a13 472 · rob h. gray, richard laughlin ... 223 an empirical case study looking at the evolution...

Social and Environmental Accounting

Research advances and new perspectives

edited by

Pasquale ArenaEleonora Cardillo

Copyright © MMXIIARACNE editrice S.r.l.

[email protected]

via Raffaele Garofalo, 133/A–B00173 Roma(06) 93781065

ISBN 978–88–548–4714–9

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form,by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means,

without written permission from the publisher.

1stedition: April 2012

The papers were selected and reviewed by the scientific committee of the CSEAR conference

Contents

PrefacePasquale Arena, Eleonora Cardillo

Part ISocial and Environmental Accounting debate

It was (nearly) years ago today: SGT Pepper, Accounting Audit-ing and Accountability Journal, Green Accounting and the bluemeaniesRob H. Gray, Richard Laughlin

A reassessment of the “open model” of social account proposed inthe mid s: are some insights still useful for the current socialaccounting debate?Gianfranco Rusconi

Social and environmental accounting and organizational change:what, where and why? A personal overviewMassimo Contrafatto

Different dimensions of accountabilityPasquale Arena, Eleonora Cardillo

Part IISocial and Environmental communication processes

Social and environmental accounting and reporting institutionalfactors: comparative analysis Bulgaria/ItalyMaria–Gabriella Baldarelli, Ninel Nesheva–Kiosseva

Social and environmental reporting: policies and practice. A pro-posal for romanian companiesCamelia I. Lungu, Chirata Caraiani, Cornelia Dascalu

New research methodology for monitoring sustainable develop-ment indicators on tourism destinations: a comparative analysison the greatest Italian destinationsMassimo Briani


Creating value through the CSR: the case of a local public trans-port companyFrancesco Agliata, Caterina Ferrone, Danilo Tuccillo

Private Dam Safety Accountability and Assurance: Moving fromMinimum to International Best Practice Policy BenchmarksJoanne Tingey–Holyoak, John D. Pisaniello, Roger L. Burritt

An empirical case study looking at the evolution of risk, opportu-nity and the business case in embedding connected reporting atBTJeffrey Unerman, Brendan O’Dwyer

Cooperative Banks (CBs) as a source of local development: Ac-countability experiences in ItalyEricka Costa, Caterina Pesci, Tommaso Ramus

Regulatory and Governance Impact on the Operations of NigerianBanksOwolabi Akintola

Part IIISocial accounting in public and non–profit sector

Converging Trends in Social Reporting Regulation: the Case ofItalian Public and Non–profit SectorsRiccardo Mussari, Patrizio Monfardini

The sustainability report for the non–profit organizations in Italy.Proposals for standardizationAlessandra Tami

Values–based public–private networks. CSR Orientation in LocalGovernment in ItalyMara Del Baldo, Paola Demartini

About the authors

Social and Environmental AccountingISBN 978-88-548-4714-9DOI 10.4399/97888548471491pag. 7–8 (marzo 2012)

Preface

The book contains the papers selected and presented at the Third ItalianConference on Social and Environmental Accounting Research, held at theDepartment of Economics of the University of Catania on September –, in collaboration with the University of Bergamo, the University ofBologna and the University of St Andrews.

The Italian Conference “CSEAR ” takes its name from the Europeanstructure CSEAR (Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Re-search) based in St Andrews (Scotland) and which is the place that promotesconferences and scientific debates on this subject.

The conference revealed the commitment of people dedicated to thedevelopment and diffusion of studies on pathways to social responsibilityundertaken by the organizations that decide to build a system of socialaccounting that is “a process of communicating the social and environmen-tal effects of organisations’ economic actions to particular interest groupswithin society at large” (Gray R., Owen D., Adams C. ).

The development and production of documents on social and envi-ronmental communication involves the adoption of different tools andtechniques and approaches with the consequent development of variousmodels and contextualised adoptions in relation to the different but specificways taken within the organization. Consequently, it can be said that if onthe one hand, entities that decide to adopt the system of social reporting,have the possibility to choose the method that best suits their needs andorganizational context, on the other hand, it is necessary to interpret theirconduct whose degree of awareness of the importance of the process is aprerequisite for the relevance and reliability of the information produced.

The experiences in social accounting show different ways and methodsof reproducing and recreating original data and information and how toimplement communication and representation models useful to express theresults of actions in their social and environmental implications. Howeverthese functional efforts are only a part of the process, which should beconjugated with the set of qualitative and quantitative performance achievedin the context of cultural dimension due to which the organization, withina social context, creates and configures its relation to the capacity of inter-preting and meeting the collective needs and to the motivational spur toaffirm and increase the degree of accountability.


The development of social accounting should be necessarily connectedto a path that applies principles and values within and across cultures. Theinternalization of values influences communication processes within theactivities that have socio–environmental impacts and the creation of relation-ships established with individuals and the social community and, therefore,it maintains the integration and the equilibrium of the social system (Parson).

The centrality of social and environmental accounting in the currentscientific debate has stimulated the motivation to develop specific studiesand appropriate researches conducted in different contexts that have foundtheir moment of discussion and debate during the conference. The researchresults have enriched the literature on this issue by highlighting moretheoretical issues and applicative aspects in relation to empirical evidencesemerged from the study of cases analyzed by the authors of the paperspresented.

Pasquale Arena, Eleonora Cardillo

P I

SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTALACCOUNTING DEBATE


It was (nearly) years ago today: SGT Pepper,Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal,

Green Accounting and the blue meanies

R H. G, R L

Abstract

Purpose — To revisit the special issue of Accounting Auditing and Account-ability Journal which sought to stimulate the “green accounting” debate. Totry and evaluate that issue and, in particular, to examine what we mightlearn about the development of the social and environmental accountingliterature in the last years.

Design/methodology/approach — A discursive, polemical essay.

Findings — The special issue exhibited a wide range of approachesand possibilities; it also exhibited some theoretical naivety and a charmingoptimism and fetching trust in the power of reasonable argument. Retro-spectively, the field has exhibited considerably more theoretical and humanunderstanding but appears to be less willing to examine the fundamentalissues that originally motivated its development.

Research limitations/implications — The implications and limitationsstem from the ambitions of this discursive attempt to encourage debate of amore direct and confrontational nature: both within and at the margins ofsocial, environmental and sustainability accounting.

Originality/value —The paper claims no originality but would hope tostimulate such originality in others. The paper would not presume to usurpthe duty of either the community or posterity to determine whether or notthis piece has either originality or value.

Keywords — Green accounting; social and environmental accounting;sustainability; academic community; research projects

Paper type — Research essay

Rob H. Gray, Richard Laughlin

It was (nearly) years ago today


A reassessment of the “open model”of social account proposed in the mid s:

are some insights still usefulfor the current social accounting debate?

G R

Introduction

This paper focuses on a process of re–examining a model of social accountthat was presented by the Author in the s.Unfortunately, this modelwas written and circulated only in Italian (Rusconi), even though itwas based on a critical analysis of literature and proposals in circulation.

The aim of this paper is to show that this model can offer some use-ful insights even for the current problems of social accounting processes.This model is called the “open model” (hereinafter referred to as “OM”)and proposes a general approach that also takes account of some criticalissues that nowadays affect this period of widespread circulation of socialenvironmental reporting (hereinafter referred to as “SER”).

Before emphasizing the specific research question of this paper, thereare two basic observations to be made:

a) this model has been presented in depth in a book published in ,so this work that was carried out during the s, a period of crisisfor the motivations and circulation of social reporting processes(Rusconi a); in this context the author was compelled to reply tomany objections, especially from the overwhelming neoliberism;

b) the model considers, as far as possible, all the important threatsthat jeopardize the respect of the fundamental accountability andtransparency mission of every real and reliable SER.

Therefore, the essential research question of this paper is whether OMstill provides some useful insights and contributions for tackling the current

. The only English presentation (Rusconi ), though synthetic, was given at EBEN Con-ference in Brussels, after being published in a review of the Department of Business Administrationof the University of Bergamo (Italy), Rusconi .

Gianfranco Rusconi

day SER debate. The paper starts by considering the reasons for this analysisof OM (why OM?).

In the following section a general view of the origins, theoretical foun-dations, principles and characteristics of OM is presented, also taking intoaccount the historical national context.

The third section examines the focal issues and problems of OM, byresponding to the question posed in Contrafatto ()

The last section discusses what is still useful nowadays of OM in order tocontribute even in a small way to the debate on SER issues and problems.

. Why the open model?

The OM was presented in Italy (Rusconi , and a) in order tosystemize the dawning interest in social accounting that took place in Italyin the eighties.

In order to speak about and analyse this model, the following must be considered:

a) the socio–historical context;b) a comparison between the OM’s principles and the current views of

Triple Bottom Line (hereinafter referred to as “TBL”) that constitutea paradigmatic point of view for important standards, mostly GlobalReporting Initiative (hereinafter referred to as “GRI”);

c) what are the contributions of the OM to tackle issues such as “man-agerial capture” (Owen et al.) or, though examined a lot less,“stakeholder capture” (Rusconi and Contrafatto )?

d) what could be the direct or indirect contributions of the OM toachieve a better understanding of the relationships between conven-tional and social accounting?

e) starting from the essential role that Rusconi assigned to thestakeholder approach, what are the possible insights from the OMthat could lead to a slightly better understanding of the role of stake-holder theory (ies) (Freeman , Freeman , Wicks et al. ,Phillips et al. , Roberts and Mahoney , Rusconi ,Signoriand Rusconi , Freeman et al. and Rusconi b).

f ) the current long–term controversial issue about economic exter-nalities is considered by the OM as essential for the SER buildingprocess.

Bearing in mind these issues, in the next sections we will try to findout to what extent the OM can:

A reassessment of the “open model” of social account proposed in the mid s

a) contribute to help scholars and practitioners better understand SER;b) help to avoid the usual and consolidated abuse or, in any case, incor-

rect applications of the social accounting process;c) suggest a possible alternative–integrative conceptual option to the

mainstream SER views, especially a rigid and a little dogmatic “TBLview”.

. Origins and theoretical foundations, principles and structure of OM

.. Origins and theoretical foundations

The OM was devised from to , that is in an historical period whichwas characterized by a general decrease of tension for social responsibilitystudies and applications, even in most of the countries (particularly USAand UK) where social accounting was more deeply studied and pioneeringapplied:

in the ‘s a period started that could be considered of “low tension” (Rusconi, p.), towards CSR, that also involved a decrease in social accounting researchand, mainly, practical applications. This was due, to a great extent, to the changingdominant view from a regulated to a stronger free market idea of capitalism (theso–called “turbocapitalism”, Luttwak ), but we also have to consider what thetheoretical influence of the idea of CSR in the ‘s and ‘s was on reducing thetension towards CSR. (Rusconi a, pp. –)

The Italian situation was, nevertheless, quite different, as is shown in thefollowing very short historical overview.

First of all, it has to be mentioned that Italy did not know about thefirst pioneering circulation of SER in s unlike other western countries,probably due to the following (Rusconi and a) related factors:

a) Until the application of European Community IV Directive from late, there was almost an institutional lack (and fear) of transparencyin all accounting information, even financial: this was certainly not asuitable socio–economic environment to support the circulation of aculture of socio–environmental disclosure!

b) industrial and social relations were very difficult in many cases, pro-voking in some cases both a fundamental contrast about the samenature or aim of a firm and, at least, a widespread distrust amongfundamental stakeholders, that greatly hampered the circulation andacceptance of voluntary accountability documents.

Gianfranco Rusconi

However, it must be stated above all that for a large part of the Italianacademic accounting, the place of social accounting was near financial ac-counting in the accounting research family. This paper is not the occasionto look more deeply into what was said before, but we only have to pointout that the Italian “general business administration” (Economia Aziendale)view is the label of the unifying discipline that encompasses accounting,management, organization, like the German business administration studiestradition. It implies an unitary and systemic view of the firm, consider-ing accounting as aimed strictly at the firm’s other essential components(organization and management).

Therefore, according to this perspective, if a firm is involved in so-cio–environmental management politics, accounting also has to complyand change its traditional perspective, to include “social accounting” too,enlarging its nature and topics as well (Contrafatto and Rusconi ).

In order to consider also the socio–cultural environment briefly, it alsohas to be said that in Italy there was a cultural tradition (perhaps due mostlyto the Catholic social teaching) of taking account of common good as aduty for every economic activity: this view also influenced some principalacademic scholars of accounting, management and business administration(Signori and Rusconi ).

In Italy, therefore, social accounting studies developed and circulated(starting with pioneering research in the eighties towards a wider circu-lation in the nineties) in a context of accounting research without anyrelevant opposition from traditional accounting scholars, providing thefoundations on which to organize SER as a specific accounting topic ,both in the academic context and in practical application.

In this context, the OM was drawn up as a basis for future researchand practical applications, but is should not be forgotten that this model,though devised within the context of the systemic and socio–environmentalapproach of the Italian tradition of accounting and business administration,it was elaborated as an attempted synthesis that should take account of thebest ideas and experiences of the s and early s.

The key insights that influenced the OM model and its principles arenow examined.

We mention two general theoretical influences (Economia aziendale andStakeholder Theory (ies)) and three specific sources of inspiration: eco-

. It is worth pointing out that in Italy there is a specific standard for social accounting,Gruppo di Studio per il Bilancio Sociale (hereinafter referred to as “GBS”), that was founded in and which comprises more than universities and whose executive committee’s Presidentis a professor of accounting, like the majority of the members. It has to be emphasized that thereform of the Italian University of included “business ethics and social accounting” officiallyin the law together with accounting disciplines.

a13 472 · rob h. gray, richard laughlin ... 223 an empirical case study looking at the evolution...

Documents