Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability addresses the broad and complicated interactions between organisational life, civil society, markets, inequality and environmental degradation through the lenses of accounting, accountability, responsibility and sustainability. Placing the way in which organisations are controlled and the metrics by which they are run at the heart of the analysis, this text also explores how this system opposes the very concerns of societal well-being and environmental stewardship that form the basis of civilised society.
Gray, Adams and Owen offer an in-depth and nuanced guide to this theory, recognising the crucial role played by scholars and practitioners in approaching these central tensions. The theory is extensively supported by analysis of developments in practice and in a real-world context.
Aimed principally at undergraduate and postgraduate Accounting students, Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability will prove invaluable to any student, teacher or practitioner with an interest in the central role accounting, finance, accountability, CSR and sustainability play in the future of society and the planet.
Chapter 1: Introduction, issues and context
Chapter 2: Ways of seeing and thinking about the world: systems thinking and world views
Chapter 3: Corporate social responsibility and accountability
Chapter 4: Description, development and explanation of social, environmental and sustainability acco
Chapter 5: Social and community issues
Chapter 6: Employees and unions
Chapter 7: Environmental issues
Chapter 8: Finance and financial issues
Chapter 9: Seeking the Holy Grail: towards the triple bottom line and/or sustainability?
Chapter 10: The social audit movement
Chapter 11: Governance, attestation and institutional issues
Chapter 12: CSR and accountability in other organisations: the public and third sectors, not-for-pro
Chapter 13: Accounting and accountability for responsibility and sustainability: some possible ways
Chapter 14: What next? A few final thoughts