Strategic environmental costs measurement and disclosure : an Australian evidence and an international comparison with USA, EU and Canada
journal contribution
posted on 2017-12-06, 00:00authored byMohammed Zaman
This paper investigates how strategic environmental costs and expenditures can be measured and disclosed as information and should be reported in the annual report of an economically sensitive corporation based on a survey conducted on top 100 companies in Australia. The results indicate that strategic environmental managers and accountants believe that environmentally induced costs and expenses should be reported as notes to financial statements, rather than only in the profit and loss statement in the corporate annual report. However, results are inconclusive as to whether certain strategic environmentally induced expenditure should be capitalized and amortized separately in the balance sheet, while there is some support environmentally induced end- of-pipe and integrated technologies being recognized separately as assets in the balance sheet. The study also found that there was a correlation between the awareness and understanding of ISO standards and this may affect decisions to employ internal environmental auditors with a knowledge and understanding of environmental management systems (EMS) audits under ISO 14000.Finally the paper investigates, through library search, the position of strategic environmental costs management and disclosure in the USA, EU, and Canada. The findings reveal that there is much awareness in reporting environmental costs in the annual report with the enactment of regulations internationally, as in Australia. But the measurement and disclosure of strategic environmental costs and expenditures is still in its infancy, as in Australia, with some improvement in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, the USA, and Canada. The paper concludes with some recommendations for future research.
Funding
Category 1 - Australian Competitive Grants (this includes ARC, NHMRC)
History
Volume
22
Issue
1
Start Page
80
End Page
102
Number of Pages
23
ISSN
0970-9029
Location
Jaipur, India
Publisher
Research Development Association
Language
en-aus
Peer Reviewed
Yes
Open Access
No
External Author Affiliations
Faculty of Business and Informatics; TBA Research Institute;