Rapid changes in the technological and competitive environment are posing serious challenges to accounting education. Meeting these challenges will require accounting educators and programs to undergo fundamental changes and to continuously seek ways to increase the value of their contributions. This article illustrates how the balanced scorecard may be used by accounting educators to stimulate, guide and sustain such continuous improvement efforts. Survey and interview responses from 69 accounting department heads are generally supportive of the balanced scorecard's potential applicability and benefits to accounting programs. These department heads also provide suggestions on the items that can comprise an effective balanced scorecard for an accounting department, as well as factors that can affect its successful implementation.

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A survey was designed and administered to 172 business professionals in the United States in 2015 to obtain their assessments of both the current status and future development of sustainable business practices at their companies. Despite the recent attention given to corporate social responsibility, we find that only 34 percent of respondents have a comprehensive sustainable management plan currently in place. However, the survey indicates that by 2021 that percentage is expected to increase to 54 percent. We also find that the six most popular sustainable business practices are recycling material, reducing waste, using less paper, employing energy-efficient technologies, conserving water, and adopting energy-efficient building designs. Respondents indicate their firms are likely to increase expenditures or investment in these same six sustainable practices from 2016-2021. This suggests these particular practices are viewed as being more feasible and beneficial to implement. Among the background variables investigated, we find that affiliation with an organization promoting sustainability is the most prominent; respondents affiliated with sustainability organizations are more likely to engage in sustainable business practices. Another significant background variable is firm size; large firms are more likely to be engaged in sustainable practices than smaller firms.

Although sustainability reporting has shown significant advances in the past decade, research has not kept pace with these developments. Very few studies looked how stakeholders perceive the importance of sustainability reporting and disclosure. This paper explored how users and preparers rated the importance of performance indicators suggested by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines regarding the environmental, economic and social impacts of a company. It provides evidence on which GRI performance indicators are perceived as relevant and important by both preparers and users. We found that users and preparers generally agree with the relevance and importance of all the performance indicators included in the GRI G3 guidelines. Despite a few areas of statistical disagreement, the overall perceptions were similar between users versus preparers regarding the importance of the GRI indicators. The convergence of the usefulness of GRI guidelines as viewed by the two conflicting stakeholders of users and preparers suggests that the stage may be ready for rule-making bodies and governmental agencies to further promote sustainability reporting by mandating uniform standards in reporting and disclosure.

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