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Within the accounting discipline and its literature, attention to the role of social and non-profit organizations has been growing, particularly with respect to issues of accountability and social accounting. In response, the aim of this introductory article is to present the background for the book by highlighting (i) the relevance and rise of the non-profit sector worldwide, (ii) the limitations of the conventional accounting framework when applied/transposed to NPOs and (iii) the ‘social accounting project’ for NPOs. The article presents analysis and critique based on a literature review of the accountability framework for NPOs. After presenting key worldwide statistics regarding the growing non-profit sector, the article points out the skepticism regarding the adoption of traditional accounting principles and frameworks for NPOs. The article offers both an examination of how to improve the accounting system for NPOs and a discussion of the benefits emerging from the social and environmental accounting and reporting models. ‘The social accounting project’ for NPOs is presented as a pathway towards these innovative practices increasing organizational transparency. This article and the book overall provide new contributions to the research literature, fostering synergies among financial accounting and social accounting scholars engaging with the NPO subject area. Moreover it brings together studies from a range of disciplines, such as financial accounting, social accounting, economics, management, and third-sector studies. This cross-disciplinary approach offers a major contribution to our developing knowledge in this field.

Purpose – During the past decade in Malaysia, there has been a rise in the number of companies engaging in a rudimentary form of social and environmental reporting, and this has coincided with high-profile media coverage of environmental disasters in the country. The purpose of this article is to explore the perceptions of accounting practitioners in Malaysia to social and environmental accounting (SEA).

Methodology/approach – The study utilises a mixed-method approach and involves 245 survey questionnaire respondents, 7 in-depth interviews and the qualitative data from 123 of the survey respondents.

Findings – The level of knowledge and awareness of accounting practitioners in Malaysia of SEA is low. They are sceptical about quantification and valuation issues, but are able to see that reform, which would have to be driven by legislation, and could improve business performance regarding social justice and environmental quality.

Research limitations/implications – This study enables the development of SEA and reporting framework as a vehicle for further discussions on business communication and the participants’ perceptions relating to social and environmental accountability in Malaysia. It postulates the strong likelihood that SEA will take root in Malaysia given the strong undercurrents of accounting and business malpractices and the clarion call by many for the reinstatement of the ethical dimension of the profession.

Originality/value of the article – While most research on SEA and reporting in the context of Malaysia focuses on the disclosure aspects, this article explores the perceptions of accounting practitioners and establishes their insights on the issue of social and environmental accountability and reporting.

Social and environmental accounting research manifests varying levels of awareness of critical global problems and the need to develop alternative approaches to dealing with economy and society. This paper explores Buddhist thought and, specifically, Buddhist economics as a means to informing this debate. We draw on and expand Schumacher's ideas about ‘Buddhist economics’, first articulated in the 1960s. Our analysis centres on Buddhism's Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path and associated Buddhist teachings. The examination includes assumptions, means and ends of Buddhist approaches to economics; these are compared and contrasted with conventional economics.To consider how thought and practice may be bridged, we examine a practical application of Buddhism's Middle Way, in the form of Thailand's current work with ‘Sufficiency Economy’.Throughout the paper, we explore the implications for the development of social accounting, looking for mutual interactions between Buddhism and social accounting thought and practice.

Accounting’s definition of accountability should include attributes of socioenvironmental degradation manufactured by unsustainable technologies. Beck argues that emergent accounts should reflect the following primary characteristics of technological degradation: complexity, uncertainty, and diffused responsibility. Financial stewardship accounts and probabilistic assessments of risk, which are traditionally employed to allay the public’s fear of uncontrollable technological hazards, cannot reflect these characteristics because they are constructed to perpetuate the status quo by fabricating certainty and security. The process through which safety thresholds are constructed and contested represents the ultimate form of socialized accountability because these thresholds shape how much risk people consent to be exposed to. Beck’s socialized total accountability is suggested as a way forward: It has two dimensions, extended spatiotemporal responsibility and the psychology of decision-making. These dimensions are teased out from the following constructs of Beck’s Risk Society thesis: manufactured risks and hazards, organized irresponsibility, politics of risk, radical individualization and social learning. These dimensions are then used to critically evaluate the capacity of full cost accounting (FCA), and two emergent socialized risk accounts, to integrate the multiple attributes of sustainability. This critique should inform the journey of constructing more representative accounts of technological degradation.

This article aims to contribute to the accounting knowledge literature by presenting the framework of shadow accounting functions (SAF) and investigating the effect of stakeholders’ pressure anomie (SPA) on it.

This study adopted a mixed, both inductive and deductive approach to develop an integrated framework, validate its practicability and verify its effectiveness in selected manufacturing firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. In developing the framework and implementation procedure, the study employed an exploratory data collection (qualitative) approach to review the phenomenon of shadow accounting functions. Then, in the second phase, this study tested the research hypothesis through a partial least squares process. The population of the study is made up of all financial managers and heads of the accounting departments of capital market companies in Iran. Presently, there are 185 companies (TSE). From this, a sample of 100 companies was selected, which are all on the Tehran Stock Exchange.

Based on the mixed method of this study, the result in the qualitative part provides the shadow accounting framework of the existence of three categories; there are six components and 37 themes during 12 interviews. In the quantitative section, it was also determined that social pressure anomie has a positive and significant effect on shadow accounting functions.

So far, it is rare to find preceding studies that proposed, validated and practically tested an integrated shadow accounting framework within the context of manufacturing industries. Thus, the authors understand that this is the very first research focused on the development of the framework for manufacturing industries to be competitive and could help managers, institutions, practitioners and academicians in the perception of social values expected by stakeholders.

The objective of this paper is to synthesize and extend the existing understanding of social health accounting (SHA) literature within the perspectives of social health disclosures (SHAD) and the effect of social health problems on public and private sector accounting.

This study provides a comprehensive and up-to-date systematic literature review (SLR) of past studies on social health within the accounting literature. This is done by employing a three-step SLR research design to investigate a sample of papers, made up of 62 mixed, qualitative and quantitative studies conducted in over 23 countries, drawn predominantly from the extant accounting literature from 2013 to 2023 and published in 25 peer-reviewed journals.

Our SLR offers several findings. First, we find that existing SHA studies apply theories in SHAD studies, but hardly apply them to explain the impact of health problems on business outcomes. Second, we show that the extant studies have focused predominantly on rigorous empirical studies on SHAD, while this is scarce for studies examining the impact of diseases/health problems on both public and private sector accounting. Third, we identify several research design weaknesses, including a lack of primary data analysis, mixed-methods approach and rigorous qualitative studies. Finally, we present directions for future SHA research.

In contrast to the ever-increasing general social and environmental accounting (SEA) research, existing studies examining global health issues and challenges (e.g. diseases, epidemics and pandemics), especially from an accounting perspective are rare. Nonetheless, the past decade has witnessed a steady increase in research on corporate accounting for, and reporting of, health issues; although the emerging literature remains fragmented thereby impeding the generation of useful empirical and theoretical insights for policymakers, practitioners and researchers. Consequently, this paper offers extensive and timely SLR of the existing studies on SHA; critically reviewing past findings published in a wide range of peer-reviewed international journals that discuss the current state of global SHA research, their weaknesses and set future research agenda.

This study aims to structure a model for integrating social value into strategic management based on identifying the critical success factors (CSF) for such integration in the investigated companies.

This research was based on the actor–network theory. Through a rigorous approach to the case study methodology in a two-stage process lasting 21 months, we carried out this study.

Companies that use the polyhedral social accounting model in their strategic management processes do so without a reference model. We identified CSF for integrating social value, which was incorporated into a protocol model based on stakeholder theory and the use of social accounting.

Practitioners can use the proposed model to maintain the alignment of strategic performance and purpose. Using social accounting based on indicators and financial proxies allows managers to incorporate social value into strategic management in terms of financial value.

The institutional demand for social information is based on the growing sensitivity of companies. Aligning social values with business strategies contributes to social sustainability.

This study focuses on an unresearched emerging phenomenon. Since the first approach to stakeholder theory, the development of a stakeholder-oriented strategy has faced the lack of a stakeholder accounting system. The polyhedral model of social accounting could help overcome this problem as it provides information that allows a novel and innovative method to make a stakeholder-oriented strategy effective.

We develop a conceptual framework as a basis for thinking about the impact of extractive industries and emancipatory potential of alternative accounts. We then review selected alternative accounts literature on some contemporary issues surrounding the extractive industries and identify opportunities for accounting, auditing, and accountability research. We also provide an overview of the other contributions in this special issue.

Drawing on alternative accounts from the popular and social media as well as the alternative accounting literature, this primarily discursive paper provides a contemporary literature review of identified issues within the extractive industries highlighting potential areas for future research. The eight papers that make up the special issue are located within a conceptual framework is employed to illustrate each paper’s contribution to the field.

While accounting has a rich literature covering some of the issues detailed in this paper, this has not necessarily translated to the extractive industries. Few studies in accounting have got “down and dirty” so to speak and engaged directly with those impacted by companies operating in the extractive industries. Those that have, have focused on specific areas such as the Niger Delta. Although prior studies in the social governance literature have tended to focus on disclosure issues, it is questionable whether this work, while informative, has resulted in any meaningful environmental, social or governance (ESG) changes on the part of the extractive industries.

The extensive extractive industries literature both from within and outside the accounting discipline makes a comprehensive review impractical. Drawing on both the accounting literature and other disciplines, this paper identifies areas that warrant further investigation through alternative accounts.

This paper and other contributions to this special issue provide a basis and an agenda for accounting scholars seeking to undertake interdisciplinary research into the extractive industries.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the drawbacks of current social and environmental accounting methods and to present a classification for developing a new accounting model.

The various social and environmental accounting methods are classified and discussed on the basis of various criteria such as the types of accounting principles and the content and information units utilized.

Current social and environmental accounting methods utilize different criteria, measurement units and principles, a fact that makes the information provided ambiguous and problematic for a reliable business‐society dialogue under a common and understandable context. A new classification is presented based on specific criteria in the prospect of developing a new accounting model.

The proposed new classification aiming to develop a new accounting model is a theoretical proposition which should be validated and tested in practice with a series of case studies before it can be recommended as an alternative to current accounting methods.

The paper attempts to highlight the drawbacks of the current social and environmental accounting methods and proposes a new classification for the development of a new accounting model.

In responding to prior critiques, the paper seeks to re‐examine social accounting as a problem focused, multi‐disciplinary field and explores some of the possible directions the emerging field might take.

The approach taken is a discursive, polemical essay.

The very nature of social accounting as a problem‐based field seems to encourage – even require – that scholars approach the subject with a diversity of disciplinary methodological framings. In this regard, it may be apposite to view the field as an emerging, new trans‐disciplinary field.

As an essay, the paper seeks to stimulate thought and debate but it is ultimately speculative and personal.

The paper continues the reflections upon the nature of social accounting (in the widest sense of the term) and offers some of the ways in which the new journal Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, may articulate its purpose. The paper would not presume to usurp the duty of either the community or posterity to determine whether or not this piece has either originality or value.