Delphine Gibassier

Is environmental management accounting a discipline? A bibliometric literature review

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the body of literature on environmental management accounting (EMA) and provides a quantitative overview of the academic as well as the professional literature constituting the field. By doing so, the paper discusses whether EMA has developed as a discipline. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a database containing 814 (396 of them published in academic journals) publications in English, German and French with a publication date prior to 2012 a bibliometric analysis is conducted. Data on the publications, journals, authors and citations were collected, double-checked and examined by applying bibliometric measures. Findings - The bibliometric analysis identifies trends in EMA research publications which show that EMA has developed as a young discipline, but is still faces challenges to get better established in mainstream accounting and management research. Although the publication number is growing, a substantial part of the publications have been published outside mainstream accounting journals in non-accounting journals, books and reports. A recent trend towards establishing specialised environmental (and sustainability) accounting journals is also rendered apparent. The low number of highly cited publications of few authors, however, indicates that EMA is still to become a mainstream field of research. Originality/value - The paper discusses with the help of bibliometric analysis and measures whether EMA has developed as a discipline and whether it has become part of mainstream accounting research.

Carbon management accounting and reporting in practice

Purpose: In contrast to the reporting, stakeholder and regulatory focus, company-internal issues of carbon accounting have so far rarely been investigated in depth. This case study focuses on carbon accounting, as one aspect of accounting for impacts on the environmental capital and details the “convergence” process between two emergent corporate carbon management accounting approaches within a multinational company. Based on a qualitative analysis of this in-depth case study, we raise questions about what could be considered an effective carbon management accounting system. Design/methodology/approach: The research has been conducted with an in-depth case study, using participant observation (Spradley, 1980). We follow a pragmatic research approach and the proposal of Malmi and Granlund (2009) “to create theories useful for practice is to solve practical problems with practitioners and synthesize the novel solutions to a more general form”.Findings: This case study demonstrates that it is possible to connect two corporate carbon management accounting approaches focusing on products and the organization into a combined carbon management accounting system. This has potential impact in making carbon management accounting in organizations leaner, and more efficient in terms of performance measurement and external communication.Research limitations/implications: This research is based on a single case study and more case studies in different industries could highlight further practical implementation difficulties and approaches to overcome. Practical implications: This paper unveils that different carbon management accounting approaches can emerge in parallel in the same corporation. The paper discusses possibilities and challenges to converge them in terms of methodology (emission factors for example) and/or in terms of information systems, on which the calculations are based. Originality/value: This is, to our knowledge, the first case study of an organization explicitly acknowledging the existence of multiple emerged carbon management accounting approaches and trying to make sense of them in a convergence process to create an overarching carbon accounting system.

'Integrated Reporting Is Like God: No One Has Met Him, but Everybody Talks About Him.' The Power of Myths in the Adoption of Management Innovations

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the process through which an International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) pilot company adopted “integrated reporting” (IR), a management innovation that merges financial and non-financial reporting.,A seven-year longitudinal ethnographic study based on semi-structured interviews, observations, and documentary evidence is used to analyze this multinational company’s IR adoption process from its decision to become an IIRC pilot organization to the publication of its first integrated report.,Findings demonstrate that the company envisioned IR as a “rational myth” (Hatchuel, 1998; Hatchuel and Weil, 1992). This conceptualization acted as a springboard for IR adoption, with the mythical dimension residing in the promise that IR had the potential to portray global performance in light of the company’s own foundational myth. The company challenged the vision of IR suggested by the IIRC to stay true to its conceptualization of IR and eventually chose to implement its own version of an integrated report.,The study enriches previous research on IR and management innovations by showing how important it is for organizations to acknowledge the mythical dimension of the management innovations they pursue to support their adoption processes. These findings, suggest that myths can play a productive role in transforming business (reporting) practices. Some transition conditions that make this transformation possible are identified and the implications of these results for the future of IR, sustainability, and accounting more broadly are discussed.

Environmental Management Accounting: The Missing Link to Sustainability?

ABSTRACT In this editorial, we review how environmental management accounting (EMA) and controls (EMCS) are linked with sustainability. We present six avenues for research to investigate further how EMA and EMCS can contribute to the missing link to sustainability. Finally, we present the four contributions to this special issue.

The Corporate Reporting Landscape: A Market for Virtue or the Virtue of Marketization?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to further elaborate on the topic of standardization bodies and standards “wars” within the “market for virtue” (Vogel, 2005). This paper is a commentary on the paper by Zinenko et al. (2015) who analyze the fit between different CSR instruments at the field and the organizational level. Design/methodology/approach – This is a commentary based on secondary data analysis. Findings – This commentary reviews the implications of Zinenko et al.’s (2015) paper for research on the CSR reporting landscape and provides some additional insights into coopetition practices and the impact on organizations. It elaborates both on the development of marketization strategies and the impact of this “marketization” on what the CSR standards were initially designed for. Originality/value – This commentary provides six avenues for research, which are: coopetition between standard-setters, the influence of adopters on the development of standards, the key intermediary role of investors an...

Environmental Management Accounting and Innovation: An Exploratory Analysis

This article contributes to our understanding of how accounting could achieve, or not, to increased innovation within companies. More particularly, it focuses on how environmental accounting could drive innovation. This is a very relevant topic, given that there have been numerous calls in the media to develop energy-saving products, and governments are incentivising research into green products. The authors address the topic through two research questions, which are (1) ‘does the use of environmental management accounting (EMA) lead to innovations within organizations?’ and (2) ‘what is the role of strategy in relation to EMA use and innovation?’. Through a survey of Australian businesses, they find a positive association between EMA and process innovation but not with product innovation. Their second hypothesis regarding the link between strategy and EMA is not sustained. The value of the article is in opening the black box of one of the ‘given’ attributes of EMA, i.e. that it helps drive more innovation. However, the construct the authors use to define EMA is mostly environmental cost driven and leaves out, for example, life-cycle analysis, carbon accounting, full cost accounting or material flow cost accounting, all of which are typically included in lists of EMA activities. Therefore, people responding to the survey might have been using, for example, an eco-conception, which is linked with life-cycle analysis, but may not have responded with this construct in mind. Furthermore, this reviewer suggests that the article might have been trying to do too much at once, since it also tries to link strategy and EMA, when arguably the most pertinent research question is the link between the use of EMA data and innovation development. There is also confusion with the fact that they also consider EMA as an innovation in itself. While this study enriches our emerging knowledge about the relevance and benefits of implementing EMA, the study falls in what Jørgensen and Messner (2010) label ‘from a distance study’ and we would benefit from gaining more detailed information on practices through case studies on the internal use of different EMA systems to drive R&D activities. The most surprising result of the article, the finding that there is no link between EMA and product innovation, deserves further investigation.

Corporate Water Accounting, Where Do We Stand? The International Water Accounting Field and French Organizations

Purpose: The research objectives of this paper are threefold. First we explore what is the current status of corporate water accounting tools and methodologies. Secondly, we develop a framework for analysing corporate water accounting and reporting. Thirdly, we investigate what French CAC 40 companies account for and report in relations to the water challenge.Methodology/approach: We collected annual and sustainability reports from all CAC 40 companies as well as their water CDP responses when available. We also collected all publically available corporate water accounting methodologies to assess the international water accounting field. We coded the data according to our designed framework via qualitative data analysis software.Findings: Although water is seen as equally important to climate change (ACCA 2009), French multinationals have a very immature reporting on this topic. Most still do not report to the water disclosure questionnaire of CDP in 2014 and rely on basic figures such as global water consumption. We analysed the multiple water accounting, reporting and risk assessment frameworks that have mushroomed since 2000, and question the impact of this fragmented field on the maturity of the water performance reporting by French companies.Practical implications: The developed framework for analysis of water reporting can be used for sustainability teaching at university level. Originality/value of paper: We developed the first comprehensive analytical framework for water corporate reporting assessment. Moreover, this research is the first comprehensive study of water reporting in Europe. We therefore contribute to extend our comprehension of corporate maturity in water stewardship and water performance reporting.

Implementing an EMA Innovation: The Case of Carbon Accounting

Environmental management accounting (EMA) has only been researched as an innovation on rare occasions. This research focuses on EMA as an innovation for several reasons. First, environmental deterioration is clearly visible, widespread and deep-rooted, and many scientists are warning that urgent action is required to remedy the situation. Second, the way that the accounting profession tackles the environmental issue will indicate its capacity to evolve with the rest of society. Third, it is of importance and relevance to organizations, because according to an Accenture/Global Compact 2010 survey, 96 % of CEOs agree that sustainability issues should be integrated in company strategy and operations. This research focuses solely on the implementation phase of the innovation cycle. Indeed, implementation is an uncertain exercise and may prove complex and problematic. Accounting innovations often fail to be successfully implemented or disseminated throughout the organization. Therefore, this research seeks to answer the question of how a radically new EMA innovation can be implemented in a company. Consequently, this research develops a case study of the implementation of carbon accounting in a French multinational, and explores the different factors that led to the successful implementation of the innovation.

Environmental Management Accounting Development: Institutionalization, Adoption and Practice

This dissertation explores the notion of environmental management accounting innovation and aims to explore how they are created, if they are adopted or not into companies and the consequences thereof, and finally how they are practiced. Research methods combine participant observation, semi-structured interviews and secondary data. This dissertation is composed of three articles that together explore the different facets of management accounting innovations. The first article tackles the question of how innovations get created and on their path to institutionalization. The focus is on the actors and their strategies, the who and how of the institutionalization process. Through an in-depth case study of one organization, the second article uncovers the process of the non-adoption of a carbon accounting methodology. The third article analyses the practices surrounding and accounting innovation in a multinational.Overall, this dissertation makes three main theoretical contributions on the specific institutional work developed by elite, the role of internal legitimacy in organizational legitimacy, and on the processes of co-emergence of new practices. This research on EMA innovations also contributes to further understanding how sustainable development can be pursued through accounting in organizations