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Social and environmental sustainability for accountants
Sustainability
The term sustainability refers to development that meets the contemporary needs without compromising the capacity of future generation to meets their own needs. Sustainability basically involves environmental and social matters that impacts the society. Keeping a note of being sustainable of a human action is to covers the overall impact of activities that effects the individual, the economy, the society, the natural and in built environment.
Sometimes it might be referred as CSR i.e. Corporate Social Responsibility but it carries a wider horizon to elaborate this concept having variety of interpretations on it. For business purposes,
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These zones of ability fall actually under an accountant’s responsibility. Great quality data that is trusted and appropriately focused on is crucial to sustainable advancement. Sustainability deals with social and environmental impacts not for the capital markets. This is actually impacting each business models not the CSR. Being an accountant doesn’t mean to be expert but knowing the concept of sustainability as well as having knowledge about the environment. It is basically embedded to perform business and applying skills.
Contribution towards Sustainable Development
The concept of sustainability comprises of being operated in a way by captivating full account of an entity’s influence on the globe and its people with future. Business is always needed to be modified on the basis of information available. Information pertains to accountancy can provide feedback over its performance which eventually guide management in decision making process for its future. The concept of sustainable development assist in determining and informing regarding decision makings about business strategies.
Accountants needs to comprehend the concept, to know how social and environmental issues creates an impact towards business process which eventually helps in developing decision making using appropriate information provided. The concept of Social and environmental sustainability needs to be entrenched in such a way that the business operates.
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He states that” “Let’s be clear: right from the outset, we’re looking for a market-led adoption [of Integrated Reporting] in Australia, not more regulation,” “What we need from regulators is the ability for companies to do integrated reporting, not the mandating of integrated reporting. This is subtle but important. We’re not about more reporting, we’re about better reporting. It’s terribly important that we don’t get captured by
In relation to sustainability, more and more this aspect is becoming very important for a company’s bottom line and for them to differentiate themselves from their competition that fails to establish a sustainability program. In a macro sense, it ethically responsible to establish a sustainability program to identify ways that the firm can make a difference globally and reduce their overall expense and
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to a business practice that involves participating in initiatives that benefit society. CSR is becoming more mainstream as forward-thinking companies embed sustainability into the core of their business operations to create shared value for business and society. Sustainability isn't just important for people and the planet but also is vital for business success. Today it's not just about having a recycling program or sustainable products. Consumers want to feel good about what their dollar is being used for.
9. Smith’s report defines sustainable development as, “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Smith’s definition is important to consider, because it illustrates that that we do not have to destroy the natural environment to have economic progress.
Protecting the environment has become an important issue in today’s society. There is no longer any doubt that businesses should consider their social responsibility and the impact of their activities on their stakeholders. In addition, firms are beginning to realize that corporate sustainability can prove to be a win win. There are multiple benefits of sustainability linked to costs, revenues, community relations, and more. The decision to strive for sustainability is obvious, but this process is easier said than done. Developing a sustainability strategy is difficult in itself, but the most challenging factor is the actual implementation. Marc J. Esptein, the author of Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environments, and Economic Impacts, provides companies with tactical methods and approaches, as well as real life examples and personal advice in order to assist in helping companies with achieving corporate sustainability.
In recent years, there has been a push for companies to look further than the traditional bottom line. While profit metrics such as net income seem to have some of the strongest reaction in the market, firms have now begun to see that their value should extend past that. As a KPMG report on corporate sustainability defined, “…corporate sustainability is defined as: ‘adopting business strategies that meet the needs of the enterprise and its stakeholders today while sustaining the resources, both human and natural, that will be needed in the future.” (pg.12) It shouldn’t be taken to mean that corporate sustainability is simply a “green”, or environmentally friendly, strategy. It encompasses more than the natural environment. Rather it creates long-term consumer and employee value by taking into consideration the social, economic, and cultural environment in which the firm operates. As more companies begin to adopt these sustainable business practices, studies are being released showing how positively significant the effects are on the firms earnings due to increased profitability and cost reductions. This paper will attempt to explain the overarching concept of sustainability, the widespread adoption of sustainable business practices, the effects on profitability for these firms, and finally the controllership function in directing this new revolution.
In conclusion, I have to say that there is a solid invisible relationship between impacts of businesses on environments, profitability of sustainable business, and responsibility of business. When one of these ones changes, it will effect to others. When a business adapts efficient and sustainable system, it will reduce negative externalities and increase positive externalities to environment. Once the business adapted efficient business model, it will reduce cost and maximize its profits. Obviously, the sustainable and efficient business model will make the business social more responsible to environments.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the set of regulations that an organization makes to protect and increase the society in which it functions. There are three areas of social responsiblity: Organizational stakeholders, the natural environment and general social welfare.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is recognized as a well-known practice of global organizations. CSR generally describes the relation that exists between companies and society and the interrelationship between economic, social and environmental features. CSR also can improve the quality of life of different stakeholders, such as employees, owners, consumers, investors, creditors, social and other responsible and ethical performance.
“Sustainability means transforming our ways of living to maximize the chances that environmental and social conditions will indefinitely support human security, well-being and health.” ( McMichael et al., 2003).
CSR is the carrier of many names such as “citizenship”, “social performance”, “corporate conscience” or “sustainable responsible business” (Fontaine, 2013).
Sustainable development integrating social and environmental considerations into business decisions, products and services to help customers and deliver long term value for stakeholders. Supporting ANZ’s institutional and commercial clients to manage their human rights, labour and environmental risks more effectively benefit customers, strengthens business relationships and reduces ANZ’s reputations and commercial risk.
At a glance, accounting might appear as a repetitive cycle of preparing and examining financial statements. However, a brief exposure to accounting has taught me how chaotic it can be for accountants. An accountant captures and represents the information of businesses. By reviewing financial operations, an accountant helps a business run efficiently. This profession can be intellectually stimulating and rewarding. After learning about accounting, I cannot help but be interested and desire to work toward a degree in accountancy. In my studies, I have learned accountants require a plethora of qualities to be successful. And to mature from a student to a professional, I must resolve to strengthen my weaknesses. There is much I must learn and achieve, but a degree in accounting is well worth the time spent.
Traditionally, financial reporting discloses only financial information to determine its financial performance. However, nowadays, success of one business is no longer solely depending on monetary gain, instead the impacts of companies’ activities have on society and environment as a whole is highly important. This trend has come across to increase the public expectation for organization to take responsibility for their non-financial impacts for example the impacts on the environment and community. Hence, Triple Bottom Line (TBL) which was first described in 1994 by John Elkington can be an ideal integrated approach that fit in to this approach in order to support the sustainability growth of the companies. Triple Bottom Line incorporate three dimension of performance and measurement namely social (people), environment (planet) and financial (profit) which attached to the theory of sustainable development reporting. It is an expansion of the traditional performance framework as it takes into consideration not just financial outcome but also social and environmental performance that businesses are dealing with. The explanations of the three pillars are as follow.
Sustainability is a concept with a diverse array of meanings and definitions – a widely used glamorous, ambiguous, ambivalent and vague concept that is used by different stakeholder groups in various ways. Presumably to avoid noodling over a terminology or to avoid the confrontation with a definition, most widely the concept is broken down a planning process (c.f. e.g. Döring & Muraca, 2010). That is why most common sustainability is understood as sustainable development.1
Despite the fact that it has been proposed that assimilated financial records contained ecological and social data, it was evident in the article that the genuine mix merits consideration among the stakeholders. Sustainability segments in yearly reports among numerous cases were isolated, albeit incorporated; similarly, applies to corporate administration segments in connection to sustainability. At the same time, when the corporate administration and sustainability turn out to be truly connected and reported together, these offered new doors for integrative methodologies in expansion to the bookkeeping