Purpose – In responding to prior critiques, the paper seeks to re-examine social accounting as a problem focused, multi-disciplinary field and explores some of the possible directions the emerging field might take. Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken is a discursive, polemical essay. Findings – The very nature of social accounting as a problem-based field seems to encoura…
Keywords Accounting theory, Environmental audit, Social accounting Abstract Social and environmental issues have become a central part of the academic accounting subject field. Examines the range of papers in this area at the APIRA conference. Indicates some of the pitfalls ± empiricism, theoretical awareness, relevance to practice, communication between academics ± which need dealing w…
example, AICPA, 1977; Estes, 1976; Gray, Owen and Maunders, 1987; Gray,Owen and Adams, 1996b), had disappeared almost entirely from both the language of practice and the orthodoxy of conventional accounting by the late 1970s. It returned to its previous obscurity even in accounting academe, (see, for example, Gray et al., 1987, 1991; Parker, 1986). The re-emergence of environmental accounting …
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to revisit the special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal which was published in 1991 and which sought to stimulate the “green accounting” debate, to evaluate that issue and, in particular, to examine what we might learn about the development of the social and environmental accounting literature in the last 20 years. Design/me…
Purpose – The objective of this essay is to examine the extent to which social, environmental and sustainability accounting and reporting (SEA) can or should contribute to shareholder value and, correspondingly, to consider the challenge that SEA can offer to the conventional views of “value” that underpin traditional financial accounting. The essay is then used as a vehicle to introdu…
Purpose – The purpose of this research is to seek to understand and explain the non-governmental organisation (NGO) and its location in civil society in order to provide a basis for future research work. The paper aims to explore and develop understandings of accountability specifically in the context of the NGO and then extend these insights to the accountability of all organisations. De…