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Accountants’ involvement in environmental and sustainability management has merely been investigated to date. With the continuous take-up of sustainability issues by companies and with the growing experience companies gain in dealing with this topic, this chapter raises the question whether accountants are involved in a way different than previously reported and if yes, what their role is in social accounting practice.

Based on 58 interviews with corporate practitioners, this chapter firstly explores the roles involved in the social accounting practice in companies which are considered to be leading in sustainability reporting in the United Kingdom and Germany. Secondly, the role of professional accountants is analysed from a power theory perspective.

The main findings suggest that professional accountants are partially involved in social accounting practice but mainly exert a gatekeeping role between sustainability managers and higher management.

Investigating the observed behaviour empirically can help improve social accounting. Should it turn out that the accountants have no other option but to act like gatekeepers, accounting education will play a major role in overcoming this deficiency in the pursuit of improved sustainability knowledge and performance. If, on the other hand, it is the defensive stance of accounting professionals and the fear of losing power in corporate structures which motivates them to act as gatekeepers, mechanisms to motivate them to cooperate should be researched.

The chapter empirically investigates and discusses the accountant’s contribution to sustainability information management. This can help overcome organisational challenges impeding companies to successfully implement sustainability measures.

Donna L. Van Raaphorst provides a detailed statistical analysis of a large sample of Alcatraz Prison inmates using the Social Science Statistical Package. The data, drawn directly from the inmate files, is compared whenever possible with similar data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in order to determine if Alcatraz, often regarded as America's Devil's Island, really incarcerated the so-called “Worst of the Worst” in its time. The results would seem to indicate that Alcatraz inmates were, in fact, not remarkably different from those in any other Federal prison in the system.

This chapter explores the potential economic advantages and disadvantages of reusable plastic containers (RPCs) in the transport of fresh produce from growers to retail stores. The empirical research linking packaging to quantifiable economic and social benefits is reviewed. This study answers the question – what are the economic and social impacts of increased standardization of bulk packaging in the North American fresh produce supply chains? Implications for the potential use of RPCs and its impact on sustainability are explored.

The chapter describes data from grocery retailers who have implemented both one-way and reusable plastic containers for fresh produce distribution. A Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TD-ABC) analysis was conducted to capture and evaluate process times and product damage associated with the typical deployment of bulk containers in the grocery retailers’ distribution centers (DC), retail stores, and asset recovery centers of the supply chain. Economic measures were implemented and together with the social dimensions provided insights about sustainability-based implications.

Fresh produce shipments using the RPC technology had significantly less waste and damage representing potential social and economic benefits. The empirical findings included results about the economic impact of RPCs on the sustainability level of a typical supply chain for fresh food products.

The quantification of the economic and potential social sustainability for the explored packaging types constitutes an important contribution. Much of the previous research did not contain comprehensive assessments. The impact of technological change – the introduction and use of RPC in packaging – is examined. In addition, the supply chain scope for this research included most of the major activities that involve the packaging of fresh produce commodities in its practical dynamics.

This chapter reviews empirical studies into the relationship between management control, strategy and sustainability.

The review explores the theoretical frameworks and models used in previous empirical research as well as the research questions and methods applied to empirically explore this emerging research area.

Even if a growing body of empirical research has emerged over the last decade, our knowledge of how companies design or use management control to support sustainability strategy appears to be limited, providing considerable scope for further research.

This review structures the state of our empirical knowledge in the area of management control, strategy and sustainability and makes suggestions for future research paths.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the use of the ad hoc methodology of causal mapping to support the process of quantifying the financial returns related to sustainability investments. The present study uses two methods to build causal maps, that is aggregate and congregate mapping, in order to capture managerial cognition and derive a model that reflects companies’ competitive advantages. The resulting causal map is a prerequisite and serves as a building block for the design of the organisation’s performance management systems for sustainability.

This study relies on qualitative, deductive research undertaken at the leading international pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. This chapter presents the results of a longitudinal study developed through an action research approach conducted at the Company over a four-year period.

This study illustrates how the described approach for developing causal maps can facilitate the elicitation of managerial tacit knowledge and the consequent identification of indicators to quantify the investments in sustainability.

This chapter proves the relevance of causal mapping as a comprehensive, articulated basis for developing and improving organisations’ strategic performance measurement systems (SPMSs).

This study’s main contribution is the triangulation of multiple qualitative methods to enhance the reliability of causal maps. This innovative approach supports the use of causal mapping to extract managerial tacit knowledge in order to identify indicators for the evaluation of investments in sustainability.

Purpose: The aim of the study is to consider the use of the Internet as a potential facilitator of positive health-related perceptions. Specifically, we propose that online health information seeking fosters positive perceptions of health. Using path modeling, we theorized several mechanisms through which information seeking could be conducive to positive health perceptions, which we conceptualized into the following four dimensions: (1) sense of empowerment in managing health, (2) self-reported ability to take better care of health, (3) sense of improved health-related quality of life, and (4) self-reported improvement of health.

Methodology: Our sample consisted of respondents who have used the Internet as a resource for health information (n = 710), drawn from the largest national probability-based online research panel. Our comparison subsample consisted of older respondents (age ≥ 60; n = 194). We used Internet-specific measures and employed structural equation models (SEM) to estimate the direct, indirect, and total effects of health-related use of the Internet on subjective health perceptions. Based on our review of the literature, competent health communication with healthcare providers and sense of empowerment in managing personal health were modeled as mediator variables. We assessed whether the proposed mediational relationships, if significant, differed across our indicators of positive health perceptions and whether any differential associations were observed among older adults. We run parallel models for each indicator of positive health perception.

Findings: Provider-patient communication informed by the Internet resources were perceived to impart a greater sense of empowerment to manage health among our respondents, which in turn, was associated with perceived contributions to better self-reported ability to provide self-care, increased health-related quality of life, and improvement in self-reported health. The SEM results revealed a good fit with our full sample and subsample.

Research Implications: Conceptualization of the multidimensional aspects of online health information seeking with separate multi-indicator analyses of the outcome variable is important to further our understanding of how technology may impact the pathways involved in influencing health perceptions and as a result health outcomes.

Although companies are increasingly embracing the sustainability discourse in their external reporting and disclosures, little is known about how management control systems support sustainability within organizations. This is unfortunate, given the important role that properly designed Sustainability Control Systems (SCS) may play in helping firms to better face their social and environmental responsibilities. Starting from these premises, the aim of this essay is twofold. On the one hand, we present a review of the emerging stream of research on sustainability and management control mechanisms, in order to identify and discuss the link between the two. On the other hand, we try to illustrate the main unaddressed issues in this literature as a premise to exploring one possible way to advance research in this area. Specifically, we make a call for a more holistic approach to the study of SCS, which considers also their organizational and cultural dimensions in addition to their technical properties. A framework for informing future work on the topic is proposed, based on the concept of ‘control package’ (Malmi & Brown, 2008; Sandelin, 2008) complemented with notions from the complementarity-based approach developed in organizational economics (Grandori & Furnari, 2008; Milgrom & Roberts, 1995). By enhancing our understanding on how SCS operate as a package, the application of our framework should allow researchers to develop better theory of how to design a range of controls to support organizational sustainability objectives, control sustainability activities, and drive sustainability performance.

This chapter provides an overview of the current status of renewable energy projects and identifies the key success factors of well-performing public–private partnerships (PPPs). To this end, this study analyses around 1,700 renewable projects on the World Bank’s Private Participation in Renewable Energy (PPRE) database. We then follow an inductive approach for a case review and examine a 5-MW rooftop solar PPP in Gujarat, India, that had been implemented in 2012. In spite of the rapid growth of renewable PPPs, regional disparity is distinct and most PPPs have been undertaken in Latin America and the Caribbean or a few selective countries such as China or South Africa. The case study informs that the successful PPPs may be attributed to such factors as policy coordination in multi-governance systems to attract project investments, the handling of land constraints in a project planning stage, and Green Incentive given to project participants. It offers a valuable insight into the significance of well-designed PPPs for enhanced energy access in developing countries, while accelerating the global transition to renewable-based energy supply to promote sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an institutional entrepreneurship approach to examining management accounting change triggered by social and environmental concerns.

The study begins with a literature review concerning the role that old institutional economics and new institutional sociology have played in the study of management accounting change, underlining strengths and weaknesses. To deal with the main weaknesses, the institutional entrepreneurship approach is presented and utilized as the basis for the development of a conceptual framework, which is contextualized to the examination of management accounting change triggered by sustainability issues.

Management accounting change literature has not paid enough attention to the social constructivist roots of institutional theory. Through the application of a conceptual framework inspired by institutional change models and institutional entrepreneurship literature, this paper proposes another approach to examine how new management accounting practices are socially constructed during the course of organizational change, particularly in response to sustainability concerns.

This new framework has not yet demonstrated its explanatory power in a particular field.

The paper examines management accounting change as a social construction process led by institutional entrepreneurs who aim to mobilize resources and negotiate the definition and implementation of sustainability strategies and new management accounting practices, which will take environmental and social issues into consideration, in order to reach an agreement on the pre‐institutionalization, diffusion and institutionalization of sustainable practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how collective identity and institutional logic affect the design and use of an environmental performance measurement system.

The authors use a qualitative case study with abductive theorizing and empirical data obtained through semi-structured interviews, observation and document analysis.

The new environmental measures were reshaped by aligning them with the existing and dominant collective identity in the case organization – in other words, cost savings and profitability. Moreover, the institutional logic forced the environmental measures to remain as non-strategic and non-bonus criteria in favour of traditional financial measures.

Thornton and Ocasio’s (2008) institutional logic is applied and its potential for analyzing change in environmental accounting is shown. The paper illustrates how collective identity and institutional logic are important mechanisms reshaping environmental performance measurement design and use, when the existing collective identity is reproduced.