Accounting for Cultural Capital—Sustainability Agenda of Charities Serving the First Nations People towards Self-Determination—Evidence from the Northern Territory, Australia

This study examined the role of the First Nations beneficiary charities in contributing to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Northern Territory, Australia, as a way of attaining self-determination by closing the expectations gap between First Nations people and the mainstream Australians. Informed by the theory of self-determination (ethical and functional strands), a latent content analysis of 118 charities serving the First Nations people was conducted, coding the summary of their activities to ascertain their strategic engagement with the SDGs. A network analysis was also carried out to examine the charities’ connections with each other and their collective contribution towards the SDGs. The findings show that charities contribute to creating cultural capital through social capital, followed by intellectual capital dimensions. However, charities contributed little to building environmental capital dimension of the First Nations people. This study examined charities’ engagement with SDGs to build cultural capital in furtherance of self-determination of Australia’s First Nations people.

The concept of environmental capital in business accounting and integrated reporting

Subject. This article considers the conceptual basis of environmental capital accounting as one of the elements of assessing the value of business in conjunction with the concept of sustainable development of the organization. Objectives. The article aims to argue for a need for methodological and methodical information support in the system of business accounting for environmental safety of domestic business and identify the objects of the green economy and monetarization in the business accounting of the benefits and costs of creating and maintaining the organization’s ecosystem. Results. The article explains the need for the formation of various business accounting models in the system of the organization’s business model. Conclusions. Based on the study, the article concludes that it is necessary to reform the current system of accounting for environmental safety costs transforming it into business accounting of environmental capital.

CAPITALIZATION OF MINERAL RESOURCES AS AN INNOVATION ECOLOGICAL STRATEGY

The paper presents issues of evaluation objects of subsoil usage and reflecting information of mineral assets for oil and gas companies. Estimation of the objects in the mineral resources sector is regulated by IFRS 6 «Exploration for and Evaluation of Mineral Resources», Russian Financial Standard, US GAAP and other normative documents. The authors` idea is to capitalize costs connected with the stages of geological exploration process, what is considered as an innovative component. Concepts of natural and environmental capital are overviewed. Different classifications of reserves and mineral resources of various categories of oil and gas are analyzed. The results of the study show that capitalizing reserves as mineral assets in oil and gas companies is possible and economically profitable.

Industry Norm, Legitimacy Threats, and Managerial Decision-Making: An Experimental Investigation of Environmental Capital Expenditure Projections

We investigate a phenomenon documented in Patten (2005) and Chen et al. (2014) regarding the overstatement of projections of future environmental capital expenditures (ECE) by firms operating in environmentally sensitive industries. Given that overstatement of ECE seems to be a common practice within these industries, we use an experimental design to examine whether two factors – an overstatement industry norm and/or a legitimacy threat – impact the likelihood of managers making higher ECE projections. Our results show participants are more likely to choose higher ECE projections in the presence relative to the absence of an overstatement industry norm. However, in contrast to expectations, the presence of a legitimacy threat was not significantly associated with higher projected spending. These findings provide additional understanding of what may drive managers’ behavior regarding environmental disclosure decisions.

Voluntary disclosure and intellectual capital: how CEOs mobilise discretionary accounting narratives to account for value creation stemming from intellectual capital

PurposeThis research aims to contribute to the current discussion led by international accounting bodies on intellectual capital narratives. Before setting a standard, a preliminary step is to highlight intellectual capital components' sources of value. The objective of this exploratory paper is to contribute to the discussion by proposing a detailed description and taxonomy of intellectual capital based on an analysis of discretionary accounting narrative disclosures in CEO letters.Design/methodology/approachTo answer the research question, a computerised lexical content analysis was done of 241 letters from the CEOs of S&P Euro 350 companies addressed to shareholders.FindingsBeyond the required disclosures about balance sheet intangibles, this study brings to light discretionary narratives about human, digital, customer and environmental capital and their interactions. In particular, CEOs are promoting two new themes, environmental capital and digital capital, as major contributors to value creation.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations of this study are inherent in the media studied, namely the CEOs' letters to shareholders, which were written as part of the firms' official communication.Practical implicationsThe main contribution of the research is a detailed description of the intellectual capital components that CEOs consider to be at the heart of their companies' models to create value. Human and customer capital were already familiar under the previous classification, but CEOs present digital and environmental capital as areas of opportunity or risk in their discretionary narratives.Originality/valueThe article contributes to the current international discussions on intellectual capital by focusing on discretionary accounting narratives. It seeks to provide guidelines concerning future standards in the current stage of intellectual capital research.

System-dynamic model for assessing the digitalization impact on sustainable development

Such a timely phenomenon in the modern world as digitalization can become a tool for achieving sustainable development goals. But it is new, and its benefits and threats are not well understood. This problem can be partially solved by creating economic and mathematical models for assessing the impact of digitalization on sustainable development. Nonetheless, most of the existing models in this field are devoted to defining the impact of digitalization on the economic aspects of countries' activities, and environmental ones are either ignored or presented approximately, with significant abstraction. Despite this, the objective of the paper is to develop and implement an economic and mathematical model, which in a generalized form can be used for different countries of the world, subject to its certain adaptation and detailing of national indicators. This approach allows to take into account the difference in the social and economic situation of countries and levels of their digitalization, which makes it possible to draw more valid conclusions based on the results of estimations. The proposed model is built on the basis of the system dynamics method, which takes into account the path-dependence, and is implemented on the example of Ukraine. With its help, two computational experiments were carried out: an inertial one (a forecast for 5 years, provided that all the current patterns of digitalization of the country's economy are preserved) and a scenario, in which patterns of investing in digital capital in Ukraine change (to the patterns of European countries – Spain and Hungary), while maintaining the rest conditions unchanged. Using this model, it was defined that digital equipment and technologies as part of the environmental capital of the Ukrainian industry, as well as non-digital equipment and technologies, have an extremely small impact on reducing energy consumption and do not contribute to a significant reduction in the air pollution. Provided that the current situation persists (the inertial scenario), emissions of pollutants into the air in 2024 may even grow by 0.8% compared to 2019. During the experiment on investment patterns’ replacement in Ukraine with the patterns of Hungary and Spain, it was found that despite the change in the nature and (in the case of Hungary) the direction of investments in digital equipment and technologies, which significantly affected their amount (both in manufacturing and environmental capital), while the rest conditions for the functioning of industry remain unchanged, the indicators of value added, energy consumption, employees’ sickness rate and air pollution level stay practically the same as before such a replacement. Therefore, the "blind" copying of the digitalization practices of other countries, while maintaining unchanged other conditions, without taking into account the peculiarities of the national institutional environment, the degree of development of science and technology, is inappropriate, since it does not lead to an improvement in the situation in Ukraine. The general conclusion is that digitalization by itself is not able to reverse the current unfavorable trends in development of Ukraine for the better. It is necessary to achieve fundamental changes in the growth of the real sector of the economy on an innovative basis, in the amount and structure of investments, in the propensity of economic entities to invest, which is now at a low level, and also to form an integral industrial-digital ecosystem, similar to European ones, but taking into account the heterogeneity of European economies and their experience, as well as the characteristics of the current state and dynamics of development of the technical, technological and institutional environment of Ukraine.

Evaluation and Analysis of Environmental Protection Investment Efficiency in China Based on DEA Model

The environmental protection investment aims at protecting the environment, improving the quality of the environment and preventing the deterioration of the ecological environment. A certain amount of capital is put into environmental protection in the form of money, machinery and other elements to form the environmental capital stock. In this study, the DEA model was used to calculate and analyze the input-output efficiency of environmental protection in China from 2001 to 2015. The results show that the overall efficiency of environmental protection input-output in China was low from 2001 to 2015, and the DEA efficiency was not fully achieved in most years, and the contribution of environmental protection investment to the output of environmental protection industry needs to be further improved. Finally, according to the analysis results of DEA model, the countermeasures and suggestions were put forward to optimize the investment structure of environmental protection and promote the rapid economic development from the aspects of broadening the investment channels of environmental protection, actively guiding residents and enterprises to participate in environmental protection undertakings, optimizing the investment mode of environmental protection, vigorously promoting the progress of environmental protection science and technology, adhering to the circular development, and adjusting the industrial structure.

The Timeline of Poland’s Rural Economy

The paper presents some suppositions as to the future of Poland’s rural economy, the development of which is intended to lead to an improved standard of living and general sustainable development in rural areas. The rural economy, shaped by factors involving human, physical and environmental capital, is presented on a timeline. These factors are mainly determined by the market and policy-making. The suppositions are based on a theoretical analysis of statistical data and research results from the literature. The main conclusion is that the trajectory of the rural economy’s development will split into many possible paths in the future.

DEFINITION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVITY IN ACCOUNTING AND MECHANISMS FOR ITS STIMULATION

In article we consider environmental activities in a broad and narrow sense. Definitely, that exactly environmental motivated movements allow attributing one or another housewifely transaction to environmental action. Environmental activities housewifely subjects could be done in two ways: special actions aimed at improving the environmental situation and greening various housewifely processes. This separation allows to develop separate approaches to accounting for relevant processes environmental activities. The main problem of environmental accounting is the assessment of natural resources during their primary development because we get them from nature for free. But their renewable cost is very high. Environmental problems can be solved only with an integrated approach. Introduction to accounting practice of valuation at replacement cost and environmental capital will allow partially solve the problem of financing the restoration of natural resources and will increase the responsibility of enterprises in the environmental sphere. Accumulation environmental capital must be carried out simultaneously with primary consumption of environmental assets. Environmental assets mean all natural resources, that are used by the enterprise in the course of housewifely activities. Environmental capital must become a reliable permanent source of financing for the company's environmental activities. Directions of use of environmental capital could be restoration of natural resources (e.g. tree planting), replacement of materials with environmentally friendly, waste recycling, introduction of new technologies, which save energy resources. To induce businesses to spend more money on the environment, the government must develop a set of incentives that will turn environmental spending into an effective investment.

Public Services and Evolution of Smart Cities

The smart city is a concept that began to take shape at the end of the last century, emerging as a consequence of the real evolution of urban requirements. Whilst in bygone eras the need arose to equip cities with elements such as security, public health services, and public adornment, which were primordial for development of said cities, nowadays the—increasingly demanding—citizenry calls for a type of services related to the introduction of information and communications technology (ICT), aside from the cities' own evolution, as well as growth of the social and environmental capital. A smart city could be defined as a city which uses information and communications technology to ensure that both its critical infrastructure and the public services and components it offers are more interactive and efficient and that citizens can become more aware of them.