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The paper complements the research framework proposed by Kim and Matsumura (2017) through a broad survey of the management accounting research in sustainability.

The paper reviews recent management accounting research in the area of corporate responsibility/sustainability; focusing on articles published in seven widely recognized accounting journals and the Journal of Business Ethics.

Our survey of the recent literature indicates: (1) a major focus has been on integration of sustainability in management control systems; (2) the primary research methods used are case studies and surveys, with few large sample, archival studies (primarily on compensation); and (3) a significant amount of literature has been published outside of the traditional accounting literature.

The paper complements existing literature reviews in the area by focusing on the set of most widely recognized journals. By focusing on these journals, we highlight opportunities for future research that are likely to reach a broader accounting readership.

Though environmental management accounting (EMA) is a globally recognized accounting practice, its application and development within several developing economies remain stunted. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the extent to which EMA practices have been implemented by local manufacturing companies in Nairobi, Kenya.

We measure the degree to which EMA methods have been adopted by manufacturing entities and hypothesize that firm size, financial performance, and regulation are positively associated to the extent to which EMA techniques are applied by Kenyan corporations. The chapter employs a mixed methods research approach and combines the use of surveys with semi-structured interviews to gain insights into drivers of EMA and the extent to which these methods are applied locally.

We find environmental regulation and financial performance are positively associated with the level of EMA practices applied by manufacturing entities.

The findings illustrate the complexities of applying EMA practices within an emerging context and provide evidence that EMA practices are still predominantly used by entities to meet local regulatory requirements. The qualitative findings indicate there could be some companies who engage with EMA at a more sophisticated level.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework which sheds new light on how sustainability control systems (SCS) can be used in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Corporate sustainability pressures are identified using insights from institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm.

Findings – The paper presents an integrated framework showing the corporate sustainability pressures, proactive strategic responses to these pressures, and how organizations might use SCS in their responses to the corporate sustainability pressures they face.

Practical Implications – The proposed framework shows how organizations can use SCS in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Originality/Value – The paper suggests that instead of using traditional financial-oriented management control systems, organizations need more focus on emerging SCS as a means of achieving sustainability objectives. In particular, the paper proposes different SCS tools that can be used in proactive strategic responses to sustainability pressures in terms of (i) specifying and communicating sustainability objectives, (ii) monitoring sustainability performance, and (iii) providing motivation by linking sustainability rewards to performance.

Organizations’ increasing concern for environment shows the interest in appropriate mechanisms that account for relevant flows of environment-related information. Today managers and researchers are promoting environmental management accounting (EMA) systems mechanisms as a means to incorporate the full spectrum of ecological data into day-to-day business decisions and foster green management execution. However implementation remains a challenge and many of the difficulties are associated with conceptual and practical problems in integrating ‘green’ information and providing guidance on effective implementation. In this context academics might investigate on further explanations on how to achieve excellence in both environmental and financial performance. Hence this chapter substantiates the need for more theoretical and empirical studies on EMA practices and proposes avenues for future research.

We review the growing body of EMA research to inform the reader of what has been studied to date and indicate the necessity for further investigation. In addition, we suggest areas for future research.

Our synthesis highlights the relevant aspects of EMA examined in prior studies. The review reveals unexplored facets that need to be investigated to complement existing knowledge. In particular researchers might explore the concept of environmental performance and the application of different forms of EMA within organizations. Moreover academics have the opportunity to further examine the role of EMA mechanisms in companies that do not pursue environmental results for economic benefits.

The chapter sheds some light on EMA literature and emphasizes the opportunities that new theoretical developments and appropriate research designs offer in the investigation of the remaining gaps in the literature.

The research debate on the direct relationship between environmental strategy and environmental management accounting (EMA) is quite popular; however, integration challenges between these two factors still persist at the firm level. This paper seeks to adopt the contingency theory perspective to examine how EMA implementation varies across organizations with different intensity levels of environmental management strategy implementation (i.e. environmental management maturity, EMM).

The paper uses a web-based survey, designed and administered to public listed companies and members of three industry chambers in Sri Lanka.

This study finds that EMA implementation is significantly different among organizations at varying EMM stages. Further, it is observed that organizations at higher stages of EMM use significantly greater domain-based EMA tools and EMA for functional purposes. Therefore, the results show that when organizations progress from reactive to proactive environmental strategies, the EMA evolves to encapsulate and diversify to deal with more-sophisticated environmental management activities.

This is the first study to provide cross-sectional evidence on the relationship between the application of EMA tools and functional uses and the intensity of the environmental strategy pursuance (or EMM). It also proposes a multi-item comprehensive measurement tool for EMA implementation.

The purpose of this study is to attempt to gain an understanding of the root causes of barriers to the development of environmental management accounting in organizations.

The study employs semi‐structured interviews with key informants accompanied by site observations. Key informants include chief operating officers, environmental managers and accounting directors of three pulp and paper companies in Thailand.

The study identifies the root causes of the barriers: lack of building organizational learning, a narrow focus on economic performance and absence of guidance on environmental management accounting.

As an exploratory case study, findings cannot necessarily be extrapolated to broader populations. To improve the generalization of the findings, future research should broaden the sample. It would also be beneficial to pursue comparative research between industries, countries and regions.

Developing environmental management accounting requires increasing “green” knowledge and generating a wider conception of corporate responsibility throughout an organization. In addition, government agencies have to play a significant role in promoting environmental management accounting.

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the influence of organizational learning mechanisms and the role of governments in developing environmental management accounting.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical success factors of environmental management accounting practices in Malaysian manufacturing industry.

A pilot study was carried out on a sample of 60 manufacturing companies from Malaysian manufacturing industry. A survey instrument including 25 measurement items was designed to identify the level of environmental management accounting practices implementation in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. Descriptive statistical analysis and reliability analysis were used to analyze the data with SPSS software.

Findings indicate that environmental safety is one of the critical success factors that play the key role in ensuring the safety awareness at workplace. Companies in the manufacturing industries need to obtain critical success factors of environmental management accounting practices implementation to enhance performance, particularly for Malaysian manufacturing industry.

The limitation of this study has been the difficult to find the literature on environmental management accounting practices in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. Another limitation is this study only conducted to 60 manufacturing companies from Malaysian manufacturing industry.

For practical implications, the development of instruments in this study may be valuable tools to evaluate Environmental Management Accounting Practices (EMAP) in Malaysian manufacturing industry. This study also provides important guidelines for Malaysian manufacturing industry to implement EMAP. This research finding would provide new insights for the critical success factors of EMAP to improve performance in Malaysian manufacturing industry.

This study makes a new contribution to environmental management accounting practices in Malaysian manufacturing industry. This study also provides important information for decision makers involved in environmental management accounting practices implementation and also provides useful reference for future researchers in this research area.

Carbon management accounting (CMA) is one part of sustainability accounting designed to provide information for the management of carbon dioxide (CO₂) releases. Adopting the contingency framework, this paper aims to examine the contextual antecedents that influence CMA adoption in Ghanaian firms.

The paper tests seven contextual dimensions, namely, strategy, structure, size, environmental management system (EMS), decentralization, technology and perceived environmental uncertainty, on CMA adoption from a survey of 125 accountants.

Consistent with prior literature, organizational strategy, structure, environmental management accounting (EMA), firm size, technology and perceived environmental uncertainty were found to be positively associated with CMA adoption and hence support contingency theory. However, a relationship between decentralization and EMA adoption was not supported by the sample data. Also, the existence of CMA systems was found to be low in the sample firms, although more than half of the respondents have EMS.

The study is limited to Ghana hence possible generalization of the results is limited. Further exploration of contingency-based research in other emerging economies would provide valuable insights on CMA adoption and practices to contribute to the CMA literature.

The findings suggest that although CMA adoption and practices is low in the sampled firms, both contextual and environmental factors play a vital role in the adoption of CMA in developing economies, as it pertains to the generic management accounting systems. Policies governing CMA practice should incorporate organizational contextual factors.

The paper presents preliminary empirical evidence on the state of adoption and practice of CMA from an emerging economy perspective, an area which lacks empirical investigation both in the EMA and the carbon accounting domain. It draws considerable novelty on the basis that despite the growing interest in climate change-based research empirical works on CO₂ emissions conducted exclusively from management accounting perspective, and in developing economies in particular, have been scant. The paper extends the contingency theory framework from conventional practices to the EMA field.

The purpose of this study is to assess the students' perception about the importance of incorporating environmental reporting practices, standards, and other issues in Management Accounting course.

Environmental issues provide a unique, timely, and important focus for developing a course in Indian management pedagogy, which shall help in demonstrating the usefulness of environmental accounting information in supporting corporate environmental strategies while assessing environmental performance. Assessment measurements that may capture the impact of reformed academic programs are necessary to judge the success and failure of management education reforms. This paper carries out such an assessment process by offering a course on environmental accounting as an intervention, to a sample of 28 management students enrolled in a higher educational institution in India imparting management education. A questionnaire is administered to these students before and after the intervention in order to understand the difference of their perception level.

The results suggests a significant difference in the perception level of students about the utility of incorporating environmental reporting practices in Management Accounting course before and after the administration of the reformed program.

The paper is unique in its attempt to understand the Indian management students' perception of knowledge and usefulness with environmental accounting in their regular course, from which a more detailed evaluation can be derived. Further work based on this preliminary finding may be used to develop a proposed environmental accounting course framework for management students in India.

The paper aims to explore the role of management accounting practices as facilitators of the environmental management.

A qualitative study involving semi‐structured interviews with environmental and accounting managers from six Spanish factories has been carried out to analyse how four management accounting practices commonly used at operational level – investment appraisals, costing systems, budgets and performance measures – may reinforce the environmental management and guarantee the maintenance of an environmental management system according to the European Community's Eco‐Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS).

The analysis suggests that management accounting practices operate as a facilitator mechanism for the environmental management by reinforcing the four EMAS significant elements: commitment to the continual improvement of the environmental performance; compliance with environmental legislation; communication with interested parties; and employee involvement. However, evidence seems to support business case arguments since accounting serves a double function: as a facilitator for the environmental management, and as a barrier for a further accountability‐based environmental management.

The study has been developed at plan level, but the influence of the top management might be analysed as well in order to explore how these management accounting practices are translated into upper organisational level.

The analysis helps to understand the complex nature of the business case as different nuances are identified when considering the different practices.

The paper shows how linked to business case arguments, small arena for internal and for external accountability are emerging.