Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Accounting and Business Research on 04/06/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00014788.2018.1470155
Accepted author manuscript, 555 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Final published version
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Corporate reporting and accounting for externalities
AU - Unerman, J.
AU - Bebbington, Jan
AU - O’Dwyer, Brendan
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Accounting and Business Research on 04/06/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00014788.2018.1470155
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Externalities comprise economic, social and/or environmental impacts arising from the activities of an entity that are borne by others, at least in the short term. As they do not feedback directly into immediate financial consequences for the entity, they tend to be outside the remit of financial reporting. A dispersed academic accounting literature on externalities has hitherto developed separately from concerns about what information is appropriate to report on corporate performance. This paper develops insights into accounting for, and reporting of, externalities that are intended to improve the use of externalities information in breaking down silos between the traditionally discrete domains of financial reporting and sustainability reporting, and between silos within sustainability reporting. Challenges in such use of externalities information are explored, including difficulties inherent in the quantification of externalities. The paper also highlights ways in which externalities can progressively become internalised, thereby bringing them more readily within the domain of economically focused financial reporting practices. An agenda for further research to help enhance the accounting for, and reporting of, externalities is also proposed. © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
AB - Externalities comprise economic, social and/or environmental impacts arising from the activities of an entity that are borne by others, at least in the short term. As they do not feedback directly into immediate financial consequences for the entity, they tend to be outside the remit of financial reporting. A dispersed academic accounting literature on externalities has hitherto developed separately from concerns about what information is appropriate to report on corporate performance. This paper develops insights into accounting for, and reporting of, externalities that are intended to improve the use of externalities information in breaking down silos between the traditionally discrete domains of financial reporting and sustainability reporting, and between silos within sustainability reporting. Challenges in such use of externalities information are explored, including difficulties inherent in the quantification of externalities. The paper also highlights ways in which externalities can progressively become internalised, thereby bringing them more readily within the domain of economically focused financial reporting practices. An agenda for further research to help enhance the accounting for, and reporting of, externalities is also proposed. © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
KW - accounting for externalities
KW - commensuration
KW - corporate reporting
KW - full cost accounting
KW - sustainability reporting
U2 - 10.1080/00014788.2018.1470155
DO - 10.1080/00014788.2018.1470155
M3 - Journal article
VL - 48
SP - 497
EP - 522
JO - Accounting and Business Research
JF - Accounting and Business Research
SN - 0001-4788
IS - 5
ER -