Emerging Scholars Colloquium - Questions Posed by Participants

Prior to the 26th International Congress on Social & Environmental Accounting Research, CSEAR organised a very successful one-day Emerging Scholars Colloquium which aimed to introducing emerging scholars into the social and environmental accounting research community, and provide them an opportunity to present and discuss their research projects alongside a cohort of distinguished international faculty.

At this event, a number of important questions were raised by emerging scholars. CSEAR's council members felt it would be helpful to use the blog to explore these questions and generate some dialogue around the issued arising from them.

The questions were:

• In a field such as social and environmental accounting there must be periods where you feel deflated by the issues we write about. How do you avoid losing your passion?
• This is a stupid question, but in my whole academic career I've never heard anyone explain it. How does academia fit in society? Does it influence society, and, if so, how? It´s a question that could provide more meaning to the academic pursuit of knowledge.
• What can be the contribution of research in promoting the correct use of social and environmental reporting instruments?
• Is it too ambitious to think that accountants will play a central role in saving the world from environmental disaster?
• How can you give your time as a PhD student?
• How can we have publish work out of this colloquium as PhDs? 
• Do you think it is necessary to defend social and environment accounting against mainstream accounting? Why or why not?
• As a PhD student without a funding grant, how can we avoid the lack of financing to endanger our passion?

Over the coming days, members of CSEAR's executive council and others will offer their perspective on these questions. However, if you have your own views, we would welcome these too, either by commenting on the blog, or via CSEAR's facebook page. Please join in the conversation!

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.

From counting money to counting CO2 emissions: the role of management accounting

By guest blogger Martin Quinn

As a management accountant and a researcher, what I am going to say here might be quite obvious. I completely appreciate the work of CSEAR members as well as efforts made by some companies to produce some form of environmental or sustainability reports.

I have a rather dull view of financial reporting of any kind to be honest – it is only done because it has to be, primarily to satisfy legal requirements and shareholders. I am in the middle of reading Capital Wars by Daniel Pinto. In the book he notes that the average period of holding a share in US public companies is now 5 months (see also here: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/b0c45128-890c-11e3-9f48-00144feab7de.html ). This give us some idea of the relevance of financial reports. So, yes I would say this, but isn’t management accounting then more important? Perhaps what we need is companies to not only take sustainability and environmental reporting seriously – and it will probably take laws to do this – but also to instil the same issues into their internal accounting. In my experience, it does not take much for a management accountant to change their skills from counting money to counting CO2 emissions, waste or energy consumed for example.

Maybe people like myself should specifically teach such things in a standard management accounting course, but as I said, management accountants are good at counting things and controlling things – we just need to encourage them somehow. For example, over a decade ago I worked for a paper company. Every piece of waste paper was captured, baled, weighed and ultimately sold on for recycling. The primary reason for the relatively complex control system was we could generate about €300,000 per annum in revenue. Then, at some stage we had to join the Green Dot initiative and account for waste to an authority. With the system already in place, the changes needed were easily made. Basically, we had to define the type of waste in more detail – cuttings of paper, waste sheets, and even dust. These changes, along with the fact that the more waste we generated, the more we paid to Green Dot , made managers focus on waste reduction and keep an eye on the reports to see what was happening.

Taking my example above, it would be very easy to report externally on waste generated, recycled or sold. But, in my opinion there is a difference between this example and an externally imposed report. As my example comes from within, it is accepted and used by all and taken seriously. Something imposed from outside might not be as easily accepted – well at least that’s what my research on organisational routines tells me.

Martin Quinn is Lecturer of Accounting at Dublin City University, Ireland, where he teaches at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. He is also a registered Chartered Management Accountant. Martin’s blog on accounting related topics can be found at martinjquinn.com. He is also a co-author of a major new Management Accounting textbook – further details can be found at burnsetal.com.

New issue of the Social and Environmental Accountability Journal published

SEAJ 34(1) Special issue on Carbon Accounting

The first issue in 2014 of the CSEAR journal is a special issue on “Carbon Accounting: The Contribution of Social and Environmental Accounting to the Debate”, guest edited by myself, featuring three main contributions by Francisco Ascui (University of Edinburgh), Martin Freedman and Jin Dong Park (Towson University) and Begoña Giner (Univesity of Valencia).

Ascui’s paper is a review of carbon accounting literature that provides insight into the directions in which SEA research should move to make a more ambitious contribution in the area. He contends that the focus of carbon accounting research is relatively confined to content analyses of corporate disclosures, opening the opportunity to conduct research in other areas, such as the interplay between carbon markets and financial accounting.

Freedman and Park examine the compliance of certain public US firms with mandatory disclosures on climate change, concluding that the regulation produced an increase in disclosure, but also a diversity of disclosure practices among companies.

Begoña Giner, member of the Advisory Council of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and former member of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), examines the evolution of carbon financial accounting regulation and uses a suggestive currency metaphor to suggest an alternative carbon financial accounting approach based on considering emission allowances as payment instruments.

As usual, this issue also contains a series of articles reviews and book reviews that researchers interested in social and environmental accountability might find a useful introduction to relevant recent literature.

CSEAR Blog seeking guest bloggers

Do you write blogs or tweet about your research? Would you like to share short pieces, provocations or updates about your research with others in the CSEAR communities? 

The CSEAR Blog is looking for guest contributors to write up to 500 words on their research. 

There are many resources for those interested in using social media, including 

• Sociological Imagination has created a number of resources for those interested in digital sociology, including discussion of positive (clarify ideas, practice writing for different audiences) and negatives (ruining your reputation, irrelevant topics, time management) about using this media 
• Just Publics  including An Illustrated Guide to Academic Blogging…  (for anyone who loves cartoons)
• Deborah Lupton (sociologist) has written some nice pieces on 'why I blog' and risks of academic blogging  

If you have something to contribute or would like to find out more about the CSEAR blog please contact Colin Dey or Shona Russell. 

Reflection Post CSEAR 2013: A Poem By Jack Christian

Scurrying, frightened, from block to block.

Huddled tight against the fallen, ‘strange-stone’ tree

That stretches beyond understanding.

The people wait, the caribou wait,

For the end.

In tented villages in now barren lands

And on narrow ledges on high sea cliffs

Hunger rages and eyes stare skyward.

The people wait, the chicks wait,

For the end.

Greed drives control, perspective is lost,

The balance shifts and no-one seems to care.

Or is it that no-one knows

That the people wait, that the creatures wait,

For the end.

Who will tell their stories of fear and pain?

Who will bear witness to the greed driven crimes

That lead to an end so unjust and cruel?

The people wait, the creatures wait,

No, not for the end -

But for those who would speak up,

Those who would give an account on their behalf.

For in such an account there is hope.

By Jack Christian

Manchester Metropolitan University

http://www.business.mmu.ac.uk/staff/staffdetails.php?uref=373

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

Reflections on CSEAR 2013

Wow! What a busy few days. Only after a long weekend of reading, coffee and running have I managed to take time to reflect on last week’s CSEAR Conference in St Andrews.

The Gateway Building became the hub for around 110 people from around the world last week to discuss all manner of topics and papers linked to social and environmental accounting. John Roberts’ plenary ‘Between Corporate and Political Accountability: The case of the Australian Resource Super Tax Profits’ discussed globalisation, cosmopolitanism and asked ‘what does it mean to be a nation state?’

John’s use of adverts during his plenary was especially entertaining and fascinating. The announcement in 2010 of a 'super tax' on mining profits by the Australian government prompted an extraordinary lobbying campaign, firstly by the mining industry, and, in response, by a coalition of progressive campaigners and trade unions. The satire deployed by the latter through a number of parody adverts is especially worth a look - see below.

The plenary also prompted further consideration of what ‘accounts’ can be – a topic that continued to be discussed in relation to papers on accounting for nature (Jack Christian) and external accounting and activism (Colin Dey, Ian Thomson and myself).

In a contrast to previous years, we had a book launch and panel discussion associated with Capitalism, Corporations and the Social Contract: A Critique of Stakeholder Theory by Sam Mansell (University of St Andrews); discussants sessions where four particular papers were presented, posters and a couple of futures workshops discussing both the future of the SEA field and CSEAR future(s).

The workshops were based in part on a survey of the CSEAR community, which provided a very valuable snapshot of the views of CSEAR members. Further details of the survey will be made available soon via the CSEAR website, but in the meantime, part of the survey asked respondents what they thought CSEAR's vision, mission and values should be, and the latter is presented below as a word cloud:

The 2.5 days of the conference was followed by ‘Rob’s day’, celebrating the intellectual contribution of Professor Rob Gray to the field. The audience were treated to a host of wonderful and very funny presentations by Professors David Owen, Lee Parker, Richard Laughlin and Jane Broadbent.

The day also featured a quiz put together by Clemence Rannou, Delphine Gibassier and Alex Stanley, called 'Know Your Rob'. For those of you who missed the event - a copy of the quiz can be downloaded here. Only one person managed to get all the questions correct on the day - the highly competitive Dave Owen!

All in all, a packed four days with lots of stimulating conversation, a fair bit of banter and amazingly bathed in Scottish sunshine.

Thank you to everyone for participating and contributing ideas and thoughts via spoken word, post-it note or survey response. Each contribution informs and shapes ideas going forward concerning CSEAR(s) activities for the next year. Many volunteers have signed up to be part of organising webinars, hosting events and building networks in places around the world. This demonstrates the capabilities and generosity of the CSEAR community to continue to mobilise SEA scholarship in new and exciting directions.

This blog is available to communicate ideas, stimulate debate, disseminate research findings, or announce events. Please contact us if you’d like to contribute to the blog. We look forward to hearing from you.

Colin Dey and Shona Russell (September 2013)

Living on CSEAR island: Do we have a problem? Tell us what you think!

CSEAR will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. The network has developed from a small number of UK-based researchers in 1991 to an international network of academics and practitioners engaging in various social and environmental accounting related activities.

At this year’s Summer School, two workshops will be held on the topics of the Future of the Field and CSEAR Future(s). Conference attendees are invited to share thoughts and ideas on these topics during the workshops and on poster boards located in the open space in the Gateway.

These are opportunities to celebrate achievements, discuss the messiness, and imagine possibilities of SEAR field and the CSEAR community in the past, now and in the future. There is no expectation for the participants to develop ‘one voice’, ‘one view’ and ‘one way forward’ for CSEAR. Rather, these activities aim to create space to discuss, connect and create possibilities for research, teaching, and engagement which may emerge.

In the first of these two important workshops, Carmen Correa, Matias Laine, Colin Dey and Ian Thomson will lead a debate that seeks to confront some of the issues - and problems - facing the CSEAR community. The starting point for the workshop is the forthcoming SEAJ article, "Struggling Against Like-Minded Conformity in Order to Enliven SEAR: A Call for Passion", written by Carmen and Matias. Their paper reflects upon the behavioural and attitudinal issues of scholars within the community of social and environmental accounting research and seeks to stimulate debate by discussing the authors' views on how the CSEAR community operates. 

Correa and Laine acknowledge that many within our community may feel happy and 'at home' within CSEAR, and that CSEAR has been of great importance in establishing social structures to foster research activity. However, they also suggest that:

"such an institutionalisation of social structures is not without problems: many basic issues come to be taken-for-granted and thus move beyond discussion (Spence, Husillos, and Correa-Ruiz 2010). We concur with Gray, Dillard, and Spence (2009, 564) that SEAR scholars need to expose our taken-for-granted assumptions more explicitly. Not only do such issues easily bring the development of this research genre to a standstill, but also they may lead to in-breeding and clubbishness (Spence, Husillos, and Correa-Ruiz 2010)."

A key concern for the authors is a lack of passion within the community, which is dominated instead by conformity:

"Many SEAR scholars tend to agree with each other, but when they do not agree, the issue is not taken up in discussion at all... There is too much of an obsession with appearance and coherence, and so frequently there is neither self-questioning nor any intention to really challenge others’ assumptions. Similar arguments can be directed towards the audience. Instead of listening, we audience members often only hear. We simply interpret the ideas of others according to our own research approach and do not acknowledge the premises and taken-for-granted assumptions behind them. Indeed, these are rarely, if ever, challenged at a conference."

To address these concerns, they argue that:

"We need to engage with others in order to learn. Spence, Husillos, and Correa-Ruiz (2010) emphasised that ‘what is needed is to show the political imagination to engage with actors other than simply other members of the SER cargo cult’. However, what we here call for is a different attitude of SEAR scholars, as individuals, irrespective of the type of forum or scientific gathering that they use to interact and dialogue about their research. Engagement takes place on the individual level – organisations, communities or strands of literature do not engage. Rather, we argue that engagement starts with the ability to listen to the other. Through listening, one comes to learn what the other has to say. Instead of simply dismissing views that are not coherent with one’s own worldview, such encounters should be seen as opportunities. Then, there is the possibility of coming to understand the other. However, such engagement may not be realised if we hold on to taboos – that is, if we are not willing to expose and get deeper into the taken-for-granted assumptions underlying each piece of research."

During next week's workshop, the intention is to explore Correa and Laine's call for deeper engagement and listening. In anticipation of this, we would welcome views and thoughts on the issues and challenges raised by this paper:

• Do you agree/disagree that there is a lack of passion, and too much conformity within the CSEAR community?
• Are these issues symptomatic of a wider structural problem within the community - as notoriously described by Spence et al (2010) as a 'cargo cult' of CSEAR 'islanders'?
• To what extent do structures such as the CSEAR conferences and SEAJ contribute to or alleviate these problems?
• Is the publication of a journal article in SEAJ and the running of workshops at CSEAR likely to resolve these problems, or are we simply talking to ourselves and repeating well-worn arguments that have been raised before?
• Rather than exhorting the CSEAR community for being passionless, should we be encouraging and helping them to be more free to pursue their passions?
• Where, if at all, are the positive examples or role models of existing CSEAR work that demonstrates what can be achieved?   

Follow the debate here, on Facebook, and on Twitter, using the hashtag #CSEAR2013.