Guest editorial

Citation

Sands, J. and Lee, K.-H. (2015), "Guest editorial", Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Vol. 11 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAOC-07-2014-0038

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Volume 11, Issue 3

1. Introduction

Sustainability and sustainable development, defined by their economic, social and environmental dimensions, are clearly one of the major challenges for society. The ongoing debate on the link between sustainability and business is whether sustainability management creates value. In a turbulent business environment characterized by rapid change and uncertainty, there is a growing business need for support in understanding the complexity of sustainability issues and their economic implications, and for decisions which address problems, such as carbon emission reduction, increasing energy costs and material consumption, and resource scarcity.

Accounting for the environmental, economic and social (or sustainability) impacts of organisational strategies and actions has been a growing area of practice and research in recent years. Sustainability requires a balanced approach to environmental, economic and social performance. Business practices in this area encompass provision of information within organisations to help managers at different levels appreciate the potential corporate sustainability impacts on and of their decisions. Environmental and Sustainability Management Accounting (EMA) provides decision-makers with tools and approaches towards improving the sustainability performance of companies and organisations, thereby contributing to more sustainable corporate bottom lines and sustainable value.

2. The contributions to the special issue

This special issue contains five articles that investigate how sustainability information is used in different ways of advancing sustainability management in different countries. Also, the findings reported in these five articles have used different research methods. The range of methods demonstrates the breadth of studies being conducted into this important issue.

First, the article “Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) for Environmental Management and Organizational Change: An Eco-Control Approach”, by Gunarathne Nuwan and Ki-Hoon Lee, undertakes an initial testing of a proposed eco-control framework using an in-depth single case study in the hotel service sector in Sir Lanka. To facilitate organisational change through corporate-environmental strategy and EMA, the qualitative analysis involving in-depth interviews identifies that the successful implementation of corporate environmental strategy and EMA requires a holistic approach to development and implementation of corporate environmental and sustainability management, including a well-defined vision, strategy and process. The contribution of this paper to the body of knowledge in an industry sector that operates throughout the world and provides a platform for extending this testing of a proposed eco-control framework into other developed and developing countries that have an hotel service sector.

Second, as the title suggests “The Potential for Environmental Management Accounting Development in China”, the authors (Qian Wei, Roger Burritt, and Jin Chen) develop a model of links between institutional theory and EMA development, which is the focus of this second article. The theory has been applied to three manufacturing companies (two publicly listed companies and one private owned company) to investigate why (or why not) EMA has (or has not) been adopted in China. The study also investigated how EMA was adopted and where the interviews revealed that EMA had been adopted by participating companies. The general conclusions were that although EMA is not very popular in China, it was recognised that there is much scope to develop the use of EMA in China. The contribution of this exploratory study is the identification that there is uncertainty about the stabilising, implementing and reinforcing of environmental regulations at local levels. The scope of this topic for future studies is relevant to all countries, both developed and developing. Such future studies may examine the progress towards managing the tension between economic growth and environmental degradation through education and awareness of all stakeholders about the reinforcement of environmental regulations.

In contrast to the first and second articles, Stefan Schaltegger and Dimitar Zvezdov in the third article “Gatekeepers of Sustainability Information: Exploring the Roles of Accountants” included both manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies in a country-comparison study using a multi-case study analysis. Another difference for this article is that this study examined the role of internal accountants in companies in the UK and Germany to provide sustainability information to decision makers. An interesting finding of this study is accountants are involved less in sustainability accounting than non-accountants, such as sustainability and general managers. The study suggests that accountants play the role of gatekeepers, which has not been investigated previously. Future studies may examine the gatekeeper function of accountants and their type of involvement in managing and using sustainability information, which may have implications for practice and university educational and professional year curriculum design.

For the fourth article “Associations Between Organizations’ motivated workforce and environmental performance”, by Kirsten Rae, John Sands, and David Gadenne, included both manufacturing and non-manufacturing Australian companies. This study has used a structural equation modelling quantitative analysis to investigate the direct and indirect associations between human capital components of the learning and growth perspective and the internal-process perspective. There are two contributions of this paper to the body of knowledge. First, the internal process is expanded to integrate the environmental activities and performance within the value-creating process as illustrated by Kaplan and Norton (2004) in their strategy map. Second, the study examines the associations between specific human capital factors and the expanded value-creating process and internal-process perspective. The findings support prior theoretical literature that argues environmental processes should be considered part of the internal-process perspective (reference), and environmental and financial performance occur concurrently from the environmental processes incorporated within the internal-process perspective (reference).

The final article “Corporate environmental sustainability disclosures and environmental risk: alternative tests of socio-political theories” (authored by Michael Dobler, Kaouthar Lajili, and Daniel Zéghal) contributes to another perspective of sustainability-information disclosure. This study uses the Standard and Poor’s 500 sample of US resource-based industries. The study complements the articles in this special issue through its use of market-based analysis to examine sustainability disclosure and environmental risk. The findings provide some guidelines for future research in financial market-based studies and may be considered for other studies using alternative model-stand approaches.

3. Concluding remarks

The papers in this special issue have explored various types and approaches of EMA to support corporate decision makers to develop and advance sustainability management. Different countries have utilized different EMA applications and practices to manage sustainability challenges and issues. The papers have shed some new light on the areas of EMA and sustainability management by providing new theoretical lenses, methodological approaches, and empirical evidence. We believe that the findings from the papers in this special issue provide new insights into EMA in developing and developed countries and have raised new issues that warrant future research.

We would like to extend many thanks to the Editor, Professor Zahirul Hoque, for providing us the opportunity to act as guest editors for this special issue. In addition, we would like to thank participants in 2013 EMAN global conference (sponsored by CIMA Global), hosted by Griffith Business School, Griffith University in Australia, as well as from EMAN Europe and EMAN Asia Pacific, for the useful remarks and suggestions. We would like also to thank all the reviewers for this special issue; Dr Gregory Laing from University of the Sunshine Coast; Dr Christian Herzig from Northingham Trent University, UK; Professor Dr Stefan Schaltegger from Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany; Dr Simon Čadež from University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Dr Tobias Viere who is with Pforzheim University, Germany; Dr Wei Qian from the University of South Australia, Australia; Dr Hasan Fauzi with the Indonesian Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research and Development at Sebelas Maret University, Indonesia; Professor David Gadenne from Univeristy of the Sunshine Coast, Australia; Dr Ted Watts with the University of Wollongong, Australia; and Dr Dimitar Zvezdov at the Centre for Sustainability Management, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany.

John Sands and Ki-Hoon Lee -Guest Editors