No / Efforts to promote corporate social and environmental accountability (SEA) should be informed by an understanding of stakeholders' attitudes toward enhanced accountability standards. However, little is known about current attitudes on this subject, or the determinants of these attitudes. To address this issue, this study examines the relationship between personal values and support for social and environmental accountability for a sample of experienced MBA students. Exploratory factor analysis of the items comprising our measure of support for SEA revealed two distinct factors: (1) endorsement of the general proposition that corporations and executives should be held accountable for the social and environmental impacts of their actions; and (2) agreement that the government should adopt and enforce formal SEA standards. Our findings indicate that the universalism value type is positively associated with general support for SEA, but not with support for government enforcement of accountability standards. In addition, we found that gender has a significant impact on support for government enforcement of SEA standards.

There is enough freshwater on the planet to ensure clean and accessible water for every human being. Despite this fact, water scarcity is a global problem affecting the livelihoods of people everywhere. This paradox can be seen in India. The country has a vast source of water through their many rivers and lakes. Nevertheless, it battles with issues regarding water scarcity and sanitation. Groundwater and rivers are polluted to a high extent and known contaminators are both human waste and industrial effluents. In Mandideep municipality, located in Madhya Pradesh, India, industrial effluents and sewage waste is dumped into the Betwa river which is heavily polluted as a result. These premises lay the foundation for this minor field study whichlooks at women’s wellbeing and capabilities through the lens of ecofeminism and the sustainable livelihood approach. Four villages, in close proximity to the river, are subject of investigation with the aim to understand the female perception of the Betwa river and whetherthe water quality impacts women’s livelihood strategies or not. During the field study, 21 women in these villages have been interviewed. The study concludes that the women’spossibilities are directly connected to environmental wellbeing where the continued undermining of natural resources reduces their capability to obtain sustainable livelihoods. The level of interaction with the river depends on the geographic position of the villages and its proximity to industrial belt of Mandideep.

Environmental management accounting (EMA) is attracting increased recognition as a management tool that assists in improving financial and environmental performance through enhanced environmental accountability. Various industries have been included in EMA-related research and study, but universities have typically failed to be the focus of the attention. This research studied the experiences of key managers from five universities to explore potential factors influencing the decision to adopt, or not to adopt, EMA within the higher education sector. For the purpose of this study, EMA is defined as the generation, analysis, and use of monetary (or financial) and physical (or non-financial) environment-related information in order to improve organisational financial and environmental performance. The two objectives of this study were to understand current accounting practices for managing major environmental costs, and to identify factors influencing EMA adoption within universities. For the purpose of this study, the major environmental costs referred to are limited to the costs pertaining to the consumption of electricity, water and paper, and the generation of wastes. A case study methodology was followed using semi-structured interviews of key personnel with four different management functions (i.e. environmental management, management accounting, senior management, and heads of academic schools) within each university, and performing content analysis on the transcribed interview data. Specifically for achieving the second research objective, a theoretical framework that considers four theories was embraced to guide the data collection and focus the study. The four theories are contingency theory, institutional theory, legitimacy theory, and stakeholder theory. The findings of the first research objective revealed that there was a general lack of EMA utilisation within the case universities. This was in part due to a perceived lack of appreciation by key personnel of the extent of environmental costs being incurred, but arguably mainly because of the absence of relevant environmental cost information being brought to the attention of senior management. Although environmental sustainability was promoted as important from an environmental management perspective, efforts to improve internal environmental accountability, in particular from an accounting perspective, were still absent. In relation to the second research objective, it was found that five key barriers contributed to this lack of EMA utilisation within the five case universities, and they were attitudinal, financial, informational, institutional, and management barriers. Among the factors that provide further explanations about how each barrier influences EMA adoption, resistance to change, resource constraints, (a lack of) legitimacy considerations, and a lack of environmental responsibility & accountability were found to be strong factors, as they were supported in all of the five cases. Apart from the theoretical extension to this area of research, the results and findings of this study supported the uses and applications of EMA by the higher education sector. Much more can, and should, be done by universities in relation to how they account for the environment. This can provide benefits not only for the sector itself, but also for the environment in which we live.