The mediating effects of the adoption of an environmental information system on top management's commitment and environmental performance

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the antecedent factor, top management's commitment to environmental sustainability, for the adoption of a sophisticated internal environmental information system; measured by the broad‐scope, timeliness, aggregation and integration of such information. The paper also seeks to examine whether the availability of such a system would lead to improved environmental performance.Design/methodology/approachThe paper investigates responses from a survey of Chief Financial Officers or chief management accountants in the top 200 listed companies in Australia. It uses linear regression analysis based on a multiple‐mediator model with percentile‐based bootstrap, bias‐corrected (BC) and bias‐corrected and accelerated (BCa) bootstrap confidence intervals to identify significant mediators.FindingsIt was found in this study that top management commitment to environmental sustainability was associated with the adoption of a sophisticated internal environmental information system. Further, the availability of aggregated environmental information was found to mediate the relationship between top management commitment to environmental sustainability and environmental performance. However, there was no significant relationship to other mediating variables.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations relate to the collinearity of mediators which make it difficult to identify the impact of specific mediators in a multi‐mediator model. The implications are that other methods may provide further value, but these may need to be based on either different data or larger samples.Practical implicationsThe findings point to the importance of aggregated environmental accounting information to organisations aiming to improve their environmental performance.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the corporate environmental accounting literature by empirically linking the top management commitment to environmental sustainability and to environmental performance through the adoption of accounting information provisions. The results of this study also provide guidance to practitioners about how to ensure their commitment to environmental sustainability will be translated to environmental performance and to some extent provide some answer to whether countries such as Australia should implement Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) to account for carbon costs.

Mediating Role of Environmental Management Accounting and Control System between Top Management Commitment and Environmental Performance: A Legitimacy Theory

“…Top management committee by understanding the importance of environmental initiatives (in terms of increased performance), decides for environmental sustainability; they will be considered as committed. Many researchers found that there is a significant or positive relationship within the commitment of toplevel management and environmental performance (Spencer, Adams, & Yapa, 2013). EP has been an effective tool because of bigger cost on environmental operation; regulatory of markets as well as public pressure; due to this increased importance day-byday, the government requires its reports from companies so top-level management commitment can highlight the issues and implement EMA systems to get information about issues, therefore, its performance can be increased.…”

“…The third part consisted of the questions regarding the variables and the scale used for all the items was five-point Likert scale. To measure the environmental performance, 7 items were included in the questionnaire which was adapted from (Latan et al, 2018) and they adopted these items from (Lisi, 2015) and (Spencer et al, 2013). One sample item from those questions is "Firm is preparing annual environmental performance report" consisting of strongly disagree to strongly agree on a scale.…”

“…One sample question from those items is "Creating & use of environment-related costs account" and the scale which was used consisted of never, seldom, sometimes, usually and always. To measure TMC, 9 items scale was utilized and one of them is "Top management try to improve the company's environmental management system" and this was also adapted from Roetzel, Stehle, Pedell, and Hummel (2018) study and also used by Spencer et al (2013). About this variable, the managers were asked to give feedback about their commitment towards the environment and it was assumed that the views shared by the top management would not be the same but are matching the vision of the firm.…”

Stakeholder Engagement: Some Empirical Evidence from a Sample of European Banks

“…The secondary stakeholder group includes social and political stakeholders that play a fundamental role in obtaining business credibility and acceptance of its activities (NGOs/activists, communities, governments and competitors). Several studies investigated the positive effects of engaging accountants in CSR, particularly in terms of the environmental dimension (Albelda, 2011;Yang-Spencer et al, 2013). Finally, Hart and Sharma (2004) add the existence of peripheral stakeholders or "fringe" stakeholders as those parties not visible or readily identifiable with the firm.…”

Impact of Celebrity Endorsement and Health Consciousness on Brand Equity in the Carbonated Soft Drink Industry in Sri Lanka

“…The null 1190 To test the meditational hypothesis (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19),this study used Judd and Kenny's (1981) a series of regression procedure, where this procedure adopted by many previous studies (Yousef 2000;Morris et al 2003;Carlson & O'Cass 2011;Spencer et al 2013). Testing for the mediation requires a series of three regression equatio]ls:…”