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Much of the extant research into why companies disclose environmental information in the annual report indicates that legitimacy theory is one of the more probable explanations for the increase in environmental disclosures since the early 1980s. Legitimacy theory is based on the idea that in order to continue operating successfully, corporations must act within the bounds of what society identifies as socially acceptable behaviour. The purpose of the practical research undertaken and reported in this paper is to extend the applicability and predictive power of legitimacy theory by investigating to what extent annual report disclosures are interrelated to: attempts to gain, maintain and repair legitimacy; and the choice of specific legitimation tactics. The quasi‐experimental method adopted utilised semi‐structured interviews with senior personnel from three large Australian public companies. The findings indicated support for legitimacy theory as an explanatory factor for environmental disclosures. Moreover, findings about the likelihood of specific micro‐legitimation tactics being used in response to legitimacy threatening environmental issues/events, and dependent on whether the purpose of the response is designed to gain, maintain or repair legitimacy, are reported.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the contributions made to the social and environmental accounting literature by papers that comprised a 2002 Special Issue of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal (AAAJ) entitled social and environmental reporting and its role in maintaining or creating organisational legitimacy. This paper will also provide insights into the origins of legitimacy theory as used in the social and environmental accounting literature as well as providing reflections about the strengths, and shortcomings, of the theory. Suggestions are made with respect to the ongoing application, and development, of legitimacy theory.

As a commentary, this paper utilises a review of the social and environmental accounting and institutional literature across a number of decades to reveal insights about the development and use of legitimacy theory as a basis to explain social and environmental reporting practices. Citation data are also used to indicate the potential impact that the papers in the 2002 Special Issue had upon subsequent research.

This commentary shows that the 2002 Special Issue is the most highly cited issue in the history of AAAJ. It also shows that individually, some of the papers in the Special Issue represent some of the most highly cited papers in the social and environmental accounting literature. The commentary provides arguments to suggest that the development of legitimacy theory is in need of further refinement, and suggests a way in which this refinement might take place.

This paper is largely based on the opinions of one researcher, and the evidence presented in the paper is selected on the basis that it is deemed sufficient to support the opinions being projected. The paper also relies on citation data as an indicator of “impact”. The implication of the research is that it identifies a “way forward” for the development of theory applicable to the understanding of organisational social and environmental reporting practices.

The study provides evidence to show that the 2002 Special Issue was significant within the context of AAAJ, and also within the context of the evolution of the social and environmental accounting literature. The description of the history of the development of legitimacy theory, and of the theory’s subsequent application, provides a solid impetus for future refinements to the theory.

This paper aims to explore the accountants’ perspective towards their role and function as business advisors in assisting with the adoption of sustainable business practices (SBPs) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

A questionnaire-based study was conducted on members from one of Australia’s leading professional accounting organizations.

Key findings from this research highlighted deficiencies in the effectiveness of the accounting profession in assisting SMEs in implementing SBPs despite a desire from clients for accountants to provide this advice and a belief that accountants are best placed to do so. Further, an expectations gap is evident between the level of involvement accountants believe they should be having in assisting SMEs and the level of involvement that is currently occurring.

This finding has implications for the accounting profession, with accountants needing to examine their current business approaches in an effort to close this gap. If this does not occur, SMEs will most likely seek this much-needed advice and support from outside the profession.

Little attention has been given to the accountant’s role in respect of sustainability from an accountant’s perspective. The findings contribute to understanding the accountant’s importance in advancing their involvement in assisting SMEs in the uptake of SBPs.

The study aims to identify and discuss influential aspects of corporate environmental disclosure (CED) literature, including key streams, themes, authors, keywords, journals, affiliations and countries. This review also constructs agendas for future CED research.

Using a bibliometric review approach, the authors reviewed 560 articles on CED from 215 journals published between 1982 and 2020.

The authors' insights are three-fold. First, the authors identified three core streams of CED research: “legitimization of environmental hazards via environmental disclosures,” “the role of environmental accounting in achieving corporate environmental sustainability” and “integrating environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting into the global reporting initiatives (GRI) guidelines”. Second, the authors also deployed a thematic map that classifies CED research into four themes: niche themes (e.g. institutional theory and environmental management system), motor themes (e.g. stakeholder engagement), emerging/declining themes (e.g. legitimacy theory) and basic/transversal themes (e.g. voluntary CED, environmental reporting and corporate social responsibility). Third, the authors highlighted important CED authors, keywords, journals, articles, affiliations and countries.

This study assists researchers, journal editors and consultants in the corporate sector to comprehensively understand various dimensions of CED research and practices and suggests potential emerging research areas. Although this paper appears to have been thoroughly conducted, using authors' keywords to identify themes was a key limitation. Thus, the authors call upon using a more comprehensive data mining technique that uses keywords in abstracts, titles and the whole body of papers and then identifies inclusive trends in CED literature.

The authors contribute to the extant accounting literature by investigating the organizational-level CED, both mandatory and voluntary, using a systematic and bibliometric literature review model to summarize the key research streams, themes, authors, journals, affiliations and countries. By doing so, the authors construct a future research agenda for CED literature.

This study aims to explore the state of environmental management accounting practice and the motivations for its use with a view to improving waste and recycling management by local government. The focus is on practice in local governments situated in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Prior studies suggest the need for environmental management accounting as a supporting tool for waste management.

An exploratory case study method was applied in 12 NSW local government organisations. In each local government interviews were conducted with managers responsible for waste and recycling issues.

Contrary to prior research this study found that, in the local governments investigated, an increasing amount of environmental management accounting information is being made available. The case studies found two main motivations encouraging the development of environmental management accounting in local government: first, social structural influences, such as regulatory pressures from different environmental regulatory bodies, environmental expectations from local communities, and pressures from peer councils; second, organisational contextual influences reflecting situational needs in the organisational contexts, such as complex waste operations and service designs, changes and uncertainties in waste and recycling management, and the council's strategic position for waste management.

The results imply that institutional theory and contingency theory provide different but complementary explanations for the development of environmental management accounting in waste management. Although previous environmental studies are overwhelmingly in favour of social system‐based theories, such as institutional theory, to explain environmental changes in organisations, an organisation's contextual dynamics seem to be equally important.

The findings about motivations provide useful information for environmental strategists and government regulators to make policies that improve accountability and the efficiency of waste and recycling management as well as promote future development of environmental management accounting to support sustainable waste management solutions.