دانلود رایگان مقاله حسابداری و توسعه پایدار

Abstract

AAs the social and environmental impacts of human activity have become more evident, the role of sustainable development as an organising principle in a variety of policy contexts and over multiple scales has become central. There are, at least, two implications that emerge from this observation. First, morally infused problems that need to be addressed have become more intractable, requiring innovation in our modes of thinking. Second, new spaces have emerged where the academy might explore how knowledge is created, validated and translated (or not) alongside policy and practice settings. One outcome of these trends has been the emergence of a stream of work (sustainability science) which investigates how disciplines might develop knowledge that progresses sustainable development. The aim of this paper, in line with the focus of the special issue, is to explore what possibilities emerge for accounting in light of a sustainability science approach. To achieve this end the paper starts with an exploration of the frustrations expressed in the literature over the perceived lack of progress made by social and environmental accounting towards addressing sustainable development. The paper then introduces sustainability science with the aim of imagining how an accounting for sustainable development might emerge. The paper closes with two illustrations of how a sustainability science approach to accounting could develop.

Concluding comments

O’Riordan (2004) notes that sustainable development work is ‘‘energized by the failure to overcome complex and policy-linked problem arenas such as climate change, biodiversity management, social justice and entitlement to all people to steward essential planetary resources for permanent and workable livelihoods.’’ These outcomes are not presently realised in practice and hence continue to motivate researchers and practitioners. Indeed, the failure to achieve sustainable development has prompted the emergence of social and environmental accounting (a sub-discipline of accounting) which focuses on the impact organisations have on society and the ecology. A wide array of disciplines also seek to address these concerns, drawing (as do accountants) from their own commitments, theories and modes of generating knowledge, doing what Spangenberg (2011) calls ‘science for sustainability’. Spangenberg (2011) also calls for a ‘science of sustainability’, whereby the particular demands for knowledge that can be used in policy and other decision making domains in order to move human society towards sustainable forms of development are recognized and acted upon.