It appears that environmental issues are becoming a source of competitiveness and that many leading Organisations are realizing the bottom line benefits of implementing environmental management practices (EMPs). Consequently, environment management (EM) is regarded as a component of improving business performance, and implementing EMPs can often provide an opportunity to improve business performance in the hotel industry. However, little evidence shows how to measure and monitor EMPs to improve environmental performance. Although accounting has received considerable attention in the literature as a potential factor with a positive influence on improving environmental performance, there is little evidence regarding the role of accounting in enhancing environmental performance and the lack of empirical research into this link is a key research gap. An exploratory approach via case study is taken, in order to investigate insights into how managers control and monitor EMPs to improve environmental performance in hotel Organisations. Triangulation methods are employed to explore relationships between environmental performance and accounting practices through investigating how relevant accounting information and techniques assist in controlling and monitoring EMPs. The study uses data triangulation, in other words the use of more than one method of data collection (documents, archive records, and semi-structured interviews), to ensure the reliability of results. The findings show that traditional accounting systems offer little in the way of opportunity for facilitating EMPs and improving business performance. This study suggests that the monitoring and measurement of practices could assist managers to continuously improve environmental performance. Most importantly, benchmarking and promoting environmental improvement efforts need to be in alignment with the Organisation's longer-term environmental objectives and business strategy. Moreover, the lack of any accounting technique to quantify the relationship between environmental and financial performance has hindered the ability of management to gain more detailed information with a view to improving business performance. Further to this, without knowledgeable employees, the adoption of environmental management systems (EMS) and monitoring of environmental performance could be expensive and also difficult to sustain in the longer term. Therefore, it is important to seek ways to monitor EMPs and improve business performance. In this study, a framework for monitoring EMPs and benchmarking environmental performance is developed in order to provide detailed information not only for accountants but also for engineers. It is concluded that there is no crucial link between environmental information and accounting systems and this study suggests that Organisations should enforce the interrelation between EMPs and accounting to increase business accountability. Although this study cannot serve as the definitive account of the link between environmental performance and financial performance and may not be generalizable to the hotel industry as a whole - it still represents a useful contribution to the literature because of the practical and theoretical issues it raises regarding the effective implementation of EMPs in specific Organisations, leading from the analysis of one hotel case study to the likely reverberation of such implementation upon Organisational activities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:530809 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Wu, Ho Cha |
| Publisher | Oxford Brookes University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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