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This paperaims to review how the field of lean and green has been evolving. Authors draw parallels between the fields of sustainability and quality management. The paper’s title is borrowed and modified from Crosby’s seminal book: Quality is Free.

The paper starts with a review on how early lean researchers in the late 1980s draw upon benchmark studies, looking at Toyota versus other auto manufacturers to demonstrate that quality is free. Similarly, the authors carry out a benchmark to show how the same argument is valid about Toyota’s environmental performance and how Toyota’s concept of Monozukuri can be exploited as proof for the environment is free movement. The paper concludes with an attempt to address the gap between theory and practice in the field of lean and green.

The starting point for creating a lean and green business system is the understanding that there is no trade-off between lean and green, that lean and green should be brought together in a symbiosis, as Toyota have done with Monozukuri approach. This requires a coherent strategy that is well developed, and well deployed across all levels of business. The bottom line remains that environment is free, but it is not a gift.

The findings presented in the paper are based on arguments resulted from the review of the relevant literature. It is important to obtain feedback from a large sample of businesses regarding lean and green symbiosis to arrive at sound and valid conclusions.

This paper contributes to the fields of operations management and sustainability by proposing a change in businesses’ mind-set about sustainability. Rather than seeing environmental protection as a cost, it should be regarded as an opportunity for enhancing economic performance. In doing so, we can seek inspiration from the fields of quality management and the total quality movement.

This study aims to identify the content in introductory business sustainability courses in the USA to determine the most frequently assigned reading material and its sustainability orientation.

In total, 81 introductory sustainable business course syllabi reading lists were analyzed from 51 US colleges and universities. The study utilized frequency counts for authors and readings and R analysis of key words to classify readings along the sustainability spectrum.

The study reveals the most frequently assigned authors and readings in US sustainable business courses (by program type) and places them along the sustainability spectrum from weak to strong. In total, 55 per cent of the top readings assigned in the sample advocate a weak sustainability paradigm, and 29 per cent of the top readings advocate a strong sustainability paradigm.

This study focused on reading lists of introductory courses in the USA; cases, videos and supplemental materials were excluded, and the study does not analyze non-US courses.

The findings of this study can inform instructors of the most commonly assigned authors and readings and identify readings that align with weak sustainability and strong sustainability. Instructors are now able to select sustainable business readings consistent with peers and which advance a weak or strong sustainability orientation.

This is the first research to identify the most commonly assigned authors and readings to aid in course planning. This is also the first research to guide instructors in identifying which readings represent weak versus strong sustainability.

This paper aims to present the findings of a government-initiated project that sought to explore the possibility of incorporating cultural connections to land within the federal national accounting system using the United Nations Systems of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN-SEEA) framework as a basis.

Adopting a critical dialogic approach and responding to the calls for critical accountants to engage with stakeholders, the authors worked with two Indigenous groups of Australia to develop a system of accounts that incorporates their cultural connections to “Country”. The two groups were clans from the Mungguy Country in the Kakadu region of Northern Territory and the Ewamian Aboriginal Corporation of Northern Queensland. Conducting two-day workshops on separate occasions with both groups, the authors attempted to meld the Indigenous worldviews with the worldviews embodied within national accounting systems and the UN-SEEA framework.

The models developed highlight significant differences between the ontological foundations of Indigenous and Western-worldviews and the authors reflect on the tensions created between these competing worldviews. The authors also offer pragmatic solutions that could be implemented by the Indigenous Traditional Owners and the government in terms of developing such an accounting system that incorporates connections to Country.

The paper contributes to providing a contemporary case study of engagement with Indigenous peoples in the co-development of a system of accounting for and by Indigenous peoples; it also contributes to the ongoing debate on bridging the divide between critique and praxis; and finally, the paper delves into an area that is largely unexplored within accounting research which is national accounting.

Gordon Gekko's words, although spoken by a fictitious Hollywood character, captures the spirit of a very real age: the Age of Greed. This was an age that, in my view, began when the first financial derivatives were traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1972 and ended (we hope) with Lehman Brothers' collapse in 2008. It was a time when ‘greed is good’ and ‘bigger is better’ were the dual-mottos that seemed to underpin the American Dream. The invisible hand of the market went unquestioned. Incentives – like Wall Street profits and traders’ bonuses – were perverse, leading not only to unbelievable wealth in the hands of a few speculators, but ultimately to global financial catastrophe.