A “green” accountant is difficult to find

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore how accountants can contribute to organisational sustainability initiatives. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a critical case study methodology, focused on a large Australian company in which senior management sought to engage accounting staff in an internal sustainability reporting initiative focused on eco-efficiency. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capitals and field enable a relational analysis of the findings. Findings While accountants adapted well to early changes aligned to cost efficiency, they struggled to engage with more creative sustainability improvements. The paper explains both adaptions and constraints as interactions between accountants’ professional habitus, capitals and their broader organisational field. Prior strategies to engage accountants (e.g. training) only partially address these factors. Practical implications The accounting profession has persistently urged members to contribute to organisational sustainability initiatives. This paper provides insight into how organisations might combine professional acculturation and appropriate capitals to advance this agenda. Social implications Although eco-efficiency is only one potential element of comprehensive organisational sustainability management, the paper’s insights into engaging accountants contributes to understanding how broader social sustainability agendas might be advanced. Originality/value The study addresses calls for empirical insights into how accountants can contribute to corporate sustainability practices. Prior studies have polarised between interpreting accountants as either enablers or barriers to sustainability change. This paper explores how shifting configurations of habitus, capital and organisational field can enable either outcome.

A Structured Literature Review about the Role of Management Accountants in Sustainability Accounting and Reporting

“…The next most common are E1 "Case/Field study/Interviews" and E3 "Survey/Questionnaire/Other empirical" (five publications each). In E1, for example, Egan and Tweedie [64] use the case study method focusing on a large Australian company in order to investigate how management accountants can contribute to corporate sustainability. In E3, Ballou et al [33], for example, conducted a survey completed by 178 members of the Corporate Responsibility Officer's Association to explore how accountants can promote the strategic integration of sustainability initiatives.…”

“…Two publications fall into C2 [33,62]; while Ballou et al [33] explored how management accountants could support sustainability initiatives in the context of an association, i.e., the Corporate Responsibility Officer's Association, Lodhia [62] focused on the Sustainable Development Bill, an environmental legislation for Fiji, and its influence on management accountants. C3 includes three publications focused on one organization [35,63,64]; Fraser [35] studied the case of a local city council, while Egan and Tweedie [64] focused on a large company group, and Fernández Chulián [63] circumscribed the study to a Spanish university.…”

“…The publications in the dataset fall into sub-categories D2, D3, and D5. Three publications focus on D2 "Private companies", i.e., professional accounting firms [52], professional services firms [53], and a firm operating in the food industry [64]. Public sector organizations are the subject of five publications e.g., [35,46] belonging in the D3 attribute.…”

Intrinsic Value Dari Pelaporan Keanekaragaman Hayati

“…Samkin, Schneider, & Tappin (2014) memperluas pendapat Sessions & Naess, (1986) dan Naess (2005) dengan mengatakan bahwa faktor spiritual dan budaya adalah hal yang tidak terpisahkan dari platform kebutuhan vital. Dengan mendasarkan pada aspek normatif realisasi diri, platform kebutuhan vital mengakui bahwa manusia memiliki kebutuhan fisik dan psikologi yang akan terpenuhi dengan cara melakukan interaksi antara satu dengan yang lainnya dalam komunitas tempat ia berada (Busch & Lewandowski, 2018;Egan & Tweedie, 2018). Haller, Van-Staden, & Landis (2018) menjelaskan bahwa kesadaran ekologis yang mendalam tentang realisasi diri memerlukan identifikasi diri yang melampaui dunia manusia agar dapat memasukkan dunia nonmanusia.…”

Finance for a future of sustainable prosperity

“…Currently the link between sustainability and accounting, and importantly the implementation of solutions overcoming problems in linking these two concepts, is not sufficient (Çalişkan, 2014;Egan & Tweedie, 2018). There is limited evidence that accounting practice is engaged with sustainability; rather, the evidence shows that accountants mainly act as gate-keepers between sustainability managers and higher management (Schaltegger & Zvezdov, 2015).…”