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Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Online from: 1988

Subject Area: Accounting and Finance

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2nd Global Accounting and Organizational Change Conference 2010

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Article citation: , (2009) "2nd Global Accounting and Organizational Change Conference 2010", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 22 Iss: 5, pp. -

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Article Type: Call for papers From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 22, Issue 5

Accounting’s role in promoting social change

Hosted by Babson College,Boston,USA in association with the Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, UK

Climate change now occupies centre-stage politically in many countries (Gore, 2006; Stern, 2006; IPCC, 2007). The scientific consensus is that climate warming is ``very likely'' due to the excessive Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions of industrial activity (IPCC, 2007; Oreskes, 2004). International policy goals to avert runaway climate change include suggested targets for stabilising atmospheric GHG concentration with emission cuts of 80-90 per cent by 2050 (IPCC, 2007; Stern, 2008). Most countries are committed to modest reductions in GHG emissions under the Kyoto protocol. In tandem with a major international policy focus on carbon pricing and trading (Stern, 2008), predominant climate change strategies for governments, businesses and individuals across industrialised societies include carbon- neutrality, energy and energy conservation strategies, and emissions trading schemes. An international voluntary carbon offset market has burgeoned (EM/NCF, 2008) in response to businesses and individuals purchasing carbon credits to go carbon-neutral (Bumpus and Liverman, 2008). Accounting, technical and ethical critiques, however, are appearing about the efficacy of these practices (e.g. Lohmann, 2005; Smith, 2007); emerging codes of conduct and voluntary standards are creating potential confusion (Lovell et al., 2008); and scaling up offsetting to the levels required is questioned (e.g. Smith and Rodger, 2007).

Despite burgeoning practice, there is a dearth of academic debate about organisational climate change strategies, and particularly with regard to organisational motives, commitments, actions and accountabilities, and the role that carbon accounting and auditing play in these. There is a complete absence of ``carbon accounting'' studies in the social and environmental accounting literature (Gray et al., 2007). To date, there are a small number of relevant studies in the organisations literature, with early research noting active political resistance and climate change denial (e.g. Levy and Egan, 2003; Livesey, 2002). Businesses are now engaging in various programmes, with measures, targets and market trading (e.g. Begg et al., 2005; Kolk and Pinkse, 2004, 2005; Hoffman, 2006), spawning business interest in strategy, opportunities and ``how-to'' guides (e.g. Harvard Business Review, special issue, 2007; Hoffman, 2006). So far, however, little work has attempted to understand the actual dynamics of organisational emissions reduction programmes, key motives that drive or inhibit action (Okereke, 2007), or critically scrutinise obvious tensions and paradoxical motives between organisational desires to reduce ecological impacts and desires to grow and succeed economically. Despite the growing tide of corporate activity on climate change no meaningful progress is being made on global GHG emissions reduction, suggesting relatively weak policy regimes and ``business-as-usual'' (Jones and Levy, 2007). This Special Issue seeks a range of papers from a variety of social science disciplines that address these shortcomings.

Special Issue paper submission deadline: 31 December 2009

Submissions: to Professor Amanda Ball, e-mail: amanda.ball@canterbury.ac.nz or Professor Markus J. Milne, e-mail: markus.milne@canterbury.ac.nz
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Papers available earlier are invited for presentation at a GHG measurement, management and sense-making stream of the 8th Australasian CSEAR Conference 2009, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, December 6-8.
See: www.bsec.canterbury.ac.nz/csear2009/

References

Begg, K.G., van der Woerd, F. and Levy, D. (2005),. The Business of Climate Change, Greenleaf, Sheffield.
Bumpus, A.G. and Liverman, D. (2008), "Accumulation by decarbonisation and the governance of carbon offsets'', Economic Geography (in press).
EM/NCF (2008), Forging a Frontier: State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2008, Ecosystem Markets/New Carbon Finance, available at: http://ecosystemmarketplace.com/
Gore, A. (2006), An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do about It, Rodale Press, Bloomsbury, London.
Gray, R. Dillard, J., and Spence, C. (2007), "Accounting as if the world matters: postalgia and a new absurdism'', 5th APIRA Conference, available at: www.bsec.canterbury. ac.nz/apira2007/proceedings.html
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Livesey, S. (2002), "Global warming wars: rhetorical and discourse analytic approaches to ExxonMobil's corporate public discourse'', The Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 117-48.
Lohmann, L. (2005), "Marketing and making carbon dumps: commodification, calculation and counterfactuals in climate change mitigation'', Science as Culture, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 203-35.
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Smith, I. and Rodger, C. (2007), "Carbon emission offsets for international transport to and from New Zealand'', paper presented at Conference of the National Energy Research Institute, Auckland, New Zealand.
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