Accounting Organizations and Society 

About: Accounting Organizations and Society is an academic journal published by Elsevier BV. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Audit & Management accounting. It has an ISSN identifier of 0361-3682. Over the lifetime, 1695 publications have been published receiving 227847 citations.

The “new public management” in the 1980s: Variations on a theme

Abstract: Changes in public sector accounting in a number of OECD countries over the 1980s were central to the rise of the “New Public Management” (NPM) and its associated doctrines of public accountability and organizational best practice. This paper discusses the rise of NPM as an alternative to the tradition of public accountability embodied in progressive-era public administration ideas. It argues that, in spite of allegations of internationalization and the adoption of a new global paradigm in public management, there was considerable variation in the extent to which different OECD countries adopted NPM over the 1980s. It further argues that conventional explanations of the rise of NPM (“Englishness”, party political incumbency, economic performance record and government size) seem hard to sustain even from a relatively brief inspection of such cross-national data as are available, and that an explanation based on initial endowment may give us a different perspective on those changes.

Management control systems design within its organizational context: findings from contingency-based research and directions for the future

Abstract: Contingency-based research has a long tradition in the study of management control systems (MCS). Researchers have attempted to explain the effectiveness of MCS by examining designs that best suit the nature of the environment, technology, size, structure, strategy and national culture. In recent years, contingency-based research has maintained its popularity with studies including these variables but redefining them in contemporary terms. This paper provides a critical review of findings from contingency-based studies over the past 20 years, deriving a series of propositions relating MCS to organizational context. The paper examines issues related to the purpose of MCS, the elements of MCS, the meaning and measurement of contextual variables, and issues concerning theory development. A final section considers the possibility that contingency-based ideas could encompass insights from a variety of theories to help understand MCS within its organizational context.

Determinants of corporate social responsibility disclosure: an application of stakeholder theory

Abstract: A lack of sufficient theoretical support for models designed to explain corporate social responsibility activity led Ullmann (Academy of Management Review, 1985, pp. 540–577) to develop a framework for predicting corporate social activity based on a stakeholder theory of strategic management. This study empirically tests the ability of stakeholder theory to explain one specific corporate social responsibility activity — social responsibility disclosure. Results support this application, finding that measures of stakeholder power, strategic posture, and economic performance are significantly related to levels of corporate social disclosure.

Revisiting the relation between environmental performance and environmental disclosure: An empirical analysis

Abstract: Previous empirical evidence provides mixed results on the relationship between corporate environmental performance and the level of environmental disclosures. We revisit this relation by testing competing predictions from economics based and socio-political theories of voluntary disclosure using a more rigorous research design. In particular, we improve on the prior literature by focusing on purely discretionary environmental disclosures and by developing a content analysis index based on the Global Reporting Initiative sustainability reporting guidelines to assess the extent of discretionary disclosures in environmental and social responsibility reports. This index better captures firm disclosures related to its commitment to protect the environment than the indices employed by prior studies. Using a sample of 191 firms from the five most polluting industries in the US, we find a positive association between environmental performance and the level of discretionary environmental disclosures. The result is consistent with the predictions of the economics disclosure theory but inconsistent with the negative association predicted by socio-political theories. Nevertheless, we show that socio-political theories explain patterns in the data (“legitimization”) that cannot be explained by economics disclosure theories. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Managing Public Impressions: Environmental Disclosures in Annual Reports

Abstract: Through the juxtaposition of theory and a meso-level empirical illustration of the environmental disclosures included in the annual reports of Canadian public companies operating in the mineral extraction, forestry, oil and gas, and chemical industries over the 1982 to 1991 period, the current study attempts to increase our understanding of the role and functioning of environmental disclosures. Our analyses focus on three concerns: the influence of external pressure on environmental disclosures in annual reports, including the amount and types of strategies used in disclosure; the characteristics of environmental disclosure vis-a-vis other “social” disclosures; and the association between environmental disclosures and actual performance. We question whether such disclosures highlight positive environmental actions, obfuscate negative environmental effects or both.