Entity's Sustainable Development from Adaptive Management Perspective

The management accounting and operations management literature argue that the adoption of the advanced techniques, that accomplish the total quality management, necessitates complementary changes in an entity's management system. The purpose of this chapter is to help managers be aware of the consequences of their decisions regarding the quality of all processes happening in the leaded entity. Such decisions, taken in the current period, have important implications for changes in the activity levels and processes in the future. This chapter presents a model of thinking in which managers' and accountants' learning on the job and their choices of professional services jointly affect performance. The outcomes provide different managers to challenge the internal and external entity's environment from total quality and environmental perspectives. Especially top managers, with new abilities, easily and inexpensively succeed to translate an adapting management process into scenarios appropriate to various situations.

Particularities of Social and Environmental Accounting Research in an Emerging Country

The purpose of this chapter is to debate on a number of research questions drawn from previous fundamental research conducted on social and environmental accounting in emerging countries. Based on literature review, on practical studies of specialized organizations or associations, and on authors' previous studies, another step is made in this research, by developing a pilot questionnaire intended to capture the willingness of companies form an emerging country, to show interest in social responsibility disclosure. This helps to launch certain debates with regard to the principles, concepts and forms of social and environmental reporting. The pilot questionnaire was sent to a group of interested companies in Romania (the emerging country chosen for this study) and the reference points for discussions on a Framework for presenting and managing social and environmental information through corporate reports are developed based on their responses.

Costs and Externalities in the Context of Social and Environmental Crises

An in-depth analysis of the current approach of global crises reveals an obvious tendency to use nature as a resource rather than a stakeholder of human activities. The purpose of this chapter is a critical analysis of current knowledge in the field of accounting recognition policies and procedures, leading to a conceptual clarification of externalities induced by climate change. The most important result is an innovative framework for management accounting, based on a complex approach, triggered by the reality of social and environmental crises; the proposed component is the expanding of conventional costing model to an eco-costing model able to generate costs compatible with the sustainable development objectives. A fundamental inductive research is conducted to identify the theoretical and practical difficulties of externalities recognition in social and environmental accounting.

GAIA Theory

The research presented in this chapter has as goal to propose the technical tools for determining all functions that need to be transferred from the biological organism to the social organism, the relationships between organs and functions, the number of dimensions required for a well-balanced cultural organism. Because of this purpose, the chapter contains medical terms, and medical analysis, that are useful in understanding the circulation of information in a living organism. As a result, the organic models were transferred to cultural issues on various directions, targeting the actual structures and other potential structures required in the future by GAIA. The research methodology of this chapter is based on a multidisciplinary approach, generating an advanced techniques set of educational, economic, social and environmental dimensions. The fundamental research that is related to inductive accounting theory and scientific methods for identification of theoretical and practical difficulties is used. This chapter allows new approaches regarding global green performance, ensuring premises for future research.

Fractal Approach in Sustainability Modeling

This chapter addresses conceptual modeling of sustainable performance designed to meet social and environmental accounting, through qualitative approaches in research of reporting tools. The debate is based on successive qualitative-correlative approaches, of fractal type, for complex phenomena. The research is completed with behaviors generating sustainability that may be used in performance management. The research method focuses on appropriate tools for complex and dynamic relations between the economic entity, society and environment. These interact to develop new relationships and new entities. The most important result of the research is modeling sustainability by cyclic structures and commutative diagrams explaining the complexity mechanisms which engage and generate the state of balance or imbalance, analyzed, controlled and corrected through crisis management. This chapter supports and argues the need for a new framework for corporate performance reporting, including risks and uncertainties arising from social and environmental factors.

Quality of Corporate Communication in a Sustainable Environment

In this chapter the focus of research is on analyzing the quality of information disclosed by companies. Financial and non-financial reports are considered important communication tools which can ensure greater corporate transparency and can enable a better engagement with stakeholders. Through an empirical study, it is shown how corporate reporting objective interacts with social and environmental factors in reconsidering traditional disclosure during crisis period. Possible associations, between the quality of social and environmental disclosure and the size of the company, are tested. The results show that the impact of global crisis on reporting social and environmental information is extremely powerful. It signals an upward trend of pushing companies to provide to their stakeholders comprehensive, integrated, and certified information on sustainability of their activities. The stakeholders' needs and requirements are the main determinants for companies to expand the unilateral reporting process, creating support for the development of dialogic communication, as a tool for knowledge transfer. A critical analysis for various aspects to which they address and a debate of those aspects in the context of usefulness to stakeholders are conducted.

European and International Standards for Social and Environmental Reporting

The present chapter promotes the need for reporting improvement to support stakeholders' confidence. It presents, analyze and debate on the most used social and environmental reporting standards, as resulting from companies' activity. It confers a high importance to establishing the way that social and environmental information published by an entity is identified and quantified, in order to be included into financial statements. Through the empirical studies presented in this chapter, the theoretical findings are correlated with practical appliance of corporate disclosure and assurance requirements in terms of social and environmental approaches. Results show that there are significant differences in voluntarily application of guidelines, principles, certification, and assurance standards. Future trends support the development of a single set of standards for reporting social and environmental aspects in order to ensure the comparability and reliability for the stakeholders.

New Dimension of Accounting Information

Traditional accounting has lost its instrumental ability of entailing the informational dimensions that are requested in the process of comprehending the phenomenon of identifying and reporting entity's activity in the context of sustainable development. The requirements for new information relate to economic, environmental and social sustainability of an entity. The purpose of this chapter is to outline the status of development in social and environmental accounting literature and to establish the main trends adopted by the most important accounting journals. It is based on the idea that besides the principles exposed in traditional accounting, the set of principles that underpin the role of the society and of the environment in a sustainable development context will develop a holistic vision of the economic entity. The authors view is consistent with the social and environmental accounting research that has emerged as a significant part of the contemporary accounting research literature.

The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Approach from the Accounting and Performance Measurement Perspective

For the sustainable development of an entity, the strategy and the value creation cannot be analyzed in purely financial terms. Corporations must apply the principle of balanced development through disclosing economic, environmental and social combined aspects. Sustainability reports are sometimes known as Triple Bottom Line (TBL) reports or Triple P (people, planet and profit). A well-known example is the concept of multidimensional performance evaluation focused on the TBL theory. This chapter per the authors presents the fundamental concepts used in TBL reporting practice, ensuring a uniform terminology, and identifies and promotes the best reporting practices used in social and environmental decision making. As conclusion, it was reiterated that the future of TBL reporting is the achievement and the acceptance of a conceptual framework and of normative-pragmatic standards to support a comprehensive and credible reporting of the three dimensions.

Models for Measuring and Reporting of Green Performance

The main objective of this chapter is to highlight the potential effects improved social and environmental performance would have on economic performance. The use of adapted managerial tools enables entities to extend the conventional accounting model of performance towards a sustainable/green performance. The comprehensive picture of corporate communication is based on the concept of sustainability and combines three dimensions of performance: economic, social and environmental. This chapter addresses the models for reporting and managing the three aspects of performance evaluation and introduces specific concepts for measurement referring to the Triple Bottom Line performance. Debates are conducted based on an exploratory and interpretive study on social and environmental performance reporting. The correlations with corporate various characteristics are emphasized.