Sustainability Accounting

Sustainability Accounting

Sustainability Accounting

Introduction

Accounting is always involved in finding out complex realities and helps the accountant in finding out what he wants to measure through following an accounting principle or standard. Therefore in order to fulfil the needs of the changing environment there are three components of accounting that develop sustainability in accounting. The three components of sustainability accounting includes: social accounting, environmental accounting and corporate or non-financial accounting. The sustainability accounting thus enables the organizations either profit or non-profit organizations to find out the impact of their different business activities on the society, environment and on the economic performance of the organization. The major aim of sustainability accounting is to make internal decisions of the organization and thus helps them in creating new policies that will have a positive impact on the economic, environmental and sociological performance of the organization. The following report will critically analyse the meaning of sustainability accounting and therefore it will analyse that how an organization can create their accounts on the basis of the sustainability.

Discussion

According to Gray (2010) they have critically analysed the development of sustainability which has led to the changes in the accounting literature in the private and non- for- profit organizations. The research conducted by Gray was done in order to find out the changes that have been taken by the organizations in terms of policies, personnel and at the organizational level in order to address the issues of the social and ecological environment. In order to find out the meaning of sustainability accounting the researchers found that there has been a growing critique regarding the experiences and speculations on how accounting for sustainability might proceed in an organization. The sustainability accounting can easily be adopted in organizations where there is use of conventional accounting. The researchers found out those there four categories of sustainability accounts. These are: firstly the general disclosure around and inside the business, secondly the fulfilling the corporate reporting responsibility, third initiatives taken to design the advancement in the corporate sustainability either in the social or environmental responsibility and last is the range of experiments that are designed to articulate the sustainability at the organizational level.

According to a report presented at Brundtland Report (UN, 1983) that was conducted on the subject of sustainability placed as a worldwide agenda. The meaning of sustainability accounting explained in this conference was that sustainability accounting is the development that enables the organizations to meet the needs of the present world but it does not let the organizations to compromise on the ability to meet the future needs of their generations. Thus the conference concluded on the fact that sustainability accounting leads towards eco-justice and eco-efficiency among the organizations. The researchers in recent times have critically analyse the sustainability accounting as it might lead towards conflicting power and wealth relationships and might create disturbances in the organization. Thus according to the management approach sustainability accounting is worthless.

The critiques also gave their view that sustainability accounting would mean increasing pressures from ...