It is strongly recommended to successfully pass the exams of Business Ethics before attending this course.
Sustainability is most commonly defined as meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It is characterized by three overarching concerns: maintaining ecological and environmental health; creating economic welfare; and ensuring social justice.
This module (Sustainability Accounting) introduces students to the theory, principles, practices and accounting/control techniques of sustainability.
Long-term, effective management and control requires an understanding of human-nature relationships, and social relationships and institutions
The role of accounting and control mechanisms and techniques will be also studied and investigated with regard to the embedding of sustainability-related issues in several social domains.
In particular,
the module discusses and focuses on the concepts of accounting and accountability for sustainability, its processes, techniques and factors. In particular, the focus is on examining the conceptual boundaries of sustainability accounting, its related-links with the notion of corporate social accountability and how this can be discharged by organizations. Sustainability Accounting, which is conceptualized as the “universe of all possible accounting”, is envisaged as the processes of discharging information, through several accounting media, about the “social and environmental” impacts of the economic activities of the organizations.
The module covers the following topics and concepts:
- introduction to the concept of social accountability
- the concept of stewardship
- introduction to corporate social reporting and social accounting of business firms.
- the context for social and environmental accounting: integrated understandings of sustainability
- the sustainability accounting: definition & conceptualization
- the roles of accounting in embedding sustainability in strategic and operational decion-making
- social and environmental reporting: approaches & tradition
- social and environmenta reporting: influencing factors motives for social and enviromental reporting: from the strategic to the ethical (this topic could cover theoretical perspectives such as letigimacy, institutional theory; etc)
- integrated social, environmental and financial reporting: gri and iirc
- social accounting and reporting standards: aa1000 and gbs (comparison)
- sustainability accounting and sustainability: introduction
The module draws upon traditional teaching and learning strategies in terms of lectures and seminars, coupled with self-directed study. During the lectures it will be required to students to engage in dialogue and exchanges of views on different topics. The directed study component is designed to enhance the taught and post taught input. Students could be required to engage with directed study reading before the module begins to support the lectures’ and seminars’ content.
The course is assessed by means of a written exam, which will focus on the theoretical and practical aspects. In particular, the exam consists of open ended, multiple choice and/or essay-type questions. Further, details of the assessment will follow in due course.
Each answer will be graded with a score from 0 to 30 and the final grade will be the average of the four grades.
Each student needs to achieve a mark of 18/30 or above in every module to obtain a ‘pass’ grade in the assessment. Any mark below 18 will be considered as a ‘fail’ and students will be required to resit.
Clearness, synthesis, consistency and critical judgment will be given particular merit.
During the course case study analysis and/or specific assignments maycould be given to students. Students can choose to be evaluated on these assignments as a part of the final grade. In this case, they will be asked to answer only part of the exam. More information will be provided during the course.
This module will be delivered in the second semester.
Students with the exam of 12 CFU need to achieve a mark of 18/30 or above in every module to obtain a
‘pass’ grade in the assessment.