Social and environmental accounting in developing countries: contextual challenges and insights

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review most recent developments of social and environmental accounting (SEA) in the context of developing countries and to offer insights for the latest research in this field. It also provides an introduction to the AAAJ special issue.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have undertaken a conceptual overview of the field developed in the past two decades (2001–2020) with a view to identify major themes, trends and future research directions.FindingsThe overview reveals that only 43 SEA papers addressing contextual challenges of developing countries have been published in leading accounting journals in the last 20 years. The coverage of these publications is concentrated in a small number of countries and regions. Interdisciplinary accounting journals, especially AAAJ, are the main publishing outlets in this field. The topic areas are dominated by social accounting challenges, with much less focus on environmental accounting, although developing countries are particularly exposed to the threats of climate change, water pollution and biodiversity loss. The literature reviewed uses elaborating, problematising and theorising contexts as three main contextualisation approaches to analyse contextual themes framed around regulatory, political, cultural and religious, and social-economic systems. Although various conceptual lenses have been adopted in the developing country SEA literature, the use of institutional theory and its various extensions to address political and cultural complexities seems to become more prominent, as shown in most of the contributions included in this special issue.Research limitations/implicationsThis review is limited to leading accounting journals. SEA research increasingly published in other disciplines such as in management, social and environmental areas might provide a more comprehensive view in this research field.Originality/valueIn this paper, inter alia, the authors review and synthesise the previous literature in a conceptual framework, illustrating and highlighting the importance of contextual framing of SEA in developing countries. Based on this review, the authors propose some ideas for a future research agenda aiming to advance the field. The authors expect this paper and the special issue to act as a reference point for emerging SEA researchers from developing countries to raise more scholarly impactful enquiries in this area.

The social return on investment model: a systematic literature review

“…As Qian and colleagues stated, “extant social and environmental accounting (SEA) research in the developing countries context is limited” (2021, p. 22). Therefore, more research from previously underexplored contexts including that of emerging countries should be conducted to offer valuable insights from a perspective that is different from the one offered by wealthy economies where the SROI was originally developed.…”

Two Decades of Environmental Accounting: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…In the context of de-carbonisation targets, Fogarassy et al (2018) underline the importance of EA on companies' financial performance, as well as the degree of its adoption in cement sectors. The most major changes in social and EA in emerging countries were evaluated by Qian et al (2021) with the goal of providing insight into current research on the topic. The connection between the environmental expenditure and publicly traded oil and gas corporations' net profit is investigated by Nkwoji (2021).…”

Pursuing Big Issues in Covid-World Accounting Research

“…As Wang et al (2016) and Qian et al (2021) have argued, the social and environmental accounting field also needs to pay much greater attention to its social, institutional, and political environment. Many emerging studies in the field, particularly in journals such as Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal; Social and Environmental Accounting Journal; Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal; Critical Perspectives on Accounting; Accounting, Organizations & Society; Accounting Forum; and Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management are publishing studies that pay attention to this.…”

“…These exhibit many of the big issues of poverty, conflict, inequalities, human rights violations, environmental degradation, a tension between industrialisation and sustainable development and more. At the same time, both economically, socially and environmentally, they are having greater impacts on the global community (Chung & Cho, 2018;Marrone et al, 2020;Qian et al, 2021). Their accountability and reporting strategies and practices exhibit both local contexts and, especially where linked to global corporations or international funding agencies, they are affected by global stakeholder expectations (Qian et al, 2021).…”

“…At the same time, both economically, socially and environmentally, they are having greater impacts on the global community (Chung & Cho, 2018;Marrone et al, 2020;Qian et al, 2021). Their accountability and reporting strategies and practices exhibit both local contexts and, especially where linked to global corporations or international funding agencies, they are affected by global stakeholder expectations (Qian et al, 2021). Yet their internal histories, social relationship traditions, cultural beliefs, and government/business structures can be markedly different from the western developed country models.…”