Assessment of students' perception towards developing a course in environmental accounting

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this study is to assess the students' perception about the importance of incorporating environmental reporting practices, standards, and other issues in Management Accounting course. Design/methodology/approach -Environmental issues provide a unique, timely, and important focus for developing a course in Indian management pedagogy, which shall help in demonstrating the usefulness of environmental accounting information in supporting corporate environmental strategies while assessing environmental performance. Assessment measurements that may capture the impact of reformed academic programs are necessary to judge the success and failure of management education reforms. This paper carries out such an assessment process by offering a course on environmental accounting as an intervention, to a sample of 28 management students enrolled in a higher educational institution in India imparting management education. A questionnaire is administered to these students before and after the intervention in order to understand the difference of their perception level. Findings -The results suggests a significant difference in the perception level of students about the utility of incorporating environmental reporting practices in Management Accounting course before and after the administration of the reformed program. Originality/value -The paper is unique in its attempt to understand the Indian management students' perception of knowledge and usefulness with environmental accounting in their regular course, from which a more detailed evaluation can be derived. Further work based on this preliminary finding may be used to develop a proposed environmental accounting course framework for management students in India.

Sustainability and accounting education: perspectives of undergraduate accounting students in Saudi Arabia

“…In fact, the results presented in Table 6 support the results of a number of previous studies that confirmed that the appropriate approach to integrating sustainability into accounting education is to integrate sustainable development issues into the appropriate courses in the accounting curriculum instead of adding a stand-alone course that includes all sustainable development issues (e.g. Ascani et al , 2021; Creel and Paz, 2018; Lee et al , 2017; Das et al , 2008; Tomas, 2004).…”

“…Accordingly, several studies have been undertaken to examine how sustainability issues can be incorporated into accounting courses. For example, Das et al (2008) assessed students' perceptions about the importance of integrating environmental reporting practices, standards and other issues in the management accounting course and found a significant difference in students' level of perception about the utility of this integration. Lee et al (2017) examined whether the introduction of sustainability topics, especially environmental sustainability, into different sections of the introductory management accounting course leads to changes in students' environmental behaviors.…”

Beyond ACT & GPA: self-efficacy as a non-cognitive predictor of academic success

“…Ideally, students should be surveyed before and after any intervention, both as to gains in substantive knowledge as well as their perception of the utility of that knowledge. That was the approach of Das et al (2008), who surveyed students before and after adding an environmental accounting component to a management accounting course and reported gains in both.…”

Do high and low‐ranked sustainability stocks perform differently?

“…6. While the first producers of environmental reports were from polluting industries, there is an increased usage on a national and international level (Das et al, 2008;Kolk et al, 2001).…”