دانلود رایگان مقاله مقالات علمی ارتقا و تقویت حسابداری برای توسعه پایدار

Introduction

Leaders of business, public service and third sector organizations are increasingly recognizing that in discharging their varied duties they must address the significant risks of global environmental change, including the economic and social risks that can flow from it. They are also recognizing the interaction of a broader range of risks and opportunities arising from, and impacting upon, ecological, social and economic sustainability as among the most urgent and complex challenges facing their organizations and society more broadly (Hopwood, Unerman, & Fries, 2010). As organizational leaders have become more aware of a wider array of sustainability-related challenges, their organizations and advisors have worked on developing a growing range of accounting, accountability and assurance practices to help identify and manage these sustainabilityrelated risks and opportunities (Bebbington, Unerman & O’Dwyer, 2014; Malsch, 2013; O’Dwyer, Owen & Unerman, 2011; Power, 1997). Alongside the development of such practices and engagements between organizations and their stakeholders have emerged critiques and debates, supported with insights from academic research, regarding the degree to which such practices and engagements might be considered as substantive (Gray, 2010).

Conclusions and directions for future theoretical developments in accounting for sustainable development research

We have sought to briefly outline the complex dynamics and interdependencies underlying accounting in the area of sustainable development. We made the case that a sensitivity to this framing suggests the benefits of a greater degree of theoretical development and diversity than has often characterized extant research in the area. We also reviewed a selection of recent papers that demonstrate this interplay of framing, theorization and insight. Between them, these papers use a variety of theoretical framings to derive evidence and understandings from complex data. The understandings provided by each paper do not compete with each other for the status of the correct or best explanation. Rather, they are complementary, each providing different insights that collectively build towards a more complete understanding of the highly complex arena of accounting for sustainable development. Given the rapidly increasing array of complex accounting for sustainable development practices and policies, the papers discussed above do not, however, collectively provide anywhere near a complete picture or understanding of accounting for sustainable development. There is therefore considerable scope for other novel theorizations to be applied in the analysis of empirical observations to contribute further towards the robust evidence and understandings that we believe the academy has a duty to provide about accounting for sustainable development.