در کنار توسعه حسابداری مدیریت زیست محیطی (EMA) در دهه گذشته، انواع حسابداری مدیریت و ابزار کنترلی طراحی و اجرا شده اند تا موجب بهبود اندازه گیری و مدیریت عملکرد سازمانی محیط زیست و اطلاعات شوند . در حالی که اهمیت EMA در پایداری شرکت ها به طور فزاینده ای مورد تایید قرار گرفته است،ادبیات موجود، توجه کمتری به ارزیابی و درک کاربرد EMA و اثربخشی آن در کیفیت مدیریت انتشار کربن و افشای آن داشته است. با استفاده از داده های جمع آوری شده از ۱۱۴ شرکت بزرگ در ایالات متحده، آلمان، استرالیا و ژاپن، ما دریافتیم که بسیاری از شرکت ها برخی از ابزارهای EMA را اعمال کرده اند، با این حال تنها تعداد کمی از آنها از تمامی ابزارهای EMA استفاده کرده اند . تجزیه و تحلیل تجربی نشان می دهد که کاربرد EMA تاثیر قابل توجهی در مدیریت هر چه بیشتر کربن و کیفیت افشای شرکت دارد. تجزیه و تحلیل های بیشتر مشخص کرد که ابزارهای حسابرسی و معیار سنجی و همچنین ابزارهای کنترل، اثرات قابل توجهی در مدیریت و افشای کربن دارند، در حالیکه برای ابزار اندازه گیری اثرات قابل ملاحظه ای مشاهده نشد. بر اساس نتایج، مفاهیم برای مدیریت آموزشی و تمرین کنندگان توسعه یافته است، که می تواند به مدیران کمک کند تا انتخاب های آگاهانه تری را برای استفاده از ابزارهای EMA به کار گیرند.

کلیدواژگان: حسابداری مدیریت محیط زیست، حسابداری محیطی، افشای کربن، مدیریت کربن، مدیریت پایدار

Abstract

Along with the development of environmental management accounting (EMA) in the past decade, a variety of management accounting and control tools have been designed and implemented to improve the measurement and management of corporate environmental performance and information. While the importance of EMA to corporate sustainability has been increasingly acknowledged, extant literature has drawn little attention on assessing and understanding EMA application and its effectiveness on the quality of carbon emission management and disclosure. Using data gathered of 114 large firms in the US, Germany, Australia and Japan, we find that many firms have applied some EMA tools, yet only a few have applied the full range of EMA tools. The empirical analysis reveals that EMA application has a significantly positive impact on both corporate carbon management and disclosure quality. Further analysis specifies that audit and benchmarking tools as well as control tools have significant effects on carbon management and disclosure, while for measurement tools no significant effects could be observed. Based on the results, implications are developed for management education and practitioners, which can help managers to make better informed choices for the application of EMA tools.

Keywords : Environmental management accounting ,Environmental accounting ,Carbon disclosure ,Carbon management, Sustainability management

۱. Introduction

The annual Earth Overshoot Day marks the day on which human induced pollution exceeds the carrying capacity the earth provides for a given year. Constantly, this day is reached far before the end of the year and the overshoot increases each year (Posthuma et al., 2014; Worland, 2015). Carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions are one of the main drivers of this overshoot and large corporations are the main emitters of greenhouse gases, both historically, but also at present (CDP, 2013; Heede et al., 2014).

To measure environmental impacts including carbon emissions, environmental management accounting (EMA) has received growing attention for the past decades (e.g., Christ and Burritt, 2013; Ferreira et al., 2010; Gibson and Martin, 2004; Passetti et al., 2014; Schaltegger and Burritt, 2000) and a variety of EMA tools such as material flow cost accounting (Christ and Burritt, 2015; Strobel and Redmann, 2002), eco-control (Henri and Journeault, 2010) and the sustainability balanced scorecard (Hansen and Schaltegger, 2016), have been designed and increasingly implemented to reduce the environmental impacts of companies. While the focus of previous environmental and social accounting and reporting research is predominantly on environmental disclosure (Parker, 2005; Schaltegger et al., 2013), EMA has been increasingly used and investigated as a company-internal approach to support the quality of environmental management in corporate practice (Adams, 2002; Burritt et al., 2002). It has been acknowledged that EMA can play a significant role in spurring operational as well as organisational change towards reducing corporate environmental impacts (Bennett et al., 2003; Ferreira et al., 2010; Masanet-Llodra, 2006).

More recently, the usefulness of EMA has been explored and discussed in the context of corporate carbon management and accounting (Ascui, 2014; Burritt et al., 2011; Schaltegger and Csutora, 2012; Stechemesser and Günther, 2012). Governments around the world have attempted to drive corporate responses to climate change through the introduction of emission trading schemes and/or taxes, abatement and disclosure regulation that aim to reduce carbon emissions. Under the current European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), carbon pricing or other related carbon reduction mechanisms, it has become increasingly important for corporations to account for carbon emissions (Bell, 2017; Bowen and Wittneben, 2011; Engels, 2009; King, 2014; Qian and Schaltegger, 2017). The expectation that a first step towards reducing corporate carbon emissions is to improve transparency and disclosure of such emissions, has led to the establishment of initiatives such as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The CDP collects and publishes (voluntary) disclosure of the greenhouse gas emissions of the world’s largest corporations.