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The current study aims to analyze the role of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) in sustainability issues and its impact on the attitude of practitioners (auditors) in industrial companies. The current study relies on the analytical method, one of the tools of the inductive approach, by examining the literature of researchers, international and local organizations, publications, series, alerts, and topics dealt with by the IFAC, as well as reviewing studies, theoretical and applied research, periodicals, books, and statistics. And specialized publications for this subject, which is related to other sciences – such as – environmental science, economic, and political sciences. The study reached many results, the most important of which are: (1) The first half of the current decade has seen high interest from the IFAC, has led to the issuance of International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) international standard on assurance engagements 3410, (GHG) Statements. (2) Sustainability has become important to a growing number of enterprises, and may have a significant influence, in certain cases, the financial statements, also became the sustainability of the topics under increasing attention from users of financial statements. Thus, the financial statements will need a practitioner to take into consideration sustainability issues and a private greenhouse gas when auditing the financial statements. This study is distinguished by analyzing the role of the IFAC and the IAASB for the period from 1998 to 2023 regarding sustainability issues.

This Chapter examined the development of sustainable road infrastructure in Ghana including transportation roads, and laws, regulations, and frameworks. The Ministry of Transport (MoT) and the Ministry of Roads and Highways (MRH) are responsible for the development of transportation infrastructure and related services. The Department of Urban Roads (DUR) is responsible for facilitating the movement of people, goods, and services and promoting economic and social development of urban regions. The Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies established road centres to manage, construct, and maintain city roads, the Ghana Road Fund (GRF) was established to provide funding for the maintenance of Ghana’s road network, and the Koforidua Training Centre (KTC) was established in 2007 to provide management and project implementation staff with professional development and hands-on training. The current road length is 71,418 km, including 42,045 km of feeder roads, 14,873 km of trunk roads, and 14,500 km of urban roads. The budget for preventative maintenance is expected to rise year over year. Road infrastructure development (RID) can lead to positive societal outcomes, such as financial gains, employment opportunities, social support systems, equal rights for women and men, increased productivity, and less pollution, but it can also have unintended consequences such as deteriorating air and water quality, noise and vibration, soil erosion and sedimentation, disruption of essential services, confusion between drivers and pedestrians, changes to the landscape and habitat, and eminent domain takings. Environmental and social evaluations of development projects in Ghana must comply with several laws and regulations, and there is no unified sustainability policy or guideline in place to regulate the development of highway infrastructure projects. Resettlement is expected to help those who have been displaced by development initiatives and the Environmental Protection Agency Act of 1994 provides the authority to authorize facilities, set performance standards, and ensure compliance with standards and regulations. The Forestry Policy focusses on reducing deforestation and enhancing ecological and social commitment of forest areas, while the method for managing cultural property requires investigating and cataloguing damaged objects. Sector medium-term development plan (SMTDP) provides solutions for enhanced RID access, while the strategic environmental assessment (SEA) incorporates ecological factors into the Ghana Integrated Transport Plan. The resettlement policy framework (RPF) coordinates laws, rules, and procedures to manage road infrastructure projects and establishes criteria for determining eligibility and entitlement. The Directorate of Policy and Planning of the MRH is responsible for managing road safety and the environment, while the Directorate of Monitoring and Evaluation oversees Monitoring and Evaluation of road projects. The Ghana Highway Authority’s (GHA) four-person Road Safety and Environmental Management Unit (EMU) is responsible for addressing social and environmental issues associated with the feeder roads zone. Sustainable development (SD) has not received much attention from the Ghanaian government, with state-owned institutions prioritizing economic growth over social benefits and environmental preservation. Local governments should include a sustainability framework in their strategic planning for the successful execution of sustainable projects.

Businesses are now under more pressure from society, legislatures, and other stakeholders to act responsibly since there is a deeper understanding of how businesses affect society globally. Whether a company environmental policy is actively pursued or passively approved, boards are ultimately in charge of it. Hence, the aim of the study is to investigate the influence of the board of directors’ characteristics, namely board size, meetings, independence, gender diversity, and qualification, on environmental disclosure. The study covers all listed manufacturing companies in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for the years 2018–2022. The study expects that the board of directors’ characteristics should have a significant impact on enhancing the environmental disclosure. The finding of the study will add a vital contribution to the literature as it is the first study to be conducted in a developing country, such as Bahrain, where no study has yet been conducted there. The finding will help different parties, for example, policy makers, regulators, and shareholders as well as managers on the effect of the board of directors on the level of high quality in environmental disclosure that will build a good reputation for companies.

In recent years, international bodies and public opinion have recommended that governments adopt social responsibility practices to inform and be accountable to citizens about their sustainability actions in environmental, social and economic fields (Galera et al., 2014) and restore citizens' confidence in public authorities (Crane et al., 2008; Shepherd et al., 2010). This chapter reviews the literature on measuring and reporting sustainable performance in the public sector. Analyzing 35 studies published in a period of 10 years (from 2012 to 2021), we address two specific research questions: How and to what extent have public organizations changed to integrate sustainability reporting (SR) systems? What are the enabling organizational factors in adopting SR in public organizations?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has been widely accepted as a vital tool for communicating with stakeholders on a range of social, environmental, and governance issues, but how companies define, interpret, apply, integrate, and communicate their CSR efforts and impacts in corporate reporting is anything but a straightforward task. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the concept of materiality in CSR reporting and demonstrate practical examples of good CSR and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reporting practices. We chose the aviation industry because of its economic relevance, constant growth, and future expected changes in the aftermath of COVID-19. In addition, airlines affect many of the SDGs directly and indirectly with contending results. This chapter is timely because of the growing willingness by companies to integrate CSR and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) thinking into the corporate strategy and business operations using materiality assessment and enhancing their competitive advantage and ability to maintain long-term value and because ESG and ethical investing have become part of the mainstream investing. Thus, this chapter contributes to an understanding of the wide range of existing and new reporting frameworks and regulations and reinforces the importance of discussing how this diversity of approaches can affect the work toward worldwide comparability of CSR and sustainability reporting.

Drawing on managerial innovation model proposed by Abrahamson (1991), this chapter tries to gain a better understanding of how the UN SDGs have impacted the practice of sustainability reporting of Spanish public universities. Data were collected from a variety of sources, such as: several email structured interviews with university managers, an examination of the Chancellor letters of sustainability reports of Spanish public universities, a detailed reading of some sustainability reports and a consultation of the website of each Spanish public university. The findings reveal that there has been an increasing number of Spanish public universities that have started to publish stand-alone sustainability reporting since the appearance of the UN SDGs. According to Abrahamson's framework, our findings reveal that governmental-policy forces have shaped the sustainability reporting landscape in the Spanish public university setting, and their behaviour is mostly explained by the forced-selection and fad/fashion perspectives.

This chapter contributes to the Public Value (PV) literature in relation to accounting by providing evidence on its content's operationalization through performance measurement. In particular, it establishes the link with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which may work as guiding principles of a public organization’s action. Accordingly, organizations embedding SDGs include them in their strategic decisions and disclose them through performance measurement and narratives.

The SDGs' presence is explored in the PV of a sample of Italian health institutes through documentary analysis of their performance plans. The aim is to verify if and how SDGs are pursued and whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected PV content.

Besides Goal No. 3 (Health), the PV content of the investigated institutes contains various SDGs. Before the pandemic, their PV was aligned with SDGs mainly related to prosperity, economic growth and social inclusion. In the following period, the number of SDGs increased, introducing planet and environmental protection dimensions. No one explicitly mentions pursuing SDGs, revealing a non-institutionalized sensitivity of managers towards SDGs. The analysis distinguishes between ‘core’ SDGs, revealed mostly by traditional performance measures disclosing the achievement of institutes' mission, and ‘complementary’ SDGs, expressed mostly through narratives. This can derive from performance measurement, which employs the language of performativity, while the contribution to society is relegated in the narratives, making them less incisive.

In Morocco, as in many developing countries, environmental responsibility is not well integrated into corporate management at the operational, tactical, and strategic levels. While the management literature offers a rich body of knowledge on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies and practices, less attention has been paid to exploring the complexity of environmental responsibility through the lens of corporate culture. This research aims to address this gap by examining the influence of cultural factors on the deployment of environmental responsibility using Johnson's (2000) model of corporate culture. This model identifies seven components of corporate culture: stories or myths, symbols, power structures, organizational structures, control systems, rituals and routines, and paradigms. Through a Moroccan industrial group case study, this chapter presents the successful deployment of environmental responsibility and describes how managing cultural factors facilitated this transition. This chapter also identifies the unique aspects of the group's culture that allowed redesigning the company's management systems. These insights offer valuable implications for managers and policymakers seeking to improve the environmental performance of large enterprises in developing countries.