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Environmental education at post‐secondary levels throughout the world has come to be predicated on, at least in part, the greening of campuses where the courses are taught. Green practices provide legitimacy to environmental education programmes. A number of resources are available to assist staff and students in getting sustainability initiatives off the ground. One in particular holds special promise, from the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). Although directed largely towards the business community, the ISO 14000 series of environmental standards may be very useful to campuses when initiating an environmental review, or contemplating the adoption of an Environmental Management Systems (EMS). The standards provide methodological assistance to organisations, including academic institutions, which seek to establish a workable EMS. Use of the ISO standards has the added benefit of bringing the business world into the campus classroom, which may provide a useful counterpoint for environmental education. A case study is included which describes the experience of a New Zealand tertiary college using ISO 14001 in its first environmental review.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

This chapter gives in “Introduction to the Human Capital Issue” a critical analysis of the standard (economic) Human Capital (HC) theory, with the help of some “traditional” (founding) accounting concepts. From this study, to avoid the accounting and social issues highlighted in “Introduction to the Human Capital Issue,” we present, in “The “Triple Depreciation Line” Model and the Human Capital,” the “Triple Depreciation Line” (TDL) accounting model, developed by Rambaud & Richard (2015b), and we apply it to “HC,” but viewed as genuine accounting capital – a matter of concern – that firms have to protect and maintain.

From a critical review of literature on HC theory, from the origin of this concept to its connection with sustainable development, this chapter provides a conceptual discussion on this notion and on the differences/common points between capital and assets in accounting and economics. Then, it uses a normative accounting model (TDL), initially introduced to extend, in a consistent way, financial accounting to extra-financial issues.

This analysis shows at first that the standard (economic) HC theory is based on a (deliberate) confusion between assets and capital, in line with a standard economic perspective on capital. Therefore, this particular viewpoint implies: an accounting issue for reporting HC, because “traditional” accounting capital and assets are clearly isolated concepts; and a societal issue, because this confusion leads to the idea that HC does not mean that human beings are “capital” (i.e., essential), or have to be maintained, even protected, for themselves. It only means that human beings are mere productive means. The application of the TDL model to an accounting redefinition of HC allows a discussion about some key issues involved in the notion of HC, including the difference between the standard and “accounting” narratives on HC. Finally, this chapter presents some important consequences of this accounting model for HC: the disappearance of the concept of wage and the possibility of reporting repeated (or continuous) use of HC directly in the balance sheet.

This chapter contributes to the literature on HC and in general on capital and assets, by stressing in particular some confusions and misunderstandings in these concepts. It fosters a cross-disciplinary approach of these issues, through economic, accounting, and sustainability viewpoints. This analysis also participates in the development of the TDL model and the research project associated. It finally proposes another perspective, more sustainable, on HC and HC reporting.

The stakes of HC are important in today’s economics, accounting, and sustainable development. The different conceptualizations of HC, and the narratives behind it, may have deep social and corporate implications. In this context, this analysis provides a conceptual, and practicable, framework to develop a more sustainable concept of HC and to enhance working conditions, internal business relations, integrated reporting. As an outcome of these ideas, this chapter also questions the standard corporate governance models.

This chapter gives an original perspective on HC, and in general on the concept of capital, combining an economic and an accounting analysis. It also develops a new way to report HC, using an innovative integrated accounting model, the TDL model.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

This chapter investigates the nature of the transformation of macroeconomics by focusing on the impact of the Great Depression on economic doctrines. There is no doubt that the Great Depression exerted an enormous influence on economic thought, but the exact nature of its impact should be examined more carefully. In this chapter, I examine the transformation from a perspective which emphasizes the interaction between economic ideas and economic events, and the interaction between theory and policy rather than the development of economic theory. More specifically, I examine the evolution of what became known as macroeconomics after the Depression in terms of an ongoing debate among the “stabilizers” and their critics. I further suggest using four perspectives, or schools of thought, as measures to locate the evolution and transformation; the gold standard mentality, liquidationism, the Treasury view, and the real-bills doctrine. By highlighting these four economic ideas, I argue that what happened during the Great Depression was the retreat of the gold standard mentality, the complete demise of liquidationism and the Treasury view, and the strange survival of the real-bills doctrine. Each of those transformations happened not in response to internal debates in the discipline, but in response to government policies and real-world events.