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This study aims to explore the state of environmental management accounting practice and the motivations for its use with a view to improving waste and recycling management by local government. The focus is on practice in local governments situated in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Prior studies suggest the need for environmental management accounting as a supporting tool for waste management.

An exploratory case study method was applied in 12 NSW local government organisations. In each local government interviews were conducted with managers responsible for waste and recycling issues.

Contrary to prior research this study found that, in the local governments investigated, an increasing amount of environmental management accounting information is being made available. The case studies found two main motivations encouraging the development of environmental management accounting in local government: first, social structural influences, such as regulatory pressures from different environmental regulatory bodies, environmental expectations from local communities, and pressures from peer councils; second, organisational contextual influences reflecting situational needs in the organisational contexts, such as complex waste operations and service designs, changes and uncertainties in waste and recycling management, and the council's strategic position for waste management.

The results imply that institutional theory and contingency theory provide different but complementary explanations for the development of environmental management accounting in waste management. Although previous environmental studies are overwhelmingly in favour of social system‐based theories, such as institutional theory, to explain environmental changes in organisations, an organisation's contextual dynamics seem to be equally important.

The findings about motivations provide useful information for environmental strategists and government regulators to make policies that improve accountability and the efficiency of waste and recycling management as well as promote future development of environmental management accounting to support sustainable waste management solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the contributions of information systems (IS) for the evolutionary process of corporate environmental management by highlighting implications for big data research.

The authors conducted two case studies with Brazilian enterprises certified by ISO 14001, by conducting interviews, document analysis and direct observation. Implications for a research agenda on big data are also presented.

As results, the authors present the identification of the main contributions of IS for the evolution of environmental management in the studied cases. The authors found that advanced stage regarding IS may be considered a factor that implies a more effective environmental management.

The main contribution of this research consists of the presentation of a framework that identifies the support of IS for corporate environmental practices. By confirming the relation between IS and maturity levels of environmental management, the authors highlight that application of big data has the potential of boosting the relation between IS and corporate environmental management.

The research debate on the direct relationship between environmental strategy and environmental management accounting (EMA) is quite popular; however, integration challenges between these two factors still persist at the firm level. This paper seeks to adopt the contingency theory perspective to examine how EMA implementation varies across organizations with different intensity levels of environmental management strategy implementation (i.e. environmental management maturity, EMM).

The paper uses a web-based survey, designed and administered to public listed companies and members of three industry chambers in Sri Lanka.

This study finds that EMA implementation is significantly different among organizations at varying EMM stages. Further, it is observed that organizations at higher stages of EMM use significantly greater domain-based EMA tools and EMA for functional purposes. Therefore, the results show that when organizations progress from reactive to proactive environmental strategies, the EMA evolves to encapsulate and diversify to deal with more-sophisticated environmental management activities.

This is the first study to provide cross-sectional evidence on the relationship between the application of EMA tools and functional uses and the intensity of the environmental strategy pursuance (or EMM). It also proposes a multi-item comprehensive measurement tool for EMA implementation.

This paper investigates the relationship between product market competition and firms’ water information disclosure and how firms’ ownership type can affect this relationship in China, offering new insights into corporate water management.

The authors investigated 303 Chinese listed companies in highly water-sensitive industries to examine how product market competition influences corporate water information disclosure by subdividing the product market competition into market competition at the firm level and the industry competition intensity at the industry level.

The results show that there exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between industry competition and water information disclosure; enterprises with the highest market power in a mildly competitive industry are more willing to voluntarily disclose water information and play an industry benchmarking role. Further tests demonstrate that the relationship between industry competition intensity and water information disclosure is stronger for state-owned enterprises than for private enterprises.

The current water resources regulations in China are relatively lax and the water risk awareness of firms is weak, which may affect the applicability of the results. In addition, water information disclosure research is a relatively new field and a quantitative index system for water information disclosure is still in the exploratory stage. Further developments, including the selection, definition and measuring methods of a water index are required.

The authors developed a new direction of enterprise water management activities from the perspective of market competition. Based on the market conditions in China, the authors also investigated the impact of the ownership type of the enterprises on the relationship between market competition and water information disclosure.

The authors suggested that the government should improve laws and regulations and adopt incentive mechanisms to encourage enterprises to implement water resource management. In addition, the government should encourage high market status enterprises to actively fulfill their environmental responsibilities so that the entire industry is encouraged to follow suit.

This study represents an important development in the field of environmental accounting and is the first research on corporate water information disclosure; it also extends the research on the influence mechanisms of market competition on the environmental management practices of enterprises.

Organizations’ increasing concern for environment shows the interest in appropriate mechanisms that account for relevant flows of environment-related information. Today managers and researchers are promoting environmental management accounting (EMA) systems mechanisms as a means to incorporate the full spectrum of ecological data into day-to-day business decisions and foster green management execution. However implementation remains a challenge and many of the difficulties are associated with conceptual and practical problems in integrating ‘green’ information and providing guidance on effective implementation. In this context academics might investigate on further explanations on how to achieve excellence in both environmental and financial performance. Hence this chapter substantiates the need for more theoretical and empirical studies on EMA practices and proposes avenues for future research.

We review the growing body of EMA research to inform the reader of what has been studied to date and indicate the necessity for further investigation. In addition, we suggest areas for future research.

Our synthesis highlights the relevant aspects of EMA examined in prior studies. The review reveals unexplored facets that need to be investigated to complement existing knowledge. In particular researchers might explore the concept of environmental performance and the application of different forms of EMA within organizations. Moreover academics have the opportunity to further examine the role of EMA mechanisms in companies that do not pursue environmental results for economic benefits.

The chapter sheds some light on EMA literature and emphasizes the opportunities that new theoretical developments and appropriate research designs offer in the investigation of the remaining gaps in the literature.

The failure of environmental reporting to meet the needs of stakeholders is partly due to the gap, or inconsistency, between information disclosed in corporate reports and the underlying quality of environmental management. Within the context of the mining industry, this paper present a novel approach to close this gap. By measuring and reporting the comprehensiveness of environmental management – in a manner consistent with the qualitative characteristics applied within financial reporting – this paper contends that stakeholders can, as a result, better assess the environmental risk of mining operations and hold organisations more accountable for their environmental commitments.

Using interviews and surveys, this paper draws on the knowledge of experienced environmental practitioners to measure the otherwise intangible quality of “environmental management”. The accounting metric developed is then used to quantify the comprehensiveness of environmental management of thirty Australian-based mine sites.

The findings suggest: (1) the accounting metric presented in this paper could better inform the decisions of both internal and external stakeholders; (2) significant variation in the comprehensiveness of environmental management exists within corporate entities and across the mining industry; (3) ISO 14001 is generally an indicator – but not a guarantee – of strong environmental management and (4) ISO 14001 self-declarations are largely symbolic.

The accounting metric presented in this paper could better inform user decisions, enhance corporate accountability and drive continuous improvement in environmental management. It could also provide a foundation for similar customised metrics in other industries and across other areas of sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of organizational change undergone by a large Portuguese business group within the context of the environmental agenda and the role of accounting as a mechanism for change.

The paper reports the results of a case study conducted between 2006 and 2009. Information was obtained from semi‐structured interviews and secondary sources. Organizational changes were analyzed using Laughlin's model in order to identify which category reflected most of the changes introduced to address environmental matters.

This paper offers evidence that change is not a homogeneous phenomenon. Additionally, it confirms previous studies' findings which found that accounting did not play a significant role in the process of organizational change within the context of the environmental agenda.

This paper seeks to complement the research in this area by integrating observations from a case study into an existing model of levels of organizational change according to how a Portuguese business group incorporated environmental issues into its processes, policies and corporate culture.

This paper aims to theorize and assess a structural model that depicts the impact of an organization's capability to share information with supply chain partners through a focused green information system for the purpose of improving environmental performance.

Data were collected from 159 manufacturing managers and analyzed using a structural equation modeling methodology.

The general capability to share information with supply chain partners coupled with the specific capabilities of green information systems enhances environmental performance. Green information systems serve as a partial mediator to the relationship between supply chain information sharing and environmental performance.

While environmental sustainability has implications for all categories of supply chain partners, the study sample focuses on the manufacturing sector only.

Evidence supports the need for manufacturers to develop information sharing and green information system capabilities to improve environmental performance.

This is one of the first studies to empirically assess the role of information systems in achieving environmental sustainability. The results of this investigation support the proposition that information sharing among supply chain partners is a key to achieving environmental sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the existing knowledge about the relationships between information technology (IT), lean manufacturing (LM), organizational environmental issues and business performance.

A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to collect data from 122 elite manufacturers, and the hypothesized relationships were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

IT competence in LM acts as a lower-order organizational capability, and its business value should be recognized through the intermediate roles of LM effectiveness and environmental management capability. Findings recommend that the net benefits of LM are mainly materialized through waste and pollution reduction and simplified implementation of proactive environmental practices.

Among other limitations, relying on a rather small sample size and cross-sectional data of this research, and lack of generalizability of findings, tends to have certain limitations. An interesting direction for future research would be to extend this research by assessing interaction of other types of IT resources with LM and organizational environmental issues.

Both LM and proactive environmental management are information-intensive. Investment in both technological and human aspects of IT resource aimed at increasing the effectiveness of LM activities and proactive environmental practices is imperative for contemporary manufacturers.

This study introduces the IT capability of IT competence in LM and two organizational capabilities of LM effectiveness and environmental management capability. By doing so, the study highlights the significant role of organizational environmental issues in devising firms’ IT and advanced manufacturing technology investment strategies in LM context.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute significantly to the first wave of empirical investigations related to the impact of green supply chain management practices on environmental and organizational performance from a manufacturer's perspective within a supply chain context.

An environmental collaboration and monitoring performance model is theorized and assessed following a structural equation methodology. Data were collected from 159 manufacturing managers through an on‐line survey.

Environmental collaboration and monitoring practices among supply chain partners are found to lead to improved environmental performance and organizational performance.

As a first wave investigation of the impact of green supply chain management practices on performance, the study is somewhat exploratory.

Practitioners are provided with a framework for assessing the impact of environmental collaboration and monitoring practices among supply chain partners on environmental performance and organizational performance. The study provides evidence that green supply chain practices lead to improved environmental and organizational performance.

The results also have important societal implications. While green supply chain management practices enhance the economic sustainability of the firm, they also positively impact society through improvements to the overall environment.

The results of this investigation support the proposition that implementation of environmental collaboration and monitoring practices by supply chain partners are both environmentally necessary and good business. The paper provides manufacturing managers with a structured approach to improving both environmental and organizational performance through environmental collaboration and monitoring with customers and suppliers.