Crowdsourcing Corporate Transparency through Social Accounting: Conceptualising the ‘Spotlight Account’

By Dr Stephanie Perkiss, Dr Bonnie Dean & Dr Belinda Gibbons, University of Wollongong, Australia 

Winners of the 2019 Reg Mathews Memorial Prize for the paper considered to have made the most significant contribution towards the social and environmental accounting literature published in Social and Environmental Accountability Journal. The paper is FREE to download here.

Image L-R: Stephanie Perkiss, Theresa Heithaus
(Program Manager, WikiRate), Belinda Gibbons, Bonnie Dean.

Organisations play a key role in addressing global economic, social and environmental challenges. Increasingly we are seeing organisations selecting to integrate sustainability activities into their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts. Yet, these CSR reports are indispensably limited, privileging self-serving discourses. 

External accounts, such as alternative and counter accounts, offer opportunities to increase transparency and accountability in the areas of sustainable development. While external accounts challenge organisations’ social accounting, there remains a need to develop this further and investigate new models of social accounting that engage multiple viewpoints and stakeholders. With the evolution and public adoption of technology into our everyday lives, there is great potential for crowdsourced applications to enhance organisational accountability. 

This paper explores the role of accounting in the context of social and environmental change agendas and introduces a new framework for social accounting, the ‘Spotlight Account’. What is significant about the Spotlight Account is the use of the crowd and technology as a way of creating new visibilities and channels for participation. Unlike shadow or silent external accounts, the Spotlight Account seeks to illuminate and transform global organisational transparency and disclosure practices by centrally locating and recording comparable, aggregated and independently sought organisational information. 

The paper conceptualises the Spotlight Account through the exploration of a new technological platform, WikiRate. WikiRate is a collective awareness platform for sustainability that organises corporate narratives, disclosures and accountings relating to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other frameworks such as the GRI, into a peer-produced, crowdsourced database. While crowdsourced platforms are not new - think about websites such as TripAdvisor - WikiRate is unique to the CSR field as a free platform that engages stakeholders through information sharing. 

Image: sample of a 'metric' on Wikirate

This conceptual paper highlights a new social accounting framework, empowering anyone to assume the role as a social accountant through participation in the platform and leveraging technology to facilitate transparent and comparative organisational data. In naming this new account, we wanted our readers to think about a spotlight – how it gives centre stage to a space, a number, a metric – each light coming from a member of the crowd to brighten sustainability information for decision-making or, to brighten a lack of corporate sustainability information that may drive better disclosure. 

Spotlight Accounting has the potential to address (some) issues of contemporary CSR practice as it focuses on the process through which accountability information is created. It represents an accounting theory or practice (process, method) and an effective form of social change. We conclude that the exploration of new social accountings can bring about emancipatory change. It opens up the possibilities for social accounting to achieve greater accountability and communication between companies and their stakeholders. We invite accounting scholars to consider the implications of Spotlight Accounting, and consider how advances in technology and increased participation from stakeholders can drive organisational SDGs. 

You can check out WikiRate at: wikirate.org or contact the WikiRate team via info@wikirate.org to discuss setting up your own WikiRate higher education program. 

Editor’s note: As part of the award, Stephanie Perkiss, Bonnie Dean & Belinda Gibbons’ original paper published in Social and Environmental Accountability Journal is available FREE to download via the publishers' website, via this link.

Alternative Accountabilities and Inclusive Mapping: Lessons from The Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor

By Mercy Denedo, Ian Thomson and Akira Yonekura

In our paper titled “Accountability, maps and inter-generational equity: evaluating the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor” published in Public Money and Management 38(5), 355-365, we explored the accountability expected of Public Sector Organisations (PSOs) assigned the responsibility of protecting the natural environment, intergenerational and intra-generational equity. If PSOs are not held accountable for the social consequences of their activities, then this might negatively affect the distribution of social, economic and environmental rights, risks and resources between present and future generations. Our central theme is whether enhanced accountability will drive changes in organisational practices associated with more sustainable ways of living. This paper evaluates the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor (OSM), an innovative public sector accounting sustainability system created by a coalition of campaigning NGOs and the Nigerian National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) by exploring the OSM system along with interview evidence conducted with different stakeholders in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Unusually for accounting-sustainability hybrids which are practices used to make visible and thinkable the sustainable governance of economic, ecological and social life, the OSM is adapted from public participation geographic information system (PPGIS).

PPGIS comprises techniques that address the absence of information on the social and environmental impact of the action of others. PPGIS use a combination of community engagement practises and geographic information system (GIS) to facilitate public participation in policy making, problematisation of the actions of others, supporting civic society groups, and reforming governance systems (Carver et al., 2001; Ramirez-Gomez et al., 2017). PPGIS also incorporates activist practises such as counter mapping or maptivism and is often an integral part of citizen science programmes. From the perspective of accounting hybridisation, there are a number of common attributes associated with PPGIS. These include making invisible data visible, connecting high level concepts with specific geographic localities, presenting information from different sources, co-production, filling critical information gaps, stakeholder inclusion, and visualising complex relationships for intra-generational engagement and intergenerational equity (Brown et al., 2012). PPGIS have also been observed as increasing the power of communities to demand greater accountability from institutions whose actions affect their ability to live sustainably (see also here and here). Many of these attributes are shared with sustainable accounting and sustainable governance offering an alternative pathway to accounting hybridisation. In this paper, we explored the OSM’s effectiveness in terms of enhanced accountability, stakeholder engagement and improved regulatory practices in preventing, stopping and remediating oil spills in the Niger Delta.

Unsustainable activities of oil companies, corruption, third party interference and sabotage in conjunction with ineffective regulators have led to Niger Delta being ranked as one of the worst petroleum damaged ecosystems in the world. The OSM was designed to improve the governance and accountability associated with oil pollution provides open access to detailed accounts of the cause, timing, location, quantity of pollutant, remediation programmes related to all oil spills. The OSM makes visible oil spill data, how oil corporations are fulfilling their legal duties, as well as, the impact of third party interference. The OSM’s origin lie in activist campaigns against the actions of oil corporations and regulators using a range of tactics including PPGIS. Following years of campaigning against the oil spill regulatory regime, corporate practices and third party sabotage; the OSM was developed by a coalition of NGOs in partnership with NOSDRA as a solution to the lack of reliable information from corporations and NOSDRA. The OSM provides real-time information on the management of oil spills measured against NOSDRA’s statutory responsibilities. The OSM was intended to enable government agencies, oil corporations, civil society groups and communities’ members to co-produce accounts of oil-spillage, engage and share critical information.

Integrating sustainable development into public sector accountability and sustainable governance systems is deemed necessary to create social, economic, cultural, political and environmental wellbeing for present and future generations. Protecting the natural environment is linked to protecting intra-generational and inter-generational equity, particularly when damage to the natural environment persists overtime. Aligning public service accountability practices with sustainable development is critical for the governance of others to achieve an equitable redistribution of costs, risk, harm, resources and benefits across generations.

Sustainable governance systems are concerned with managing the social, economic and environmental risks emerging from unsustainable practices. Accounting possesses a powerful set of practices that can play a number of important roles in sustainable governance systems, in particular rendering visible and governable the risks of unsustainability. Accounting can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of those institutions responsible for sustainable governance. At an operational level, accounts of actual or potential harm through regulatory breaches can trigger corrective actions or policy interventions by PSOs. Managing social, economic and environmental sustainability across generations requires accounts to challenge institutions to fully discharge their responsibilities by ensuring effective risk management policies and stakeholder engagement. Given the importance of PSOs to sustainable governance, we argue that PSOs should integrate relevant aspects of sustainable development into their accounting and accountability systems. The absence of effective accounting-sustainability systems in PSOs, including environmental regulators, might limit the attainment of inter-generational equity. Accountability practices need to be embedded within robust governance systems in order to change policies or practices to protect the environment and human rights in the context of sustainable wealth creation and its distribution across generations. Within the Niger Delta, whether the dramatically improved disclosures of oil spillage through the OSM system will lead to future reforms of the social, economic and environmental governance of the oil sector remains an open question to be answered by practitioners, oil corporations and the regulatory agencies.

References
Brown, G., Montag, J. M. and Lyon, K. (2012). Public participation GIS: a method for identifying ecosystem services. Society & Natural Resources, 25(7), 633-651.

Carver, S., Evans, A., Kingston, R. and Turton, I. (2001). Public participation, GIS, and cyberdemocracy: evaluating on-line spatial decision support systems. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 28, 907-921.

Denedo, M., Thomson, I. and Yonekura, A. (2018). Accountability, maps and inter-generational equity: evaluating the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor. Public Money and Management, 38(5), 355-364.

Ramirez-Gomez, S. O. I., Verweij, P., Best, L., van Kanten, R., Rambaldi, G. and Zagt, R. (2017). Participatory 3D modelling as a socially engaging and user-useful approach in ecosystem service assessments among marginalised communities. Applied Geography, 83, 63-77.

Responsible sustainability accounting educators and transformative educational practices

By guest blogger Professor Ian Thomson, CSEAR Executive Council Convenor


Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.

(Nelson Mandela)

Unfortunately we live in a world that is in urgent need of change. The sustainability accounting research community has long recognised the importance of effective social and environmental accounting learning, and many members of that community have been involved in the delivery of social and environmental accounting education to students across the world. The CSEAR network consider education to be an effective engagement strategy to transform our collective intellectual capital into knowledge that is useful, usable and used by others in order to make the world a more sustainable place.

This blog was inspired by a recent article in Accounting Forum by Gray, Brennan and Malpas (2014), which argued for a reframing of social accounting and the construction of a more responsible social accounting academic community. Writing in a commentary piece in response to Gray et al., I reflected on the potential value of involving the student population in the co-production of sustainable accounting knowledge and in collective, targeted educational programmes of sustainable transformation. These reflections were designed to complement the efforts of dedicated individuals delivering high quality sustainable accounting educational experience to fragmented groups of students and to consider the potential of more organised, integrated and coherent programmes of sustainable accounting education. There does appear to be a need to consider reframing sustainable accounting education in a way that facilitates effective learning in sustainability and accounting for sustainability.

This blog is intended to encourage others to join in thinking about designing a collaborative educational infrastructure, creating effective learning opportunities, alternative assessments, enhanced research capacity in order to collectively leverage the sustainability accounting community’s transformative potential. I would argue that we are guilty of ignoring or under-estimating the transformative potential of our students. For example, consider the ‘waste’ of hundreds/thousands of hours of student effort producing insightful essays, projects, dissertations that remain largely unread (other than markers) sitting rotting in cupboards or taking up space in computer servers. We need to consider how to better harness the impact of the collective efforts of our students.

Here are some ideas to start this process of integrating student learning and our research in order to co-produce usable knowledge for change. The underlying concept is to co-ordinate aspects of the accounting education of all students studying sustainability accounting and share their work with others.

For example:

• Students researching and submitting responses to consultations on new social accounting standards and/or sustainability regulations as part of their assessment. 
• Students monitoring the human rights impact of selected organisations and submitting their findings into an open-access database of corporate human rights abuse. 
• Students undertaking shadow accounts of the same multinational corporations and compiling these into a global library of shadow accounts.
• Students creating a global crowd sourced map of carbon emissions/water shortages or participating in a collaborative programme of public accountability (see www.ushahidi.com) 
• Students participating in a scenario planning exercise engaging in a shared dialogue on the future of social accounts.
• Students participating in alternative reality games dealing with issues such as a world without oil, mass human migration, climate catastrophes or the collapse of capitalism (see also http://janemcgonigal.com/)

I am sure that others will have other ideas and hope you will share them with the wider sustainability accounting community. This post is a call to join in the next wave of sustainable accounting education.

Links to other resources

Bebbington J. (1997) Engagement, education and sustainability: a review essay on environmental accounting Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 10 (3) 365-381.
Cadiz, M. and Thomson, I. (2013) Sustainability and Accounting Education, Accounting Education: An International Journal, 22(4) 303-308.
Christensen, L., Peirce, Hartman, Hoffman and Carrier (2007)  Ethics, CSR, and Sustainability Education in the Financial Times Top 50 Global Business Schools  Journal of Business Ethics, 73(4), 347-368,
Collison, D., J. Ferguson and L. Stevenson (2007) Sustainability accounting and education in Unerman J., J. Bebbington and B. O’Dwyer (2007) (Eds)  Sustainability Accounting and Accountability (London: Routledge)
Cooper, S. Parkes, C. & Blewitt, J. (2014) Can education help a leopard change its spots? Social accountability and stakeholder engagement in business schools  Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 27(2), 234-258.
Coulson A. and Thomson I. (2006) Accounting and Sustainability, Encouraging a Dialogical Approach; Integrating Learning Activities, Delivery Mechanisms and Assessment Strategies  Accounting Education: an International Journal 15(3) 261-273
Ferguson J., D. Collison, D. Power and L. Stevenson (2011)  Accounting education, socialisation and the ethics of business  Business Ethics: A European Review  20(1)12-29
Godeman, J., Bebbington, J., Herzig, C. & Moon, J. (2014) Higher education and sustainable development: exploring possibilities for organisational change,  Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 27(2), 218-233.
Gray R, Bebbington,J. & McPhail, K. (1994)  Teaching Ethics and the Ethics of Accounting Teaching: Educating for immorality and a case for social and environmental accounting education  Accounting Education 3(1) 51-75.
Gray, R. (2013) Sustainability and Accounting Education: The elephant in the room, Accounting Education: An International Journal, 22(4) 308-332.
Gray, R., Brennan, A. and Malpas, J. (2014) New Accounts: Towards a reframing of social accounting, Accounting Forum, In press.
Humphrey C, Lewis L & Owen D, (1996) Still Too Distant Voices? Conversations and Reflections on the Social Relevance of Accounting Education. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 7, 77-99.
McPhail, K. (2013) Corporate Responsibility to respect human rights and business schools responsibility to teach it: Incorporating human rights into the sustainability agenda, Accounting Education: An International Journal, 22(4) 391-412.
Owen, D., Humphrey, C., & Lewis, L. (1994) Social and Environmental Accounting Education in British Universities, (London: ACCA – The Certified Accountants Educational Trust).
Stevenson, L. and Thomson, I. (2010) Editorial, Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, 30(2) 51-63.
Thomson I. and Bebbington,J. (2004) It doesn’t matter what you teach?  Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 15(4-5), 609-628.
Thomson, I. (2014, forthcoming) "Responsible social accounting communities, symbolic activism and the reframing of social accounting. A commentary on new accounts: Towards a reframing of social accounting." Accounting Forum.

Behind the Brands

The following website is well worth a visit …

http://www.behindthebrands.org/en-us/brands

Oxfam have developed an innovative website that creates the possibility of linking brands (produced by the ten largest food companies) with information (or the lack thereof) on the social and environmental conditions under which these products are produced.  In particular, the evaluation presented focuses on issues of: land tenure; treatment of women workers; farmer relationships; workers in general; climate change issues; transparency and sensitivity to water concerns.  This site, therefore, creates an engaging resource for teaching on a wide array of topics such as: counter accounts and/or shadow accounts; sustainable consumption issues; product lifecycle assessment; multi-criteria analysis of sustainable development … and many other topics.  It is especially engaging as the focus on brands means that the links between (students – and our) personal choices and impacts are drawn closer.  Likewise (and with every evaluation technology), deconstructing how this account of brands is made up is valuable in itself.  If you have not seen it, take a look.

Jan Bebbington and Shona Russell

External Accounting & Activism: Thoughts from a workshop

In a cavernous room in the University of Strathclyde, accounting academics gathered on earlier this week to discuss our conceptions, experiences and understandings of external accounting and activism. The international group came together to discuss responses to such questions: What did we mean by activism? What is accounting, for that matter? What problems or issues did our research, our engagement focus upon? What are the limits, possibilities and practicalities of doing this engagement? After lunch, we returned to watch and listen to four presentations from around the globe. From valleys and coasts of Aotearoa New Zealand, to the oil fields of Nigeria via the mountains of Peru, we heard about alterative accounts and multiple actors assembled around and responding to problems of climate change, biodiversity and corporate misconduct.

Over the course of the day, we identified some key themes and elements that could be considered around this area of external accounting and activism.

• Problem orientated research permeated our interests. From the prevention of coal mine operations to the recognition of impacts of student loans, our research projects often sought to document, examine, sometimes critique and other times participate in interventions to seek some form of change.
• It is important to appreciate and explore understandings of terminology and give time to discuss alternative perspectives.
• Appreciation of the multiple spaces in which activism might occur. While we might commonly think of activism protests on streets, we observed that activism occurs in parliamentary committee rooms, lecture halls and even Facebook pages.
• We identified a variety of activism practices including holding banners, compiling shadow accounts, writing research reports, lobbying politicians, creating sculptures, and documenting climate change in the local environment. The professionalization and the sophistication of practices prompted us to wonder, are PR companies and NGOs incorporating the same practices but for very different ends?
• The role(s) and identities of accounting academics. We wondered did authority come with the identity? When might it be an (in)appropriate time to declare such identities? Rather than declare a determination to all be public intellectuals, we recognised that individuals each have skills and capacities to engage in various ways. By sharing research experiences, we began to appreciate the diverse practices and possibilities of engaged scholarship in this area but with a broader appreciation of the institutional opportunities, pressures and responsibilities that come from our position.

So what next? For some of us, it’s about writing up individual projects and a collective piece reflecting and imagining possibilities for accounting research and activism to contribute to add … Watch this space!!

If you have any thoughts or comments relating to this topic, please comment below, email Shona Russell (sr65@st-andrews.ac.uk) or join us for a chat at CSEAR 2013.

Thanks to everyone for an interesting and stimulating day. I’m really looking forward to continuing the conversation in person, over email and in articles.

Shona Russell (May 2013)

Shadow Accounts: An Introductory Reading List

To follow up on my earlier blog post on shadow accounts, I've created a new page within the blog that provides some useful references for anyone interested in the area.

Corporate Social Reports vs Shadow Reports: How should we use accounting in contested arenas?

Elaine Cohen's CSR-Reporting blog has a nice article on Hershey's recent publication of their first CSR report. The report itself is rather unremarkable, but this is not the issue, however - far more interesting is the publication of a 'shadow report' by a coalition of NGOs in direct response to the Hershey report.

The blog article attempts to tease out the main areas of contention between these publications and rightly draws attention to the partisan nature of both reports, which, it is argued, undermines the credibility of both parties.

The Hershey report/shadow report illustrates how the communications tools and tactics of corporations and activist groups can sometimes appear remarkably similar.  For example, just as there is a growing activist literature focusing on ways to battle big business, so there is a corresponding corporate literature that offers almost exactly the same kind of help, but this time in fighting back against the activists.

However, the role of accounting, and especially social and environmental accounting, in these contested arenas is less well understood. If the tactical approaches of activists and corporations are converging, why do examples of shadow accounting such as the Hershey report remain relatively uncommon? Is the purpose of these reports to discharge accountability or to mobilise public opinion? What is an effective shadow report? And how can we encourage corporations to better respond to the concerns raised in shadow accounts?