysed to determine how many disclose certain environmental information. This number, expressed as a percentage, was compared with the corresponding percentage disclosure among the Financial Mail Top 100 industrial companies for the same years. A greater number of mining companies, when compared to other large companies, disclose environmental information. This finding is consistent with legitimacy, which is the notion that an organisation will not continue to prosper if its aims and methods are in conflict with that of society. Mining companies have a greater need to legitimise their operations by means of environmental disclosure, because their environmental impact is extensive and obvious.

The business environment is changing and education at university business schools does not appear to keep pace. This paper aims to identify principles to guide educators in preparing accounting students for automation and artificial intelligence and sets an agenda for future research.

The seven principles are derived from an extensive literature review and the analysis of qualitative data from focus groups, thought leader discussions, interviews and workshops.

The derived seven Cs model includes: critical, conceptual thinking and the spirit of enquiry; complicate, grapple and fail; create, innovate and experience; concise communication; collaboration; consciousness, respectfulness and ethical fibre; and curiosity, lifelong learning and specialized generalists. An inclusive list of future research topics related to the seven Cs model is provided to aid researchers’ agendas.

Although every attempt was made to base this study purely on expert opinions, as reflected in journal articles, conference papers, interviews and focus groups, it is impossible to prevent author biases from slipping into the interpretation and reflection involved in creating the model. Readers will also find some overlap in terms of the accounting business competencies development model’s seven Cs, due to the inter-related nature of the concepts and because the various definitions of concepts have some habits of the mind and social competencies in common.

The seven principles will help business schools and higher education policymakers guide future education developments with a focus on new competencies and reframed skills, as opposed to new knowledge. The model ensures that scholars and graduates have insight into the essential knowledge, attributes and skills that apply to the diverse nature of accounting vocations and can adapt to unanticipated changes.

This new model can be used by business schools to ensure that graduates can fully contribute to a society impacted by automation and artificial intelligence by entering the workplace with the requisite skills. It also responds to critics’ fears about the role of business schools in preparing graduates for the future of work.

The paper contributes in two ways. First, rather than focussing on particular issues or the shortcomings of current education, it identifies broad-based principles from a literature review, interviews, focus groups and workshops. Second, it sets an agenda for future research.

Previous research has revealed industry differences in respect of environmental reporting in South Africa. However, these studies concentrated on particular types of environmental reporting and therefore precluded many other types of environmental reporting in the annual reports surveyed. Past surveys also awarded equal credit to any reference to a particular type of environmental information, whether it comprised a single sentence or several pages. The annual reports of the top 100 companies, in terms of market capitalisation, were analysed and a sentence count of environmental disclosure was done with the use of the Hackston & Milne (1996) methodology. The group of energy companies was defined as comprising companies in energy‐intensive industries or companies that are producers of energy carriers. The survey revealed that these companies disclosed significantly more environmental information than other companies, in total and in each category These findings are consistent with the notion of legitimacy, which holds that companies cannot prosper if their aims and methods are not perceived to be in line with that of society. For this reason, companies that have the most obvious environmental impact tend to disclose more environmental information than other companies in an effort to legitimise their aims and methods in the eyes of society.

Over the last few decades, corporate environmental reporting (CER) has received substantial attention due to complex societal and ecological challenges experienced at a global scale. While there has been growth in CER research across the world, we know very little of the state of CER research in Africa. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive literature review of CER in sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate its current state, uncover gaps in extant studies and identify areas for further research in the region. We perform a metasearch on the Financial Times Top 50 journals in addition to wider analyses using African Journals Online (AJOL) and Google Scholar between 2008 and 2020. Though there is some progress in interrogating CER in the region, there is much leeway for further research into how public and private corporations provide an account for their interaction with nature. Extant studies have examined how CER is often subsumed within corporate social responsibility initiatives while other studies explore ways in which CER can provide accountability mechanisms in the mining sector of select countries. Important areas of future research include the influences of legal, cultural and political systems on the level of CER, the tensions between economic development driven by multinational corporations and the necessity for ecological protection. Finally, further research could investigate the role CER can play in encouraging specific corporate disclosures around GHG emissions, especially given global efforts being undertaken to mitigate the effects of climate change.

This study measures and compares the expectations of two different groups – the first is selected preparers of environmental reports (ERs) in South Africa (companies and professional environmental consultants), and the second is selected users of ERs (this included environmental activists, pressure groups and non‐governmental organisations [NGOs] with environmentally related objectives(. The study considers the perceived importance of environmental reports, the areas that are reported on and the levels of disclosure. It compares and contrasts the expectations of the above groups. The study found significant differences between the expectations of the groups. Predictably, the responses of the users showed expectations of higher levels of disclosure than those of professional environmental consultants, who in turn expected higher levels of disclosure than company respondents. Significant differences were found between the responses of the groups with regard to the importance of specific areas of environmental disclosure. The study shows that there is evidence of a gap between the expectations of the different groups, and hence that there is a need for improved environmental reporting in South Africa.

The contents of the annual reports of listed mining companies as well as of the Top 100 industrial companies in South Africa were analysed to determine how the disclosure of environmental information has changed over time. Disclosure of general environmental information increased until 1999 and then stabilised at that level. The initial increase in the disclosure of specific environmental information, such as measurable objectives and environmental performance, was followed by a decrease from 1998 onwards. A possible explanation could be that the lack of legal requirements with regard to the reporting of environmental information enables companies to decide what to report and what the extent of the reporting should be. They can therefore elect not to report specific and sometimes sensitive information, because stakeholders could perceive such information to be negative and it could therefore have a negative impact on the corporate image.

This study applies social identity theory (SIT) to explore the perceptual differences among various stakeholder groups regarding the relevance of social and environmental accounting (SEA), SEA education and mandatory disclosure of SEA.

The study adopts a mixed method applying a qualitative and quantitative approach. In total, 325 structured questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively, using ANOVA and group comparison methods. Responses from 18 interviews were analyzed qualitatively to provide complementary evidence for the quantitative study.

There were significant differences between various stakeholder groups regarding the relevance of SEA practice and SEA education. Regulators were mostly affected by considerations about the external perception of work quality, followed by financiers. Practitioners and shareholders were influenced by the ability of SEA in its current state to affect actual work quality. This possibly indicates that academic qualifications have marginal effects on predicting considerations about SEA compared to social identity.

This is the first application of SIT to SEA research and contributes to the effort to improve SEA within emerging economies, highlighting that a one-size-fits-all approach may be ineffective.

The environment is an important business issue and it will be even more so in future. Environmental reporting nowadays features increasingly in annual reports and elsewhere. It is however not compulsory and corporate decision makers must therefore make a decision for or against such reporting. Ethics is at stake in any decision involving right or wrong. Ethical theory is therefore examined in an effort to establish whether environmental reporting should be done. It is concluded that corporate environmental reporting constitutes the ethical high road.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework informed by a literature review. This framework aims to deepen and broaden the understanding of the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and non-financial reporting (NFR) through qualitative research approaches.

A review of corporate governance and NFR literature and existing research frameworks leads to the development of a conceptual framework to encourage future qualitative accounting research on the corporate governance mechanisms for NFR.

Few studies consider the complex interrelationships between NFR and corporate governance mechanisms. Quantitative studies using secondary data sources dominate accounting research on the topic. Of the small number of qualitative studies, many are theoretical and offer little new knowledge about the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms in practice. The research framework, developed from a literature review and consideration of multiple qualitative approaches, proposes numerous avenues for future research.

This paper is based on a scoping review of the literature using peer-reviewed journal papers. Other researchers may have identified additional literature for inclusion, including grey literature.

More qualitative research into NFR and corporate governance mechanisms may help to guide practitioners seeking to incorporate sustainability into their governance practices.

The critical relationship between NRF and corporate governance is under-explored in research yet has significant consequences for organisations pursuing sustainability.

The authors develop a conceptual framework for qualitative accounting research on NFR and corporate governance, addressing key outstanding questions in this area and considering different theoretical perspectives when approaching this critical topic. Although there is scope for further research in general in this promising area, including quantitative reviews and discursive studies, qualitative research would be of particular value. The authors also outline multiple directions for nurturing academic debate.