W(h)ither Ecology? The Triple Bottom Line, the Global Reporting Initiative, and Corporate Sustainability Reporting

This paper offers a critique of sustainability reporting and, in particular, a critique of the modern disconnect between the practice of sustainability reporting and what we consider to be the urgent issue of our era: sustaining the life-supporting ecological systems on which humanity and other species depend. Tracing the history of such reporting developments, we identify and isolate the concept of the ‘triple bottom line’ (TBL) as a core and dominant idea that continues to pervade business reporting, and business engagement with sustainability. Incorporating an entity’s economic, environmental and social performance indicators into its management and reporting processes, we argue, has become synonymous with corporate sustainability; in the process, concern for ecology has become sidelined. Moreover, this process has become reinforced and institutionalised through SustainAbility’s biennial benchmarking reports, KPMG’s triennial surveys of practice, initiatives by the accountancy profession and, particularly, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s sustainability reporting guidelines. We argue that the TBL and the GRI are insufficient conditions for organizations contributing to the sustaining of the Earth’s ecology. Paradoxically, they may reinforce business-as-usual and greater levels of un-sustainability.     

Sustainability + Accounting Education: The Elephant in the Classroom

Despite the growing importance of sustainability and the sustainable development agenda, and despite the growing presence of papers recognising the critical interaction between sustainability and accounting and finance (and, indeed, with all social science), there has been a relatively muted response apparent within the accounting education literature itself. This relative lack of literature may well be unexpected but what is not unexpected is the difficulty that accounting and finance teachers have in developing such demanding new ideas with accounting and finance students in the classroom. Without in any sense gainsaying the considerable impediments to innovation, this explicitly polemical essay seeks to address a more fundamental difficulty: that of the way in which sustainability is approached and represented in both the literature and the classroom itself. The contention is that, unless sustainability is ‘keeping you awake at night’, you do not understand it. The paper seeks to support this contention and then offers an example of one undergraduate course that is explicitly designed to stop students sleeping peacefully.     

An Empirical Analysis of Current US Practice in Evaluating and Controlling Overseas Operations

This project examined whether US based multinational managers used different techniques for evaluating and controlling foreign operations during the late 1980s than they used in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Consistent with prior research, a combination of surveys and interviews provided the data. Contrary to the prediction of prior research, managers continue to use financial data that has been translated into US dollars versus reports in the foreign (local) currency. Managers continue to emphasise profit as the primary basis of evaluating and controlling foreign operations. Significant changes include the increased emphasis on ‘actual compared to budget’ and decreased emphasis on return on investment.     

Social exclusion

Lawless, P., Martin, R. and Hardy, S. 1998: UNEMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION: LANDSCAPES OF LABOUR INEQUALITY. London: Regional Studies Association with Jessica Kingsley Press, £17.95 paper.

Madanipour, A., Cars, G. and Allen, J. 1998: SOCIAL EXCLUSION IN EUROPEAN CITIES: PROCESSES, EXPERIENCES AND RESPONSES. London: Regional Studies Association with Jessica Kingsley Press, £17.95 paper.     

Canonical valuation of options in the presence of stochastic volatility

Proposed by M. Stutzer (1996), canonical valuation is a new method for valuing derivative securities under the risk‐neutral framework. It is nonparametric, simple to apply, and, unlike many alternative approaches, does not require any option data. Although canonical valuation has great potential, its applicability in realistic scenarios has not yet been widely tested. This article documents the ability of canonical valuation to price derivatives in a number of settings. In a constant‐volatility world, canonical estimates of option prices struggle to match a Black‐Scholes estimate based on historical volatility. However, in a more realistic stochastic‐volatility setting, canonical valuation outperforms the Black‐Scholes model. As the volatility generating process becomes further removed from the constant‐volatility world, the relative performance edge of canonical valuation is more evident. In general, the results are encouraging that canonical valuation is a useful technique for valuing derivatives. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:1–19, 2005     

Segment Reporting Practices in Australia: Has IFRS 8 Made a Difference?

This study examines changes in segment reporting in Australia following the adoption of the international accounting standard, IFRS 8 Operating Segments. We analyse segment disclosures of the top 200 companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in their pre‐ and post‐adoption of AASB 8, the equivalent Australian standard to IFRS 8. Our findings indicate that the number of reportable segments and the extent of disclosure have increased post‐adoption of AASB 8. Contrary to expectations, however, there is very little change in the identification of reportable segments. Companies, in general, have managed to retain their segment reporting formats and disclosures from the pre‐AASB 8 period.