Definition
Sustainability accounting entails systems, methods, and processes of creating sustainability information for transparency, accountability, and decision making purposes. This includes the identification of relevant sustainability issues of the company, the definition of indicators and measures, data collection, overall performance tracking and measurement, as well as the communication with to internal and external information recipients.
The main understanding of the phenomenon in literature includes: (1) an empty buzzword blurring the debate (critical, Marxist-lead view), (2) an overarching measurement and information management concept for the calculation of a single corporate sustainability measure (technocratic view), and (3) an umbrella term bringing together different environmental and social accounting approaches for the purpose of addressing sustainability issues...
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References and Readings
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Zvezdov, D., Schaltegger, S. (2013). Sustainability Accounting. In: Idowu, S.O., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Gupta, A.D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28036-8_743
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