Global survey aims to map sustainability and climate change across accounting and finance education

By Dr Shona Russell, CSEAR Co-director

Do you teach about carbon disclosures, or ESG? Does sustainability feature in your teaching? What have you experienced when teaching these topics? What insight and support could you offer to those wishing to teach these subjects? 

 

Shona Russell, John Ferguson and Ian Thomson have launched an online survey aims understand academics’ experiences of teaching sustainability and climate change in accounting and finance degree programmes around the world. If you have experience of teaching these topics or would like to teach these topics, you can complete this 15-20 minute survey:

English version: 

https://standrews.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5AXjhioKLf1A6hg

Version in either French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Simple or Traditional Chinese: 

https://standrews.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0jn2aeb2UWkqR8y

Complete the survey before 16^th September to win one of five copies of Sustainability Accountability and Accounting by Matias Laine, Helen Tregidga and Jeffrey Unerman.
 
The survey is part of the Building Carbon Literacy project involving colleagues from the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research is funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s COP 26 International Climate Network Grant.
 
Motivated by a concern that public and private accounting and finance have been identified as central to achieving net-zero carbon ambitions, the project aims to understand the education, knowledge, skills and capabilities of professionals tasked with understanding, evaluating and investing in climate solutions. 

Findings will be publicised in October 2021 before the Conference of the Parties 26 in order to:

• Enhance understanding of climate change and/or sustainability in accounting and finance education and academics’ experiences of teaching these topics

• Work with stakeholders to develop transformative curricula to ensure that current and future professionals are equipped to achieve net-zero ambitions. 

 
Please contact Shona Russell (sr65@st-andrews.ac.uk) to learn more about this project. 

Frustration, schizophrenia and a touch of sneakiness: insights in the process of doing ethnographic research

By Michelle van Weeren, Université Paris Dauphine

Winner of the inaugural Best Paper Award at the 2019 CSEAR International Congress

This summer, I participated for the first time in the Emerging Scholar Colloquium and the International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research hosted by the University of St. Andrews from the 25th to 29th of August. I was quite positively surprised as I discovered the approachability of the senior researchers, it was clear that this was an open community willing to help and encourage future members. I was even more surprised as it turned out that my co-author Clarence Bluntz and me had been awarded with a prize for the best paper of the conference for our article “It’s not about manipulating the results, it’s about refining the methodology”- creative friction in the production of sustainability ratings. I was actually just about to sneak away to my room in the Agnes Blackadder Hall to practice this paper’s presentation that I was supposed to hold for the next day as Michelle Rodrigue stopped me and summoned me back to the conference room, where the award ceremony was just going to start. I was flabbergasted to hear we had won (to be honest, I wasn’t really aware of the existence of this ceremony that was organized for the first time this year) and unable to say a word, but luckily for me, this was not required for my picture being taken (it would have been better to keep my eyes open, though). All this did not exactly lower my level of tension for the next day’s presentation, but I am of course very grateful and happy with CSEAR’s recognition of our work.

The paper was, in the words of inaugural Best Paper Award Committee member Matias Laine, “not the most polished paper”, but the result of an “innovative approach in an area that needs more research”. For this blogpost, I thought it might be interesting to write a few words about this innovative approach.

The article is the result of an ethnography I conducted in the young sustainability rating agency where I used to work as an analyst for a period of three years. Just like most of my colleagues, I started working there with the firm conviction that sustainability ratings could help to bring ethics to the financial sector, thus making it a powerful lever for conducting a positive change in the world. This idea was reflected in the features of the agency’s rating methodology, that was based on strong sustainability principles but at the same time relied on the analysts’ capacity to ask the right questions rather than on quantitative and standardized checklists. This qualitative approach to evaluation worked out fine within the borders of our organisation but was, as it turned out as the agency matured and confronted its products to the market, not quite understood by the companies we rated. The result was a non-linear standardisation process of the rating methodology, with the analysts struggling with the tension between an internal pressure to make sense of sustainability performance while sticking to a case-by-case and common sense-based form of judgment, and an external pressure to communicate their ratings on sustainability performance in a way that was acceptable for external parties. This process was full of paradoxical situations and moments of bricolage where analysts had to make arbitrations between these two types of pressure.

Of course, the above-described analysis did not occur to me as precisely as I now write it down while I was still working there. The starting point of the project was rather one of general wonder about what was going on. Fascinated with the struggles my colleagues and I were going through but also fairly frustrated with the concessions we had to make to comply with external expectations, I started to keep a diary about one and a half year after my hiring. As my colleagues and me were working in an open space with all doors and walls made of glass and my screen was facing the hall where everybody continuously passed to grab a coffee in the kitchen, I had to be very careful with the Google Doc I used. I also had to be careful with What’s App that was installed on my desktop and that I used to talk to my friend Clarence Bluntz, who was in the second year of his Ph.D. at the time and with whom I shared my observations.

As my notes piled up and thanks to discussions with Clarence, who came to the company twice to conduct interviews with my colleagues (this part of the data collection was thus fully uncovered), I was more and more able to see the events at the agency from a distance. At the same time, I still was one of the analysts and had to complete my ratings and attend meetings just like all of my colleagues. When something occurred at the company everyone was upset about (this happened quite frequently), I at first felt just as troubled as everyone else, but quite quickly I was also able to analyse the events from a greater distance, thanks to Clarence and to the observing approach I had taken and that had become natural. The result was a sort of schizophrenic state of being, switching back and forth from playing the role of a devoted employee to being a kind of undercover agent. This was not always easy and more than once I felt scared or guilty about my sneaky behaviour.

It is now more than a year ago since I left the company and started my Ph.D., which can be regarded as the continuation of this ethnographic work. Because I wondered whether the tensions my colleagues and I experienced are shared more widely in the field, I have been doing interviews with analysts and other actors from the French sector for responsible investment during the past year. Thanks to these discussions and to my readings, I now understand that the company I used to work actually was an exception in the field, sticking to a strongly ethically-driven approach to sustainability analysis in a sector where this type of analysis is more and more instrumentalised to better identify financially material risks and opportunities. This does not mean that tensions are not felt by analysts in other organizations, but generally, they do not get the same degree of autonomy from their managers to develop and refine their own methodologies, that are often highly formalized. In other words: if we wanted to attract mainstream investors, who are used to quantitative reports and data, we did not have any other choice than to adapt ourselves, and it is rather praiseworthy that our employer gave us the freedom to carry out this adaptation process as we wished, thus leaving room for our own interpretation of the compromise between ethics and efficiency.

The frustration that led to this inquiry at the start has thus made place for a more nuanced view on my period as a sustainability analyst. The schizophrenia has disappeared, as I am now a full-time academic. The guilt about the sneakiness that my covert participatory observation implied stayed, as I never disclosed my full intentions and the detail of the data collection process to my former employer (the project would not have been possible if I had). The odds are low that he will ever read this blogpost, but if one day he would, I can only hope that he will be able to appreciate the honesty of this confession.

6th Emerging Scholar Colloquium and the 31st International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research, 2019: Insights and thoughts from an emerging scholar

By Miriam Corrado

From the 25th to 29th August, the University of St. Andrews hosted the 6th Emerging Scholar Colloquium and the 31st International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research, joining together several emerging scholars, experienced researchers and professors from all around the world.

It was the first time I have participated in the Emerging Scholar Colloquium, and the desire to meet with the academics who, through their journal contributions, are at the basis of my academic training and knowledge, was very strong. Indeed, when I received the letter of acceptance for the Emerging Scholar Colloquium, I felt honoured but at the same time hesitant, to present and talk about my research in an international context such as CSEAR.

Thanks to the generous support from the sponsors (many thanks to Robin Roberts, Pegasus Professor and Al and Nancy Burnett Eminent Scholar Chair in The Kenneth G. Dixon School of Accounting at the University of Central Florida, USA, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and Charles Cho, Professor of Accounting and the Erivan K. Haub Chair in Business & Sustainability in the Schulich School of Business at York University, Canada), CSEAR has been able to offer bursaries to selected emerging scholars, providing us an opportunity to present our research projects to a cohort of distinguished international faculty and to be introduced into the social and environmental accounting research community.

As soon as I was welcomed at the Agnes Blackadder Hall on Sunday 25th August, I suddenly perceived the friendly and comfortable environment which the CSEAR community enjoy. That impression was confirmed the next morning when Lori Leigh Davis warmly welcomed all the emerging scholars in the Gateway Building, making us feel like we have always been part of that community. The colloquium proved to be useful and constructive, as well as the following days during the CSEAR UK Congress, especially for creating a lively and engaged forum for discussion and reflections on emerging issues in social and environmental accounting research.

I would like to thank the organising committee and the Faculty members (in particular Jesse Dillard, Ericka Costa, Matias Laine, Den Patten, Shona Russell, Ian Thomson, Giovanna Michelon and Carmen Correa) for the opportunity given to share our ideas, to learn through their constructive feedback and, in particular, to give suggestions for our academic career such as the guide for the publication process.

I would strongly recommend to all early researchers and PhD student, to catch the opportunity like the one offered by CSEAR for two main reasons: first, the comparison with other researchers and PhD students from all around the world, allow you to open up your mind, to know about different practice existing in academia and build a strong network; second, the discussion with the Faculty members allow to expand your own research insights thanks to the different backgrounds, research traditions and expertise of various theoretical and methodological approaches of each member.

Many thanks,
Miriam

Climate Emergency, Climate Action and Accounting Education?

By Ian Thomson, University of Birmingham Business School and CSEAR Executive Council Convenor

Today, the 20th September 2019, children in the UK and around the world are participating in mass demonstrations stressing the need for global action on climate change. Climate scientists warnings are more urgent,  nations are waking up to this climate emergency, some financial institutions are divesting of fossil fuel investments levels, some businesses are reducing their carbon footprint and a growing number of committed individuals are struggling to live low carbon lives. Despite an awareness of how to resolve this, where change is happening it appears too slow to make a difference.

Despite this crisis, many universities and business schools continue to teach accounting and finance, with its hidden carbon curriculum, as if they were climate change deniers. The need for carbon literate graduates has never been greater, yet with a few notable exceptions accounting and finance programmes across the world are largely ignoring this global challenge. Carbon accounting and finance needs to become the new normal for our students.

Of all the social and environment accounting topics this is perhaps the easiest to assimilate into professional practice and is broadly supported by professional accountancy bodies. Carbon intensity disclosures are part of UK corporate reporting and in many other countries. There are standards, protocols, taxes, techniques to measure carbon in ways that can be appropriated into organisational decision processes and reporting.

However, we must ask ourselves how competent are graduates from your programme in understanding drivers of climate change, deciding which carbon accounting method to use,  applying carbon accounting methods and making meaningful and impactful recommendations as to the lowest carbon course of action. Even though I have been teaching this topic for over 25 years I only reach a percentage of our students. These students are aware of the topic, but far from competent in doing carbon accounting.

So why it is it that in 2019, climate literacy and carbon accounting are not core parts of our degrees?

• Why do we not teach our students to become carbon literate and provide them with the accounting skills to contribute to the meaningful application of carbon accounting to real world problems?

• Why do we teaching management accounting students to resolve problems with labour or machine capacity constraints, but not with carbon constraints?

• Why to do teach students about asset impairment standards, but not taking into account unburnable fossil fuels or stranded assets? 

• Why do we not teach students to take into account carbon emissions as a material risk in audits? 

• Why is possible exposure to future regulations on carbon, not a factor in corporate valuations or setting cost of capital? 

The list of whys could go on and on. Before you get too annoyed with me – I know many of you are doing wonderful things in this space, and members of the CSEAR community are at the frontiers of practices. But we need every graduate in every institution to have some level of capacity in climate literacy and effective carbon accounting.

This is a challenge CSEAR should take the lead on. I would like us to share our best practice, create learning resources that are translated into different languages. We also need greater accountability and transparency on how climate change is integrated into global accountancy education programmes.

This will not solve climate change on its own, but is a necessary first step, and at least may mitigate the worst consequences of the production of carbon illiterate accounting and finance graduates. This is not a trivial task, but we have the expertise, knowledge, ability and motivation to change what we teach in our programmes. Let us not be bystanders as the world burns.

Can Accountants Save the World? Incorporating Sustainability in Accounting Courses and Curricula

By Charles Cho and Hannele Mäkelä

The new academic year is about to start, turning our minds back into teaching. How tempting it would be to take the slides from the prior year(s) and do what we know best. However, recent changes in global governance and accounting standard setters’ agenda encourage (force?) us to step outside our comfort zone and think: “how can we incorporate sustainability into accounting courses and curricula?”

While many of us have successfully been doing this for years, and even more of us regularly experiment with novel ideas in their teaching, it is time that we, as a community, start carrying responsibility and take action towards a better – and more formal – alignment between accounting and sustainability. Pursuing sustainable development and mitigation of climate change require new understandings of corporate accountability and measuring corporate performance. How companies manage sustainability is crucial for their long-term success. It is no longer enough to measure organisational success by financial measures only. The role of accounting is acknowledged central in achieving sustainability, as strongly emphasized by high-profile speakers at the recent World Congress of Accountants – including former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales and Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England.

For instance, recent developments for non-financial reporting require new understandings of social and environmental value, and how to account and measure for such value. Carbon accounting and disclosure, water accounting, and human capital accounting are just a few examples of the types of non-financial information that companies are now required to disclose. Consequently, and in parallel, business schools are globally and increasingly expected to commit to sustainability education. How can we as academics, researchers and teachers, equip future accounting professionals to better deal with the challenges (and possibilities?) associated with sustainability issues?

Both of us have recently attended workshops, panel discussions and other related events with valuable opportunities to learn and share thoughts around accounting and sustainability with experts from different backgrounds. One of us is part of a group of eight Canadian academics who (still) call for an “integration of sustainability into the CPA Canada curriculum” as follows:

It is our responsibility – as accounting educators and researchers – to contribute to the sustainable development of the profession. This academic commitment to accounting is also an engagement that will ensure the prosperity of future generations. We live in turbulent times where the natural resources of the planet are compromising economic growth, where fiduciary duty requires the inclusion of environmental, social and governance issues and where the ethics of economic actors has become essential to the conduct of business. The integration of sustainability into the CPA Canada curriculum is crucial to the building of a successful, inclusive and leading accounting profession that could pursue an ideal of good business.

We firmly believe that besides the new tools and accounting-related ideas and theories we teach at our business schools – and perhaps as a driver for change –  the accounting profession, via its professional orders, associations and/or societies (e.g., ACCA, AICPA, CA ANZ, CPA Canada, ICAEW), must lead and take action to make concrete changes by including sustainability as a core competency in their examinations and certification/licensing requirements. Unfortunately, we have only seen much discourse without much action so far—a ‘déjà vu’ (?).

Moving forward and “on the ground”, we need new methodologies and new ways of approaching accounting education. Many of the key ideas and concepts in accounting need to be thoroughly and fundamentally re-considered when applied to the sustainability arena. In this process, multidisciplinary thinking is the key. We need to build and educate students with strong core competencies in accounting, but it is equally important to critically analyse the role of accounting-related ideas, tools, and information in the bigger picture of the ecosystem we live in and its sustainable development. What are the critical accounting concepts, theories and tools that we need to master? What is the sustainability-related information that we need, how and from where do we get it? How and what do we conceive of value? What is the time-span to be considered? And so on.

In addition to a critical analysis of these pressing questions, we also need the ability to collaborate in multidisciplinary settings and with different actors in society. This should be reflected in how we teach at business schools. Businesses, governments, NGOs and all other societal actors could (should) be involved, and we could experiment with? new kinds of participatory methods. Then again, sustainability could be easily included even in introductory courses through case studies, for instance. As often mentioned, the question is not only about what you teach but how you teach; that is, teaching methods that foster critical analysis, collaborative skills and problem-solving should be in use throughout curriculum.

This blog aims to stimulate debate around how we should teach accounting to advance and improve sustainability. It constitutes a call for action from us – the community of accounting educators – to change our accounting courses and curricula to integrate sustainability issues, a response for the challenge posed for accountants to save the world.

Editor's note: this blog article was originally published on the EAA-ARC blog on 8 August 2019, and is republished here with permission.

5th Emerging Scholars Colloquium & 30th International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research: A thank you letter from PhD students and emerging scholars

We, PhD students and emerging scholars, would like to thank the organizing committee of the 5th Emerging Scholars Colloquium and the 30th International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research. It was, for all of us, our first CSEAR UK congress and we are really happy for the fruitful and amazing time spent in St. Andrews.

Our journey started on Sunday 26th August at the Agnes Blackadder Hall. We were welcomed and introduced to each other by some faculty members. We had the chance to get to know each other and talk in an informal manner with some of the faculty members. After our first dinner and the interesting talks we had, we felt more at ease and ready for our presentation at the Colloquium of Monday, 27th.

The next morning, Lori Leigh Davis warmly welcomed us in the Gateway Building providing us with all the information needed and wonderful animal pins for our name tag. The day was organized with a first plenary session and the subsequent parallel sessions of emerging scholars where we all had the honour to present our own research ideas. Afterwards we received lots of feedback in a very constructive way from both faculty members and other emerging scholars.

We would like to thank Jesse Dillard, Sheila Killian, Carlos Larrinaga, Leonardo Rinaldi, Robin Roberts and Andrea Romi for their fruitful insights. Faculty members’ feedback was very valuable for our own research. They gave us new ideas, interesting insights, relevant literature to support our study, possible contributions, etc. Thanks a lot for helping us to further develop our research skills!

The day concluded with a plenary session where faculty members talked about the social impacts of research and how step by step practice can be improved. We can conclude that it has been a challenging but very valuable research day!

A special thank you to Carmen Correa and Giovanna Michelon for the excellent organisation of this day! Thanks to them we had the opportunity to present our own research, share ideas and receive really fruitful hints. Also, a thank you to the AI and Nancy Burnett Eminent Scholar Chair in the Kennet G. Dixon School of Accounting at the University of Central Florida, USA, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), and the Erivan K. Haub Chair in Business and sustainability in the Schulich School of Business at York University, Canada for the support and sponsorship given. It provided us a great opportunity to participate to the conference without concern.

The overall conference gave us the chance to expand our own research insight thanks to the different theoretical backgrounds and broad range of methodological approaches we were immersed into. Moreover, also the different breaks were useful to discuss the presented research topics and to know each other better. We learned that, along with the presentation of projects, a conference is an ideal networking opportunity. All the attendants of the conference are happy to share their own research expertise with colleagues from other universities. The evening as well was a good networking opportunity with the St. Andrews central pub as “home” of our chats. We had, since our first day, the feeling that we were part of the CSEAR family! A family of inspiring people with the same final objective: bettering the world.

Thanks to the whole committee for the excellent organization of this conference! We appreciated as well a lot the coherence between theory and practice. Researches about sustainable development presented during a sustainable conference! ‘No plastic’, recycled paper, fair-trade teas and coffees and some other small details demonstrated how some important values are intrinsic and shared within this community.

Looking forward to see you next year!

Jolien Lievens, Laura Mazzola, Angelina Orlando, Wanisara Suwanmongkhon

Highlights from the 30th CSEAR International Congress & 5th Emerging Scholars Colloquium

Many thanks to all those who participated and who helped organise the recent events held at St Andrews at the end of last month. The 30th CSEAR International Congress attracted a record number of participants and both it and the preceding Emerging Scholars Colloquium were very successful and enjoyable events.

To give a flavour of what went on, one of CSEAR's own members, Mira Lieberman from the Grantham Centre for Future Sustainability at Sheffield University, blogged her own experiences from the events. These originally appeared on her own 'Sociolinguini Blog', but the links to these posts can be found below.

Many thanks Mira!



ESC - https://wp.me/p83JVx-2aS

Congress Day 1 - https://wp.me/p83JVx-2b0

Congress Day 2 - https://wp.me/p83JVx-2bX

Congress Day 3 - https://wp.me/p83JVx-2cD

The Social and Environmental Accountability Journal (SEAJ)

Matias Laine and Helen Tregidga, SEAJ Joint Editors

SEAJ is the journal of CSEAR and an important part of our community.  Its strength relies on the CSEAR community and as such we would like to take this opportunity to update you on the journal and also outline the various ways you can contribute. 

There have been some recent changes at SEAJ.  Coming to the end of his term as Joint Editor, Carlos Larrinaga vacates the position (Helen will now join Matias as Joint Editor from 2018 – 2021).  We would like to thank him for his service in this role in which time that the journal has continued to develop.  He continues to support the journal in his role as Convenor.  We have also welcomed several new members to the Editorial Board. We are pleased to have them join the team. The SEAJ Editorial Board, we believe, is an amazing collection of scholars in our field drawn from across the globe.  Representative of the growing diversity (geographically and topic wise) of our community.  We encourage you to visit our journal homepage and view our Editorial Board members and journals scope.

While we believe the journal is in a good position, we are mindful of the increasing pressures of the publishing environment.  We need to be mindful and put strategies in place to ensure its success.  We believe one of the strengths and opportunities of the journal is its association with the vibrant CSEAR community and a supportive Editorial Board.  As such, we take the opportunity here to outline our strategy moving forward, and also how you, as CSEAR members and friends, can assist the journal in the coming period.

We know that the driver of achieving our aim of developing the journal in a way that meets the needs of the CSEAR community is an increased profile and, above all, quality submissions.  As such, we have a few ideas for doing this.

In order to raise the profile of the journal we will be starting to tweet new journal content (via the @csearUK Twitter account) and also calls for papers for the journal.  Please, if you are on Twitter, follow CSEAR and retweet SEAJ content as appropriate.  Tweet about the journal and any paper/review that you read.  We know that in the current environment this is important to raise awareness of the journals content and increase readership. 

We are also looking to increase the use of the Commentaries section of the journal.  Commentaries, outlined in the journals aims and scope, are short editorial reviewed pieces which can take the form of a polemic, debate, definitional pieces, revisiting/reviving previous issues/papers, reviews etc.  These types of publications fit with the aim and ethos of the journal and we believe are an ideal way for authors to engage on issues and topics important to our field.

To foster this section of the journal our intent is to commission some pieces from members of our community (including some of you).  We hope that if you are invited you will agree.  We also strongly invite you to contact us with possible commentaries – either ideas you think are worth exploring (ideally with possible suggestions for those we could ask) – or with ideas for pieces that you are interested in contributing yourself!

Special issues continue to be a strong contributor to content.  The special issue for this year (edited by Delphine Gibassier and Simon Alcouffe) is in the final stages of production and submissions are strong for the 2019 special issue on Sustainability Governance (edited by Leonardo Rinaldi).  For the 2020 special issue it has been decided that an appropriate theme would be ‘SEA 2020 and Beyond’. The official information for this issue along with dates for submission etc will be announced shortly, but the aim here is to attract submissions which consider the future of SEA – whether that be issues, theories, methods etc.  Once again, this theme fits the ethos of the journal and our aim to create new academic literature in the broad field of social, environmental and sustainable development accounting, accountability, reporting and auditing.  Please consider supporting this issue by reflecting on your own research in relation to the theme and consider submitting to the issue and encouraging others you know to prepare submissions. 

We also ask that you also consider the journal for regular submission pieces – and again, encourage others to submit their work.  The journal’s aims and scope note that the journal “provides a forum for a wide range of different forms of academic and academic-related communications whose aim is to balance honesty and scholarly rigour with directness, clarity, policy-relevance and novelty”.  We realise we can’t compete for some types of publications with other high ranked journals, nor has this ever been the goal of SEAJ, but we can contribute to the publishing of good quality content that comes in various forms from longer empirical papers to shorter pieces which provide novel contributions. Likewise, in line with our editorial policy and vision, we continue to have interest in novelty and innovation also when it comes to the shape and form of submissions. Interesting and insightful contributions do not always fall within a shape and style expected in most scholarly journals, and hence at SEAJ we remain open to alternative approaches. Obviously, this does not imply that anything would go, but, rather, that in our view scholarly rigour, clarity and relevance do not depend on a manuscript following a particular form or structure.

And, we can’t forget the reviews section of the journal.  We want to thank many of you for supporting this section of the journal – including our emerging scholar community.  Reviews are again a great way for the journal to participate in discussions of topics of interest and critically engage with the field of research.  The reviews team (Michelle Rodrigue, Hannele Mäkelä and Lies Bouten) would be happy to hear from you with potential review items.

Lastly, we want to take the opportunity to thank you for your continued support for the journal. As we note above, a key strength of the journal is a strong and supportive community of researchers.   We aim to continue to provide a journal that supports that community – and look for ways the journal can further reflect the vibrant important research that we all do.

We look forward to working with you all to build SEAJ!

A thank you letter and report from the 4th CSEAR Emerging Scholars Colloquium, August 2017

By Ph.D students and emerging scholars attending the CSEAR Emerging Scholars Colloquium, August 2017

After a great experience at the 4th Emerging Scholars Colloquium (ESC) and 29th Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) conference, some of us Ph.D students and emerging scholars would like to thank the organisers for the great opportunity they provided us with this August in St. Andrews. With this letter, we also would like to give some advice to prospective emerging scholars, as well as general comments about CSEAR and ESC UK 2017, with the underlying hope of helping others interested in attending over the coming years.

The annual CSEAR conference and ESC at St. Andrews University, Scotland, together provide a great opportunity for young scholars to present their work at an early stage and receive feedback from within the community. This is not only due to the great location Saint Andrews offers, but also because the event provides a perfect networking opportunity to interact with the faculty members that kindly host us.

The ESC began on the 28th of August, 2017 and was followed by attendance at the main conference. Forty minutes were reserved for each emerging delegate to present her/his work and collect feedback from those more experienced in the field. During CSEAR ESC 2017, the Ph.D students and emerging scholars totalled 25 and came from all over the world. For example, universities such as Stockholm School of Economics, Bristol University, the University of Leicester, the University of Dundee, the University of Burgos, Paris Dauphine, PLS Research University, Bergamo University, the University of Central Florida and Auckland University of Technology were represented, among others.

Delegates were divided into sessions that dealt with different themes and research areas. Moreover, various theoretical backgrounds and diverse methodological approaches were presented by the emerging scholars, and thereafter discussed by faculty members with different research profiles. Professors such as Charles Cho (York University), Carmen Correa (Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla), Jesse Dillard (Portland State University), Matias Laine (University of Tampere), Giovanna Michelon (Exter University), Den Patten (Illinois State University), Michelle Rodrigue (Université Laval) and Helen Tregidga (Royal Holloway, University of London) acted as the discussants.

The evening before the ESC began, we had the possibility of meeting one another during dinner at Agnes Blackadder Hall. There, some of the faculty members welcomed us, as well as introduced us to each other, allowing us to feel more at ease. Getting to know our colleagues is key for the CSEAR community and this is achieved not only during the plenary sessions in an academic capacity, but also during the evenings’ social events at the infamous pub ‘The Central Bar’ which involved relation-building in addition to some deeper academic discussions.

In our opinion, the ESC and CSEAR were successes, and a special thanks goes to those who organised the conference, as well as the faculty members who welcomed us. Moreover, we are extremely grateful to the brilliant researchers within the community for their continued work and inspiration both more generally, but also specifically when participating in the discussions. With this letter, we want to show how fruitful this 4th ESC has been for us, and we hope to see you again next year… a little older and a little wiser, and perhaps with a little more emerging scholars attending.

Thank you for welcoming us to your community of social and environmental accountability research.

Ph.D. Students: 
Jamiu, Muhammad, Clarence, Rebecca, Iris, Emilia, Zhifeng, Joselyne, Anees, Leanne, Teng, John, Melita, Osai, Iredele, Alexandros, Nadra, Enrique, Shamrin, Juliette, Chaoyuan, Hyemi, Madlen, Di, Rijadh, Jingjing, David, Ahmad, Sisi.

A Retrospective Musing on the Textbook in Social and Environmental Accounting

Reflections on Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Accounting for Society and the Environment by Rob Gray, Carol Adams and Dave Owen (London, Pearson), 2014

by Professor Rob Gray

I am very grateful to Ian (Thomson) and Colin (Dey) for the invitation to write for Colin’s blog on something that was starting to nibble away at the back of my mind. The “something” was a combination of the hoary old chestnut – whither academic social accounting? – and a related concern over the role(s) of substantive authored books within social accounting (and, in all probability, business and management more widely). Musing on the state of academic social accounting is nothing new but the need to get published in a few selected journals continues, it seems, to drive out wider and more natural curiosity about how the world works (or doesn’t work) and our place within it as social accounting academics and scholars more widely. (Robin Roberts’ contribution on the CSEAR blog touches on this). I worry if the inevitable and very practical advice to younger academics to leave wider reflections until after their PhD really means that they never get around to learning how to indulge in such reflection. Publication trumps pondering? Metrics trump musing? These inchoate firing of the aging synapses were stimulated by some recent chats about textbooks…. and, in particular, by a realisation that there are very few books offering wide-ranging views of social accounting. Moreover, the gap (hiatus perhaps) between Accounting and Accountability (1996) and Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability (2014) of almost 20 years later was filled by neither neophytes nor old lags falling over themselves to make sense of this most wonderful and perplexing subject. (Apologies for the self-absorption that this perhaps reflects).  Of course there are the excellent collections from Jeffrey, Brendan and Jan and the somewhat more focused texts from, for example, Stefan (Schaltegger) or Stuart (Cooper) but none of these seek to offer a contesting and potentially comprehensive world view of the subject (in the way that, for example, Reg Mathews and, coincidentally, Bob Perks did in 1993 and Ralph Estes did in 1976).  Is there now no time for such creations? Is there perhaps no appetite for the production – or even consumption – of such things? Are attempts at overviews of a discipline impossible? over-ambitious? entirely unnecessary? 

These notions are cast into relief by having time to reflect upon the labour of (mostly) love that Dave, Carol and I undertook over far too many years to produce Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability (2014). Whilst far from sitting back and waiting for the accolades, bouquets and plaudits to overwhelm us after the book was published at the start of 2014, we were somewhat puzzled by the apparent lack of response and its relatively low impact on citations. The text had been written for a number of reasons and it is perhaps salutary to suggest that maybe we have misjudged our community. That, as much as anything, promoted the following brief reprise on our collaborations.

In the 1980s when Dave and I were still in short pants and trying to get a grip on what was happening in accounting academe, there was virtually nothing on aspects of social accounting and any commitment to this area was met with howls of derision, fatherly advice to choose other paths and refusals to allow such sedition to take root in departments of “proper” accounting. Dave and I, linking up with Keith Maunders, set out to do two things. First, we wanted to try and satisfy ourselves that there was a thing worthy of the title social accounting and that it did have a substantive relationship with “real” accounting. Secondly, we wanted to show that this stuff could be taught as a (relatively) coherent and important programme. In effect, we want to proselytise and to champion this area as a worthy subject in and of itself.  The result was Corporate Social Reporting in 1987.

We got lucky. Rather to our surprise. there was a reasonable response to the book (reference the open-season that the crits declared on all things social accounting). Perhaps more significantly, (and even more to our surprise), the world also changed in about 1990 and the subject (but especially the “environmental” bit) suddenly became sexy. Environmental issues in accounting became almost ubiquitous and, as Dave remarked elsewhere, seemed to be drowning out the social issues of social accounting. Hence we determined to really try to step things up a bit (helped by Reg Mathews and Bob Perks) and try to produce a more nuanced and wide-ranging text. Accounting and Accountability (1996) was the result.

Accounting and Accountability, much to our delight, became a stalwart of the social accounting literature. It was very widely cited (great news) but very widely relied upon (not such good news it turns out).  The reasons for this uncharacteristic modesty lay in the book’s significant limitations: most notably the limited take on theory and the relatively narrow range of views incorporated and organisations embraced.  A victim of its own success, the book had been the best we had been able to produce at the time – given our still developing understandings - but its frequent citation as the last word on theories of and for social accounting theory was increasingly disturbing.

It took a long time, (for a lot of reasons), to produce Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability (2014). This was our attempt to articulate a view and views of social accounting more substantively. It was even a bit of an apology for having been so naïve in places last time around.  Much wider in its embrace of the business and management literature, more nuanced (we hope) in its treatment of CSR and sustainability, and much more cognisant of both financial and organisational context, the text sought to offer a more comprehensive range of views, theories and understandings of social accounting.

But here’s the nub. The reaction to it has been extremely muted: indifferent even. The reviews, although excellent, have been few and far between. The citations take a while to pick up but remain scarce. Our reaction to this is far from sulky – simply a bit bemused. Has that boat sailed? Did we really miss the point? Or are textbooks of less and less interest perhaps? To repeat, the absence of any substantive texts in the intervening 20 years is perhaps significant.

I get to wondering about other areas of accounting – and, indeed, of business and management more widely.  With the pressure on journal publication and the absence of obvious tangible rewards for textbook writing is academe entering another phase in which shared knowledge and understanding is less important than a localised adherence to something approaching normal science? Are textbooks dead? Do you care? What do you think?

Thanks for reading this.

Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Accounting for Society and the Environment

Rob Gray, Carol Adams, Dave Owen

Jan 2014, Paperback, 360 pages
ISBN13: 9780273681380: ISBN10: 0273681389

http://www.pearsoned.co.uk/bookshop/detail.asp?item=100000000072808

-->