Jan Jaap Bouma

Implementing Environmental Management Accounting: Status and Challenges

Preface. 1. Environmental Management Accounting: Innovation or Managerial Fad? Pall Rikhardsson, Martin Bennett, Jan Jaap Bouma and Stefan Schaltegger. Section 1 Progress. 2. Challenges for Environmental Management Accounting Roger L. Burritt 3. Current Trends in Environmental Cost Accounting - and its Interaction with Eco-Efficiency Performance Measurement and Indicators Stefan Schaltegger and Marcus Wagner. 4. Environmental Accounting Dimensions: Pros and Cons of Trajectory Convergence and Increased Efficiency Pontus Cerin and Staffan Laestadius. 5. Process and Content: Visualizing the Policy Challenges of Environmental Management Accounting Dick Osborn. Section 2 Exploring EMA implementation issues. 6. Environmental Performance and the Quality of Corporate Environmental Reports: The Role of Environmental Management Accounting Marcus Wagner. 7. Environmental Risk Management and Environmental Management Accounting - Developing Linkages Roger L. Burritt. 8. Using Software Systems to Support Environmental Accounting Instruments Claus Lang, Daniel Heubach and Thoms Loew. 9. Applications of an Environmental Modelling System in the Graphics Industry and Road Haulage Services Tuula Pohjola 10. Process-based Environmental Cost Accounting for Small and Medium-sized Companies Natalie Wendisch and Thomas Heupel. 11. Environmental Account Systems in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. How to adapt existing Accounting Systems to EMA Requirements Alessia Venturelli and Aldo Pilisi. Section 3 National Experiences in Implementing EMA. 12. Environmental Accounting Guidelines and Corporate Cases in Korea: Implication for Developing Countries Byung-Wook Lee,Seung-Tae Jung and Jeong-Heui Kim. 13. Environmental Management Acconting: Current Practice and Future Trends in Argentina Graciela Maria Scavone.14. Environmental Management Accounting in the Framework of EMAS II in the Czech Republic Jaroslava Hyrslova and Miroslav Hajek. 15. The Role of Government in Promoting and Implementing Environmental Management Accounting: The Case of Bangladesh Abdul Hannan Mia. 16. Environmental Management Accounting Practices in Japan Katsuhiko Kokubu and Eriko Nashioka. 17. Environmental Management Accounting - Pilot Projects in Costa Rica Christine Jasch and Myrtille Dense. Index.

Risk assessment and water management

In order to implement water management in a sustainable way, the related decision-making processes have to take the ecological and socio-economic consequences into account. In The Netherlands, policy makers struggle with the question of how they can deal with flood risks. This paper presents some results of a research project sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Water management in order to develop a risk assessment approach that assists decision-makers in dealing with flood risks. It shows that dealing with risk in decision-making related to water management manifests itself in different ways. One aspect is the incorporation of risk in the process of valuation of socio-economic effects. Another aspect is the incorporation of the valued socio-economic effects into the decision-making process. The paper shows that different attitudes towards risk determine to a large extent how the valued effects are assessed. This element has been widely discussed in the literature. The results are innovative in that they also show that risk attitudes and the understanding of the risk concept interfere with the outcome of the decision-making process in the field of water management. The paper provides an approach to how the concept of risk can be operationalized in different ways by decision-makers in dealing with flood risks. The approach is applied in two case studies. The results show that different institutional contexts impose different ways of dealing with risks which may significantly change over time (discount rates, risk attitudes, relevance of ecological effects, etc.).

Institutional Changes and Environmental Management Accounting: Decentralisation and Liberalisation

This paper uses an institutional perspective to explore how EMA practices are being influenced by societal and institutional change. It focuses on two sectors in the process of decentralization and liberalization, namely, public water management and the energy sector. Shifts in the institutional and politico-economic context will be linked to the changes in their EMA systems. It is concluded that in both sectors a tension will remain between, on the one hand, the use of economic instruments and methods of evaluation as efficient tools for decision-making and, on the other, the fact that a ‘price’ is often insufficient as an indicator for rational, informed decision-making. Non-ambivalent qualitative and quantitative indicators will therefore remain necessary for the evaluation of alternatives and for environmental policy-making. It is observed that the processes of decentralisation and liberalization induced more variation in the demand for EMA information about specific types of environmental performance. Decentralisation and liberalisation bring many aspects of environmental performance into the realm of ‘customer or stakeholder relations and commercial strategy’ in EMA, as positive or negative ‘marketing assets’ to a firm or a product. The design of EMA systems and the choice of indicators will therefore closely reflect ‘what the market dictates’. Commercial strategies and the variation in the specific physical and societal context of a firm will lead to a much larger variety in the demand for EMA information and in processing approaches.

Trajectories of Greening: The Diffusion of Green Organizational Routines in the Netherlands, 1986-1995

Abstract In the Netherlands. there has been an ongoing effort by business firms and government organizations to deal with the ecological impact of industrial activities. Over the years. the set of organizational routines that firms employ to deal with their ecological impact is changing. In this article, we analyze first of all the change in this set of routines in the period 1986-1995. Then we address the question by what mechanisms these changes are brought about. Institutional theory provides us with three possible mechanisms (i.e., forms of isomorphism) by which such changes occur. Our analysis suggests that, in addition to these three forms, there are two distinct mechanisms of change. We also suggest that each mechanism leads to a certain kind of organizational change. We thus develop the concept of trajectories of change.

Embedding economic drivers in participative water management

Country location influences the institutional surroundings of the infrastructures related to water systems. In the Netherlands, water management has its own particularities. Temporarily inflow of affluent water from the rivers or the sea resulted in a highly developed institutional setting based on flood risk prevention. From an economic perspective, managing water is about allocating and using water in an effective and efficient way. This article deals with the coordination problem related to multi functionality of water systems. ‘Allocation efficiency’ is the issue. The diversity of water systems such as rivers, lakes, ditches or groundwater is multifunctional and within the systems, demand is competing. Decision makers should be aware of the different aspects of infrastructures that interfere with water systems. Further on in the decision-making, these aspects need to be valued. This may be done explicitly (for example in a formal cost-benefit analysis) or implicitly. Implicit valuation takes place when the outcome of a choice is expressed without an explicit weight and value of the effects a project has. The focus of this article is on economic drivers that express values to decision makers and thereby may stimulate the implementation of planned water projects. The problem addressed here is how these economic drivers may be institutionalized and what institutional (re-)designs are necessary to organize the coordination problem related to the multi functionality of water systems. It is part of participative water management that, under the name of Joint Planning Approach (JPA), is developed during the ‘Freude am Fluss’ international project that aims at formulating and realizing adaptation strategies in water management, specifically the realization of more space for rivers.