Accounting, the Environment and Sustainability
Sustainability relates to both present and future generations. It is discuss that the needs of all peoples are met. Those needs are both social and environmental. The link between accounting and environmental degradation is well-established in the literature (see, for example, Eden, 1996; Gray et all 1993). The crucial point is that accounting which takes the business agenda as given should include much environmental and social accounting. Thus, central to any discussion of accounting and the environment is a basic, challenging, and deeply unsettling question: do we believe that the organizations which accounting serves and supports can deliver environmental security and sustainability?

At the same time as the technical implementation of social accounting and reporting has been developing the philosophical basis for such accounting has also been developed. Thus, Benston (1982, 1984) and Schreuder and Ramanathan (1984) consider the extent to which accountants should be involved in this accounting. Donaldson (1982) argues that such accounting can be justified by means of the social contract as benefiting society at large. Batley and Tozer (1990) and Geno (1995) have argued that “sustainability” is the “cornerstone” of environmental accounting.

Social and Environmental Reporting
The questions of how business should report its social performance and how that performance should be assessed have been dominant themes in the social accounting literature (Gray et al, 1996) and the social issues in management literature (Wood 1991) over the past decade. We are now witnessing both a number of initiatives that seek to set guidelines or standards for social accounting, for example the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

If there is one area which accounting researchers have embraced with enthusiasm it is the phenomenal growth in environmental reporting by organizations. The research in this area has been dominated, initially at any rate, primarily by studies descriptive in orientation. Such studies typically employ some variant of content analysis (see, for example, Milne and Adler, 1999; Gray et all, 1995). Both country specific studies and comparative studies have recorded an upward trend in environmental disclosure both through the annual report and through stand-alone environmental reports. However, analyses of the phenomenon ( Hackston and Milne1996; Fekrat et al1996; Pava and Krause 1996 ; Adams et al 1998) confirm that such reporting is principally restricted to the very largest companies and is, to a degree at least, country and industry variant.

Research into environmental disclosure is developing rapidly with examinations of the impact of pressure groups (Tilt, 1994) and other external forces (Gray et all, 1995; Deegan and Gordon, 1996), exploration of user’s needs (Epstein and Freedman, 1994; Deegan and Rankin, 1997), focus on particular aspects of reporting such as environmental policies (Tilt, 1997), exploration of the truthfulness of environmental disclosure (Deegan and Rankin, 1996) and much needed theoretical development (see, for example, Patten, 1992; Roberts, 1992; Gray et al, 1995, Buhr, 1998; Adams et al, 1998; Brown and Deegan, 1998; Neu et all, 1998).#p#分頁標題#e#

Environmental reporting takes place in a predominantly voluntary regime and with the continuing interest in voluntary guidelines for such reporting (see, for example, KPMG 1997), such survey of practice are crucial in keeping attention focused on the doubtful quality and, especially, the global paucity of such reporting. If environmental reporting is important (for social accountability reasons even if it is of dubious “financial user need” value) then the predominant view of business – that environmental reporting is adequate in voluntary regime – must be challenged. Whilst the early research into environmental disclosure appeared to be so delighted that any such disclosure was taking place, this acquiescence has given way to a more critical analysis of practice. This analysis, primarily informed by the “critical school” (Laughlin, 1999), comprises three main themes. The first two of these themes are, in essence, the same critique made of social accounting. First, accounts of any kind are necessarily partial and biased constructions of a complex world. Not only do such constructions, by making some things visible, make other things invisible (Broadbent, 1994) but they are most likely to limit and even destroy the essential nature of the thing accounted for. (See, for example, Maunders and Burritt, 1991; Maunders, 1996; Cooper, 1992; Johnson, 1998). Second, the critical theorist would argue that environmental reporting is voluntary activity it can only reflect those aspects of environmental performance which organizations are willing to release. It can, therefore, only be a legitimation device and not an accountability mechanism. Consequently, the critical theorist argue, environmental accounting- including environmental reporting- is almost certain to do more environmental harm than it does good. These two themes are now developing into an important – if, as yet, unresolved – theoretical debate which seeks to counter the inherent managerialism of most accounting (and environmental accounting) research.

The final theme in the critique of environmental disclosure develops the issue of the voluntary nature of environmental disclosure and brings a much-needed re-assessment of the importance and role of law in the construction of society. Specifically, Gallhofer and Haslam (1997) could be taken to use researchers’ views on the role of regulation in governing environmental reporting as an indicator of the researcher’s managerialist or alternative perspective.

In essence, a non-managerialist environmental reporting would have to challenge an organization’s legitimacy and, in particular, the legitimacy of the means by which it earned the reported profit and gained its growth. The critical challenges to environmental reporting are not ill-founded when they remark that too little environmental reporting research examines this question to any substantial degree.

One of the more inexplicable, although exceptionally welcome, consequences of the growing environmental agenda has been the re- emergence of a serious interest in social accounting. This is not the place to try and review, in any detail, the broad social accounting literature (see, for example, Gray et al 1996) – although a few general observations seems opposite. Social Accounting had its principal heyday in the 1970s but, although some researchers maintained an active interest in the field, it virtually disappeared from the popular consciousness of accounting academe during the 1980s and 1990s. Its re-emergence seems to be a response to a number of factors. One such factor seems to be the recognition that separation of environmental from social issues is difficult at best and pernicious at worst. As environmental issues are explored more carefully, the underlying implications for employment, communities, health and safety and even the organization’s very posture on ethics and social responsibility inevitably resurface.#p#分頁標題#e#
Equally, corporate practice has re-discovered social accounting and when organizations as diverse as Ben and Jerry’s, the Body Shop and Shell commit to social accounting, the wider business community begins to take notice. Finally, as we shall see, the environmental debate leads us inexorably towards discussions of sustainability. Such discussions must, by definition, embrace social accounting matters.

The recent research literature on social accounting is still a little sparse but examples exist. The Adams/Roberts project has maintained a focus across both social and environmental disclosure (see, for example, Adams et al, 1998; Gray et al 1995; Hackston and Milne, 1996). Work by Roberts (1992), Pinkston and Carroll (1996), Patten (1995), Epstein and Freedman (1994), Mathews (1995) and Robertson & Nicholson (1996) continues to keep the social responsibility accounting debate moving forward whilst simultaneously, we are starting to see a re-emergence of normative work designed to guide how social accounting might be accomplished and what it might look like (See, Zadek et al, 1997; Gray et al, 1997; Gonella et al, 1998).