Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Accounting for Society and the Environment

Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability addresses the broad and complicated interactions between organisational life, civil society, markets, inequality and environmental degradation through the lenses of accounting, accountability, responsibility and sustainability. Placing the way in which organisations are controlled and the metrics by which they are run at the heart of the analysis, this text also explores how this system opposes the very concerns of societal well-being and environmental stewardship that form the basis of civilised society.

Gray, Adams and Owen offer an in-depth and nuanced guide to this theory, recognising the crucial role played by scholars and practitioners in approaching these central tensions. The theory is extensively supported by analysis of developments in practice and in a real-world context.

Aimed principally at undergraduate and postgraduate Accounting students, Accountability, Social Responsibility and Sustainability will prove invaluable to any  student, teacher or practitioner with an interest in the central role accounting, finance, accountability, CSR and sustainability play in the future of society and the planet.

Rob Gray is Professor of Social and Environmental Accounting at the University of St Andrews. He was Director of the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) from its inception in 1991 until 2012.

Carol Adams is Professor at the Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University and a member of the Global Reporting Initiative Stakeholder Council. She is founding editor of the Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal.

Dave Owen is an Emeritus Professor at the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (Nottingham University Business School). He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (University of St. Andrews).