Purpose – The objective of this essay is to examine the extent to which social, environmental and sustainability accounting and reporting (SEA) can or should contribute to shareholder value and, correspondingly, to consider the challenge that SEA can offer to the conventional views of...

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze so‐called sustainability, corporate social responsibility or citizenship reports, as artefacts of a compromise between an institutional entrepreneur (IE), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and companies. Some companies take on this invitation but to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to document organizations' self descriptions of why they initiated sustainable development (SD) reporting and explore these explanations using an institutional theory framework. Design/methodology/approach – Constructs organizational narratives from...

Purpose – Through an analysis of corporate sustainable development reporting, this paper seeks to examine critically language use and other visual (re)presentations of sustainable development within the business context. It aims to provide a framework to interpret and tease out business...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical account of a social accounting technology applied within a New Zealand Local Body Authority and reflect on “assemblages” that enable change for sustainability thinking at the organisational level. Design/methodology/approach...

Ecology considers the interrelationships between all species and matter. It is argued that there are important direct and indirect links between accounting information and ecological effects. A direct link can be traced through identification of some of the conventional problems of accounting....

Develops a case for the enabling potential of environmental accounting (EA). Investigates three areas to support this case. The first concerns the manner in which EA actively and critically engages with practice in an attempt to change practice along lines that are more socially and...

Purpose – This paper aims to suggest that companies have ethical reasons to report about biodiversity issues and to investigate whether companies act on these reasons by examining the extent of biodiversity reporting in Denmark. Design/methodology/approach – For the first purpose, desk...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the application of standard environmental accounting practices for estimating long‐term discount rates is likely to lead to the rejection of biodiversity‐sensitive projects that are in the greater societal good....

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to provide an account of the quantity, location and intentions behind companies' biodiversity disclosure. Design/methodology/approach – This study applies a mixed methods approach to the examination of the quantity and location of biodiversity...